Be More Chill

The novel explores the question of whether or not human social behaviors can be quantified and analyzed through its science fiction premise. Even before Jeremy Heere ingests the SQUIP, he obsesses over unspoken interpersonal rules and attempts to track his social reputation using a system he called Humiliation Sheets. The novel often capitalizes phrases that Jeremy uses, such as Humiliation Sheets or Appearance Checks, to create the impression that these are standardized and official terms. By contrasting this academic-sounding prose with the relatively normal circumstances of Jeremy’s high school life, the novel indicates that even everyday interactions are influenced by psychological phenomena.

The novel borrows the language of social psychology and evolutionary biology to depict social interaction as a contest. This cynical perspective suggests that teenagers make friends or enemies based on the costs and benefits of those relationships to their own survival. For example, when Jeremy watches the MTV reality dating show Dismissed, he sees the premise as a competition in which people like him will inevitably fail. He reflects that “the result—cutthroat social contest, all day, everyday; death to the ugly; death to the stammerers; death to the faces that got scarred in a playground sometime—stays the same” (33-34), no matter who the contestants on the show are. This “survival of the fittest” mentality is also brought up in his conversation with Michael Mell about whether or not technology will prevent humans from continuing to evolve (37), because anyone with confidence can now successfully breed.

When Jeremy ingests the SQUIP supercomputer, it validates his view of society as a set of quantifiable rules. The SQUIP informs Jeremy that becoming cool is much simpler than he imagines because “HUMAN SOCIAL ACTIVITY IS GOVERNED BY RULES AND I HAVE THE PROCESSING CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND, OBEY, AND UTILIZE THOSE RULES” (109). Unlike a normal computer, the SQUIP’s quantum functions allow it to navigate the gray areas of human interactions. It tells Jeremy that “EMOTIONS, HUMAN DILEMMAS, PLANNING, WRITING, RELATIONSHIPS—NONE OF THESE ARE CUT-AND-DRIED” (134), but it claims that through the use of photon qubits, even an inanimate piece of technology can successfully analyze these ambiguous situations to find the best outcome.

Because the computer works in a manner similar to that of a human brain, but with better processing power, it is—ironically—better than a human at acting human. The SQUIP even suggests that future generations of technology will be able to harness human biology, as well as social psychology. When explaining its plan to make Christine Caniglia jealous by having Jeremy date other women, the SQUIP says, “HOW DO YOU THINK GUYS WITH GIRLFRIENDS BECOME SO ATTRACTIVE TO OUTSIDE FEMALES THAT THEY’RE FORCED TO CHEAT? PHEROMONES” (155). While the SQUIP cannot currently manufacture pheromones in Jeremy’s body, it claims that the next version will. Through these descriptions of the SQUIP’s technical abilities, the novel satirizes the way that humans obsessively create social rules that limit free expression, suggesting that it detracts from their humanity and makes them more like advanced computers.