Wednesday, April 15, 2020 — 5A
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SAM JUNE

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

If you’ve been to Rick’s, you’ve probably 

seen Sam June dancing. A second-year 

master’s student in electrical engineering, 

June takes the stage for hours every 

weekend. Unusually, though, he usually 

dances 
alone 
and 

sober. While many 

people go to Rick’s 

for sloppy make-outs 

and cheap drinks, he 

goes to find solace in 

dancing solo. 

It 
all 
started 

on 
June’s 
twenty-

first 
birthday. 
He 

and 
three 
friends 

went to Rick’s, and 

even 
though 
he’d 

never really danced 

before, 
he 
found 

himself enjoying the 

experience. 

He 
decided 

he wanted to try 

dancing again, but 

his friends weren’t 

always up for it — so 

he went alone.

“I would get bored, so I would go to 

Slounge or Rick’s or Cantina, and for a long 

time I never really danced,” he said. “I just 

sat in the back corner and maybe listened to 

music and briefly said hi to (a) friend or two 

if I saw them. I didn’t feel really comfortable 

dancing by myself at that time.”

At home, he found himself dancing for 

fun. “My bedroom closet is like a giant 

sliding mirror,” he said. “I would dance by 

myself and see what it looked like. It helped 

me to determine if something looked stupid 

or if I was like, ‘Oh, that didn’t look half 

bad.’”

June kept going back to bars, but he hadn’t 

worked up the confidence to dance yet. “It 

went on for months 

where 
I 
wouldn’t 

really dance at all, 

and it would kind 

of suck because one 

of my favorite songs 

would come on and 

I’d feel like I couldn’t 

really dance to it,” he 

said. 

Finally, he decided 

to just go for it. 

“One day, months 

down the line, one 

of my favorite Taylor 

Swift 
songs 
came 

on,” he explained. “I 

said ‘No, I’m gonna 

get up and dance. 

I don’t even care if 

everyone makes fun 

of me, I’m gonna do it.’”

He positioned himself in the back of the 

dance floor behind two groups of friends 

and began to dance. “That was the night a 

gate first opened up for me,” he said. 

Rick’s can be sort of like a middle school 

dance — you see people you know, and you 

want them to see you, too. But for June, the 

people around him don’t really figure into 

it. 

“When I started dancing on stage, I never 

did it for the crowd,” he said. “In fact, at 

first, I got nervous of what other people were 

saying about me. A pair of friends would 

be standing off to the side and exchanging 

whispers while staring up at me. Some 

might point and laugh while taking a picture 

or Snapchat video. Initially, I thought most 

people were ridiculing and insulting me, but 

I didn’t let it bother me.”

This attitude helped June decide what 

was more important to him; his own joy or 

other people’s opinions. His joy won out.

“At a point, I realized that it didn’t matter 

if those two girls in the back of the room 

were making fun of me; it didn’t matter if 

that one person taking a video of me was 

adding a degrading caption; it didn’t matter 

if that friend group was laughing at how bad 

my dancing was,” he said. “None of those 

things mattered because I wasn’t on the 

stage to seek validation or be the center of 

attention.”

Instead, he decided to just enjoy himself.

“I was happy because I was dancing and 

having fun in a way that made sense to me. 

When I dance, I feel like I don’t have to 

hold back from being myself, and it’s a very 

empowering feeling,” June said. “Dancing 

never fails to make me happy, no matter 

what kind of negativity is weighing on me.”

Now that Rick’s is closed due to the 

pandemic, June is finding new ways to use 

dancing to express himself and connect 

with others.

“Once quarantine kicked in, I got the idea 

to make a TikTok to keep the dancing spirit 

alive, even though Rick’s is off-limits,” he 

said. “So now every few days I post a video 

of myself dancing to a song I like.”

A profile of Ann Arbor’s legendary Rick’s Dancer

MIRIAM FRANCISCO

Daily Arts Writer

BOOK REVIEW
‘Followers’ depicts our alarming dependence on technology

LILLY PEARCE
Daily Arts Writer

Stuck inside, days blending together, time 

practically slipping through our fingers, it 

is technology that we cling to during this 

unprecedented period. Our reality is grounded 

with technology. It allows us to remain 

connected to the outside world. And though 

it’s true technology has become one of the 

most invaluable tools right now, this increased 

dependency has made us overlook the dangers 

of technology, the dangers that are explored in 

Megan Angelo’s debut novel, “Followers.”

With an extremely relevant look into our 

learned reliance on technology, Angelo makes 

you rethink your online presence — so much 

so that I now feel particularly paranoid when 

I find myself checking my Instagram feed and 

updating my Twitter timeline more than I ever 

have before. 

Angelo tells the story in two timelines: one set 

in 2015 with ambitious blogger Orla, who is stuck 

working as an inglorious reporter for a gossip 

magazine, and the other set in 2051 with celebrity 

Marlow, whose entire life has been broadcasted 

24/7 for the rest of the world to watch. Angelo 

alternates between these storylines, dropping 

hints to what has caused this distinct evolution of 

technology and transformation of American life 

known as the “Spill.” 

