The Feed: Glitch Protocol: In a world where every waking second is a metric, attention is the only currency that matters.

by Scott Smallbeck

153 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2026

Reviews

[Jade Tarbania · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard one to rate for me. This way of looking at how time consuming social media is becoming should be eye opening and alarming. I enjoyed the premise and the message behind the book, but there were some things that really bothered me.

We start off strong with us learning everything about the feed and the “lives” that their society has. Their day to day is simple- wake up, eat their weird food, social media, sleepsync. Day in and day out. No human connection, just followers and four walls. Then our MC sees the tree that starts it all. She asks questions and refuses to forget.

Then we meet the Analogs- the people living without the Feed on the surface instead of in the pods. This is where it goes downhill for me. We meet Jonas who created the Feed and shares how everything started and how far the Feed has progressed, how it uses brain power to continue running, and why the Feed needs to be stopped.

Maya learns the garden and goes back to her pod with cuts on her hand. She’s supposed to lay low and wait for the broadcast, but she doesn’t… from here, I’m just going to post the few specific notes I made because from then on, I get frustrated with the timeline because it feels very random now…

Page 69: “You’ll get used to it. Or you won’t.” Would’ve been a more meaningful statement if I hadn’t read it 2 or 3 times in the last chapter or two.

Page 135 to 153: The timing is off. Maya just broadcasted her truth- what she’s seen and felt beyond the feed- right after Voss told her that her time to broadcast would be limited.
Moments later, people are making content explaining it away and calling her glitch girl while a smaller percentage of others are asking questions- one refusing sleepsync while Voss speculates that they remember what it’s like the dream, another making real food.
Voss states “Three hundred twelve direct inquiries in the last hour. People asking how to reach the Surface. Asking if there are others. Asking how to join.” But again, Voss said she wouldn’t have much time… but we have an hour of content already…

And don’t get me started on the random and truly out of nowhere romance for one page at the end. I don’t even want to talk about that.

I looked it up. The word optimized is in this book 97 times. Optimization 48 times. Optimizing 6… 151 times in 153 pages... it’s safe to say there was a lot of repetition in this book. I felt like I was losing my mind

[Valerie Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the concept of this book. The ideas surrounding the Feed, optimization, and what it means to be human were interesting, and there were definitely parts that made me think.
Unfortunately, some things pulled me out of the story. There were continuity issues and formatting problems in the Kindle edition, especially inconsistent spacing after commas. There was also quite a bit of repetition. I understand that repeating certain phrases and ideas was probably intentional, but sometimes the wording was so similar that I genuinely thought I had accidentally gone backward in the book.
The biggest issue for me was the ending. I reached a point where I felt the story had already landed perfectly, but it continued for several more pages repeating the same ideas. By the end, I was skimming because I was ready for it to be over.
Good concept and an interesting story, but it needed a tighter edit.

[Rebeka Alvie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m genuinely sorry to rate this book so low because the underlying concept is strong, and it had the potential to be something really interesting. There are elements here that I enjoyed, particularly the characters and the world-building, which made it even more disappointing to see the execution fall short.

My biggest issue was the prose itself, which was clearly written by AI. The writing felt unpolished, with frequent repetition of lines and even entire paragraphs within the same chapter. While I’m not opposed to the use of AI as part of the writing process, I think any AI-generated material requires careful revision and refinement by a human. And that editing just didn't seem to be there, and it dulled the reading experience.

[Stephanie White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book was talking about all of us- that we are so tuned into the net that it's hard to get disconnected.

The main female, lives in a facility, where everything is controlled, feeding, eating, sleeping, work - and she thinks she lives a good life - then one day she sees a feed of a "live tree" which wakes her up.

Then she realizes after she meets some folks that everything isn't glowing - she even meets one of the people who set up the Protocol.

It's a deep book - I enjoyed it - I'm just looking at more of the big picture - 8 billion people are connected, isn't that the population of earth? :)

Will defintely make you think.

[whataslacker · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise sounded interesting. The first chapter was good enough to suck me in. Then it all goes downhill from there. About midway, I almost called this a DNF (and I hate to not finish a book I started). Getting to the end of this book was a struggle. There are so many repeated things throughout that make it just feel like the author was trying to lengthen a short story. Some were exact word-for-word repeats of sentences and full paragraphs from the chapter or page before it, so it becomes tedious rather quickly. I fought my way through it and finished it, but honestly wished I had just given up at that halfway point. Besides all the repeated thoughts and dialogue, there are a ton of plot holes and missing information. The world this author tried to build is incomplete. The characters should have been better developed. Your mileage may vary but I see no reason to continue with this series of "books".

[Carie Lyons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute and delightful



This was a cute futuristic story. Not far from where society is heading. A little bit Matrix crossed with Silo. I would read it again. It is short and sweet.