this computer/body/computer thing reminds of jankspace: “the grotesque, empty space in the digital network of technocapitalism that we fill with our slimy human bodies.” https://dis.art/welcome-to-jankspace
Another super interesting piece. Yes the algogarchic project is very much a real obsession/ cult / religion lead by Musk, Zuck, Andressen et al. My one caution for your memeology is the physical world is still fundamentally more important than the digital world. To what extent does memeology serve the algogarchy?
Thanks for the caution -- I think anything on the platform serves the algogarchy, but you have to work with the tools you have, which are available to you, in the position you're in. And as of now, what I want to do is try to reframe some of the stories around the web and its history so the side that demonstrates people can be powerful, smart, and free shines through a bit better -- I'll see where that project goes, hopefully somewhere good! If they offer me enough, I will have to sell out, though.
I like DIT because it immediately evokes stuff in American culture like zombies or hungry ghosts, it also naturally explains the end. These scrollslave phone style users are seemingly born cucks, they don't have a desire or means to avoid what they don't want. So I feel like clit logic is stretching too far from the multiple meanings of cuck to make sense.
Love this. And yet … does the metaphor really work? The problem is that a cuck gets off on someone else fucking their wife/partner/whoever. The computer is not my wife, however unhealthy my relationship with it may be. So, in facilitating the computer’s digital sex act with another computer, am I really being cucked? What you’re describing sounds more like ….insect pollination. Two computers, made for each other, as you say, needing each other, but intrinsically unable to consummate without the intervention of a third party (of a different species). Maybe we humans are bees or moths in this scenario, buzzing from feed to feed laden with digital pollen.
insect pollination would work too... but I think, although I'm not sure I'm married to my computer either, there is a certain pleasure in not having power here. People do enjoy, in some ways, watching a computer enjoy content on their behalf. And what I seek to capture in the term is a bit of that self-abasement which you undergo when you're totally doomscrolling, subordinating the concerns/responsibilities of being a self to the task of being a user, watching systems take on the agency, the profit, the risk, the joy. But I agree this is somewhat of a weak point in Cuck Internet Theory, where the metaphor kind of runs into a limit.
*sitting in the comments just watching*
You are doing double duty on helping us comprehend why every interaction on the internet today has become soul-eroding.
Soul is an amorphic term—nevertheless people, in their bones, know what I’m saying.
This is one of your most exciting and entertaining posts ever.
this computer/body/computer thing reminds of jankspace: “the grotesque, empty space in the digital network of technocapitalism that we fill with our slimy human bodies.” https://dis.art/welcome-to-jankspace
thank u! I will check that out
What is the simulation without it's simulacrum?
But I don't want you to be a cuck. Does that make me old and out of touch? Keep on keeping on Aidan.
Another super interesting piece. Yes the algogarchic project is very much a real obsession/ cult / religion lead by Musk, Zuck, Andressen et al. My one caution for your memeology is the physical world is still fundamentally more important than the digital world. To what extent does memeology serve the algogarchy?
Thanks for the caution -- I think anything on the platform serves the algogarchy, but you have to work with the tools you have, which are available to you, in the position you're in. And as of now, what I want to do is try to reframe some of the stories around the web and its history so the side that demonstrates people can be powerful, smart, and free shines through a bit better -- I'll see where that project goes, hopefully somewhere good! If they offer me enough, I will have to sell out, though.
Little did Trump know he was kind of an oracle when he said "it's all computer"
Riveting stuff
I like DIT because it immediately evokes stuff in American culture like zombies or hungry ghosts, it also naturally explains the end. These scrollslave phone style users are seemingly born cucks, they don't have a desire or means to avoid what they don't want. So I feel like clit logic is stretching too far from the multiple meanings of cuck to make sense.
Love this. And yet … does the metaphor really work? The problem is that a cuck gets off on someone else fucking their wife/partner/whoever. The computer is not my wife, however unhealthy my relationship with it may be. So, in facilitating the computer’s digital sex act with another computer, am I really being cucked? What you’re describing sounds more like ….insect pollination. Two computers, made for each other, as you say, needing each other, but intrinsically unable to consummate without the intervention of a third party (of a different species). Maybe we humans are bees or moths in this scenario, buzzing from feed to feed laden with digital pollen.
insect pollination would work too... but I think, although I'm not sure I'm married to my computer either, there is a certain pleasure in not having power here. People do enjoy, in some ways, watching a computer enjoy content on their behalf. And what I seek to capture in the term is a bit of that self-abasement which you undergo when you're totally doomscrolling, subordinating the concerns/responsibilities of being a self to the task of being a user, watching systems take on the agency, the profit, the risk, the joy. But I agree this is somewhat of a weak point in Cuck Internet Theory, where the metaphor kind of runs into a limit.
great article Aidan. check out my new short story if you’re interested https://byframe.substack.com/p/the-canon-fe2