03-30-2021, 02:55 AM
Friends,
Let's get strange.
Let's get strange talking about the strange thing we call the internet. I want to cast a wide net with this topic, and hopefully we can catch some tantalizing things together. The hope is that this thread, best read after dark (in your respective timezone), will allow us to channel vibes that are weird, eerie, uncanny, existential dread-inducing, psychedelic, and haunting about the internet and the digital age.
Whether the internet is just a big floating mass of human thought or its own unique inhuman consciousness (or both, or neither), I think that there are strange nameless energies we constantly experience because of our relationship to the internet, and that's what I want to tap into here.
What do I mean? I don't really mean that time you watched a spooptube video about red rooms (though an experience or concepts involving a sense of danger and unease related to the internet may come up organically as we go). Urban legends have always existed; I am interested in us talking about psychical/limbic/bodily/cultural experiences and effects specific to the internet--to Now, or as long as you've had access to a computer. Anecdotes and theories.
Not so much about content itself alone, but discussion of the very presence or effect of the technology itself. Let's get trippy, nutty, fringy, philosophical, shamanistic, galaxy-brained, personal, anecdotal, relatable. Let's find weird common ground and totally alien new terrain. Reality, identity, perception, presence, absence, space, time, energy, auras, bodies, dreams, delusions.
It'd be relevant to also discuss/dissect content that often makes us think and feel on a meta-level about (electronic/digital) technology, i.e. stuff like what's being posted in the Youtube Oddities thread, bizarre/strange current or dead websites, true weird events involving the internet in a weird context, post-internet art, OPN, vaporwave, the appeal of The Backrooms meme, the effect of cursed images, dreamcore, internetcore, analog horror, Outrun, glitch art, error messages, anomalies, skeuomorphs, vaporwaRe, Randonautica, numbers stations, broadcast signal intrusions etc). Everything shadowy and off-kilter about the devices and logics that dominate almost every domain of 'modern' life now.
Not just the what, but the why of the effect of these things on us feels like it would be really immersive and rewarding to discuss. Let's try a create a vibe with this thread and keep it going.
Starting points/generative concepts:
Let's get strange.
Let's get strange talking about the strange thing we call the internet. I want to cast a wide net with this topic, and hopefully we can catch some tantalizing things together. The hope is that this thread, best read after dark (in your respective timezone), will allow us to channel vibes that are weird, eerie, uncanny, existential dread-inducing, psychedelic, and haunting about the internet and the digital age.
Whether the internet is just a big floating mass of human thought or its own unique inhuman consciousness (or both, or neither), I think that there are strange nameless energies we constantly experience because of our relationship to the internet, and that's what I want to tap into here.
What do I mean? I don't really mean that time you watched a spooptube video about red rooms (though an experience or concepts involving a sense of danger and unease related to the internet may come up organically as we go). Urban legends have always existed; I am interested in us talking about psychical/limbic/bodily/cultural experiences and effects specific to the internet--to Now, or as long as you've had access to a computer. Anecdotes and theories.
Not so much about content itself alone, but discussion of the very presence or effect of the technology itself. Let's get trippy, nutty, fringy, philosophical, shamanistic, galaxy-brained, personal, anecdotal, relatable. Let's find weird common ground and totally alien new terrain. Reality, identity, perception, presence, absence, space, time, energy, auras, bodies, dreams, delusions.
It'd be relevant to also discuss/dissect content that often makes us think and feel on a meta-level about (electronic/digital) technology, i.e. stuff like what's being posted in the Youtube Oddities thread, bizarre/strange current or dead websites, true weird events involving the internet in a weird context, post-internet art, OPN, vaporwave, the appeal of The Backrooms meme, the effect of cursed images, dreamcore, internetcore, analog horror, Outrun, glitch art, error messages, anomalies, skeuomorphs, vaporwaRe, Randonautica, numbers stations, broadcast signal intrusions etc). Everything shadowy and off-kilter about the devices and logics that dominate almost every domain of 'modern' life now.
Not just the what, but the why of the effect of these things on us feels like it would be really immersive and rewarding to discuss. Let's try a create a vibe with this thread and keep it going.
Starting points/generative concepts:
- What are you earliest memories of the internet?
- When you have memories of the internet, do you remember your body experiencing the thing in the space you were in, just the content itself--how would you describe it?
- Do you notice that changes in layouts/interfaces/web design effects you at all on any notable emotional/psychological level?
- Do you ever have internet related dreams?
- Is the internet supernatural?
- Is the internet "real"? Surreal? Irreal? Unreal? Multireal?
- Does the space in which you use the internet affect your usage habits?
- Do dead websites or dead links or empty comment sections or no one else online make you feel weird?
- Why are 'liminal spaces' such a thing online right now? Can the internet be a liminal space?
- What do you picture when imagining other people on the other side of internet communication?
- Is the internet related to psychedelics, stimulants, or deliriants?
- Have you ever found anything genuinely weird/sus/spoopy in places like google search, maps, etc--again, not so much creepypasta type stuff, but stuff that genuinely fucked with you in your experience of it.
- Any truly bizarre or haunting/unsettling experiences you've had online? (again, let's take it above the basic internet mystery/horror territory--let's get into real odd shit you've seen)
- Do you have any weird/strange/insane theories about the internet, the digital age, digital tech? (the more bizarre the better)
- What does the internet do to our sense of time? Our bodies?
- How does the internet change our relation to and perception of offline spaces, bodies, language, communities, etc.
- Is there archetypal/mythical precedence for the design, effects, and function of the internet as a thing?
- Predictions on how the internet will continue to evolve and continue to shape societies?
- Anything extraterrestrial about the internet we should consider?
- What do algorithms do to and for us psychologically?
- Is the internet just TV 2.0 or Written Language 10.0 or is it truly unique in the lineage of human tech? What comes after?
- Does anything in general about the internet ever feel weird, eerie, uncanny, existential dread-inducing, psychedelic, or haunting to you in a way that no one ever talks about? Does the internet scare you in any way?
- Let's talk about anything else that feels like it fits these vibes
