Two characters, a keen young recruit (Mae) and her more experienced mentor (Annie), each want to live a life that harmonizes with the surveillance practices on which the Circle’s business model depends. They want to but cannot—at least not without a sanity-threatening struggle. At risk is not just the ability of these characters to direct their lives but their basic sense of themselves as selves: the minimal integrity without which they fail to be selves at all.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 501