one of my favorite elements of pluribus is how the series highlights the parts of human relationships and connection that the hivemind cannot experience, because of how it highlights the things that the hivemind eliminates, and everything that willingly submitting to the hivemind would erase from the world.
mr. diabate makes a very sad and hungover carol breakfast in his penthouse suite. he watches her miserably mash her avocado into her toast and pile her bacon and scrambled eggs on top of it to shove into her mouth. he looks down at his own plate to do the same, and discovers that he also enjoys eating his breakfast all together as a sandwich. he wouldn't have thought to try it that way if he hadn't seen carol do it first. he has surrounded himself in a bubble of hivemind make believe, with a harem of dubiously willing supermodels to attend to his ever whim, but he is ultimately alone, just like carol is. he cannot experience human connection because there are no humans around him to connect with, only the hivemind playing pretend with a bunch of meat puppets at his direction. this is the first time since the hivemind descended onto earth that he has experienced something as simple as imitating another person. the hivemind cannot offer this to him, because the hivemind does not have its own experiences to draw from. it "has" everyone's experiences at its disposal, but it cannot make individual decisions based on its own preferences.
the most chilling example of this, to me, was zosia telling carol that she is so excited that she will be writing another winds of wycaro book (pause. it is so funny that they named the series that. thank you plurb writer's room.) because we will finally have something to read!!
of course, the hivemind knows everything about the wycaro series. they know the full text of the novels. they know every fan theory and debate. they know everything that carol and helen workshopped together but didn't include in the published series. they know every interaction carol has ever had with a fan or an agent. they know every twitter, tumblr, and reddit post ever penned about or in response to the series.
but even knowing all of this, the hivemind cannot create a new entry for wycaro. even if the hivemind absorbed carol and had access to every unpublished idea she'd ever had for the series, it still couldn't create a new book. because one of the most basic building blocks of the creative drive is the desire to share your work. even just with one friend. even just in one small community. the desire to create something is the desire to communicate to another person. the hivemind cannot have this desire, because the hivemind does not communicate. knowing everything about everyone does not facilitate communication, it ends it. there is no need, within the hivemind, even to speak out loud. every colonized individual can experience the thoughts of all their fellow hive members in real time. eliminating all barriers to communication also eliminates the need for it.
the hivemind absorbing carol and knowing everything that she would have included in the next seven wycaro novels is not the same as an unjoined carol creating a new novel and giving the hivemind something new to read. this is something the hivemind would not even know it was hungry for if it did not have a few individual stragglers to remind it of what it lacks.
like any good scifi, the hivemind is a flexible metaphor. manousos explicitly calls it a colonizer. carol tells us it is just like the staff at the conversion therapy camp she was sent to as a child. kusimayu agrees to join the hivemind willingly and it shows us that her family, her culture, her home, mean nothing to it as soon as it has consumed her.
and in the ways i've described above, the hivemind is generative ai. the whole mass of all human knowledge sitting at its fingertips, and no ability nor desire to do anything with it.
janainaart
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
dailybridgerton