Orla strives to do something more with her life. 

She dreams of writing the novel that drove her to 

move to New York in the first place, but instead 

finds herself devoting the majority of her time to 

writing frivolous magazine articles on uprising 

influencers. We see her frustration growing 

while she resides on the outskirts of celebrity 

life, until her roommate, Floss, invents a scheme 

that will place both of them in the limelight of 

fame. Floss is desperate to be known, and Orla is 

desperate to transform her life, so together, the 

two capitalize on Orla’s position writing for the 

blog, Lady-ish, to propel Floss to stardom.Tired 

of being nobodies, they convince the world that 

Floss is somebody. 

Marlow, on the other hand, has been a 

beloved celebrity since birth but is now growing 

suspicious of her fans’ adoration. Marlow lives 

by the stage cues of the Constellation Network 

that orchestrates the lives of all its contributors, 

deciding everything from the clothes they wear 

to the food they eat. Only one hour every day, from 

three to four a.m., is not 

broadcasted to Marlow’s 

12 million followers. But 

despite her large following, 

she wonders why she feels 

so alone. This curiosity 

is 
only 
encouraged 
by 

the questions that arise 

in 
Marlow’s 
path, 
the 

inexplicability 
that 

develops as she learns more 

about her own past and the 

past of American society 

that 
the 
Constellation 

Network has kept secret 

from her for so long. 

Having grown up in Constellation, California, 

all that Marlow knows is what the Constellation 

Network has told her. In her future state, she is 

aware of the Spill, but is unfamiliar with specific 

details. Any questions or conversations Marlow 

has about the Spill are quickly suppressed by the 

network, which only piques her interest more. 

She wants answers that she is not getting, so 

as she has done all her life on camera, Marlow 

decides to act. 

It was harrowing to witness the extent to 

which technology influences both dystopian 

societies, despite 2015 being very much grounded 

in present-day circumstances. That is what 

made the modern setting of the book so striking 

— the fact that the majority of the events that 

occur could actually happen; as Orla and Floss 

manipulate social media for their benefit, the 

feasibility of a modern dystopia revealed itself, 

and to be living in a time where we spend our 

days glued to our devices, I quickly became 

paranoid as I wondered about what opportunities 

this increased reliance on technology presented 

for ambitious manipulators, hackers and even 

just 
bored 
quarantined 

scrollers, all of whom have 

too much time on their 

hands. 

My 
paranoia 
eased 

when I read from Marlow’s 

perspective in 2051. This 

world didn’t feel as real 

(and at times, was difficult 

for me to visualize at 

all), given the futuristic 

additions of robots and 

disturbing devices everyone 

had implemented in their 

wrists. 
These 
devices 

connect to the host’s brain, reminding me of Siri, 

or Amazon’s Alexa, only in your head rather than 

your device. Marlow can think of any question 

and the device responds to her as if it were her 

own thought. The devices ruled out the need for 

technology like cell-phones and computers, given 

the perpetual availability of knowledge in one’s 

own mind. 

But though my paranoia had passed its peak, 

that is not to say I am not thoroughly creeped out. 

I am already disturbed to find advertisements of 

products on my social media timeline that I had 

previously mentioned in passing, nevertheless 

actually searched, so I could not imagine having 

an even more powerful device linked directly to 

my inner thoughts. 

Nevertheless, I found the alarming presence 

of technology to be one of the most interesting 

aspects of the book. But, as I was reading to 

discover more about the “Spill” that led to the 

eradication of modern technology and the 

imminent innovation of the devices in 2051, 

I found myself getting lost in the superfluous 

details Angelo includes about the regular lives 

of Orla and Marlow. Angelo neglects to really 

characterize either of their personalities and 

as a result, their personal stories never really 

captivated me. Maybe they were just boring.

There was incredible content for Angelo to run 

with, had she narrowed focus on the manipulation 

of technology by these characters, but instead, 

she focused on rather irrelevant details of the 

characters’ lives that slowed the progression of 

the novel. Orla was too caught up talking about 

her highschool crush, whose role was completely 

unimportant to the storyline by the time he was 

introduced; Floss was characterized to have an 

incredibly strange backstory we never got to hear; 

Marlow was written too placidly. Excitement 

seemed to run away from her. 

While the applicability of the problematic 

technological usage made the book relevant, the 

unfulfilled characterization and dull, redundant 

backstories made the book feel a lot longer than it 

actually was. If Angelo would have focused on the 

dystopian effects of technology and taken more of 

the “Black Mirror” route with the presence and 

infiltration of our devices, the book would have 

been far more gripping. The commentary on our 

reliance on our phones and computers is stirring, 

but the overall book was not as enthralling as it 

had promised to be.

“Followers”

Megan Angelo

Graydon House

Jan. 14, 2020

This attitude helped 
June decide what was 
more important to him; 
his joy trumped other 

people’s opinions.

