periphery to fringe to center

preliminary web theories

it’s time for another beautiful late night on the internet. it’s time for another dose of internet, fringe and weird and fun and fascinating. i am a black widow because it is halloween season, and there is nothing better than being a reclusive little creature with a reptuation that rolls on in advance of any encounter—so it’s time to hide in my corner and tense the threads of text that pull me into the web. the internet, this time.

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the internet isn’t an abstraction any more. perhaps it never was. perhaps it is, but in a way we’ll never understand. what is wonderful about the internet is that it’s a fantastic element for understanding the creatures that we are. what are we suscepitble to? what do we crave? what do we desire? what do we abhor? and how are these reflected in the content that we post, consume, remix, submit, delete, retweet, repost, bastardize?

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when you go on the internet and interact with something, when you get a kick of dopamine from a cute cat video or an exceptional gatcha box—your online interaction has transcended the screen. it’s in your bloodstream now. your feels are real, are they not? your feels are chemical. nathan fielder took blood and urine samples after befriending a lonely la local and found that levels of dopamine and serotonin had increased after a day at the amusement park. who’s to say the interent isn’t doing the same thing?

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i tell my husband that if i could mainline the weird part of the internet, just have a pure iv drip of internet going right into a central line, that would be great. i’ve had the misforune of waking up to an iv line a few times before. it’s always been filled with saline. never anything good. just something to keep the tissues wet and healthy while the being ails. but when you internet hard enough, that’s the web blooming into your bloodstream, giving you a kick of whatever it’s supposed to give you. whatever you seek. the impulses of your screen and the urge to scream you feel welling up in your neck—that you quiet—these are real. these are happening. whatever got you mad probably didn’t. they change your chemistry.

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so what do we seek? what are we looking for on the internet? how do we stumblefuck our way into something that we love? there’s ragebait content all over social media. posted mostly by strangers who you, dear internet denizen, can reply to at your whim. they might block you. they might not. they might start a flame war that echoes embarassingly across platforms. they might forget that you even posted and just go on with their day. that is the most maddening of all. but you can tap into that madness, feel it in your bones, get all ornery. horenery. how you react is up to your chemistry. perhaps you prefer the warm embrace of an echo chamber, with affirmations that pool up beneath your tearful and earnest comment. perhaps you derive a simp or two from this activity. nobody knows how it’ll go.

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but this is why i think people who are researching the internet probably need to stay off of twitter. or at least not get too caught up in it. because what happens and sets discourse for a small group of people can come to define it if we do that, and much is lost when that happens. perhaps there’s a chilling effect. perhaps there’s some people who are simply too based, or too off-kilter, for that part of the internet. but perhaps what we seek is not what is served up to us by the algorithm. maybe what we seek, if we seek truth, is somewhere else.

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theorize the mediasphere. theorize the internet. theorize how this absolute shiftest shows what we are, how we are, who and what we have the potential to become. but zoom out now. i want you to see everything from space, like you’re an alien zooming around in a cool little space coupe. when i was in group therapy, we did an exercise where we viewed the world as if we were alien to it. it was supposed to show us that we should evaluate our behaviors and those of others critically. when you are abused, you become accustomed to abuse. when you are too human, you become accustomed to that easy thread of inter-and-re-action. it’s time to take a step back. haven’t you always dreamed of flying? dream of flying with me.

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during that exercise, i sobbed. i sobbed hard. i couldn’t cope. because i have never felt like that thread of inter-and-re-action was anything to hold on to. it slipped out of my hands and cut my fingers like a kite gone wild in a gale. so instead of staying tethered to this earth, let’s fly above it. for a moment. in our minds. come with me. into whatever comes next.

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perhaps we should look to what gets less attention. when you zoom out, watching the internet pulse with the topical and react to the news cycle, what do we see? many people, all reacting and trying to understand and striving for acceptance or attention or some metric that will make them feel better. trying to get some chemical kick out of whatever we are doing. a well-recieved tweet picks me up like a ciggie. i don’t smoke, though—i’ve tried cigarettes and the smell of smoke in my hair reminds me of all the suspicious smoke i’ve smelled before and i don’t like it. smoke smells like a dirty little secret. smoke smells like what we don’t talk about. but we do things that we don’t talk about. we have dirty little secrets that get us through the day. i know this because i know my family. i am bad at keeping secrets, personally. i am a writer, after all. when i smell the smoke on your clothes, the membrane between your world and mine gets dangerously thin.

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we know that under neoliberal capitalism, life is hard. there is the constant threat that you will be thrown away when your being is not generating as much revenue as your tissues would. this has happened to me. i will write about it eventually. i have already written about it and i have not shared it because i have not found anyone that i feel comfortable sharing it with. that’s ok. things happen in the right time. stories find their conclusion when the moment is right. there is another thread you can touch, that thread of your life and your narrative. the way you can feel something coming, like a vibration, the first flutter of a wing which will become tangled in your web.

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so perhaps what is happening on the internet shouldn’t be judged just by what is very popular. perhaps it shouldn’t be judged for the momentary breach of consciousness that is virality. perhaps we should look for what people are striving for; perhaps we should see a lonely globe looking for love. perhaps you need to hold onto that thread, as the invisible committee says, of what you feel to be true. start from there. what do you feel?

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affect circulates. we present ourselves differently depending on where we are out there. there is a pulsing throb, a vibe, something delicate on your tongue, in the hearts of others. these are things we feel to be true. we know them to be true. protests erupt across a nation. across the internet. we attempt to understand and it defies us. we can feel that something is happening, but what?

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it is easy to become an alarmist by looking at what is popular. but rather than solely look at these things that are enraged, perhaps we should look at what isn’t popular. perhaps we should set our sights on the periphery, how it moves from almost-nothing to spark a central consciousness, all in one exponentially beautifully moment that unfurls like a revolution in bloom. we cannot stop it. we cannot start it. we are washed away, powerless. this is what we feel to be true, is it not?

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on the fringe, nobody knows anything about you. on the fringe where there is no usual norm or distinction of class, where there is an inherent level of disrespect in the vulgar norms of communication, there’s something interesting happening. it’s like the internet’s id. it’s the internet that seethes with the feelings that you’re not supposed to have. it’s the internet that froths with what you are not supposed to say. what you are not supposed to feel.

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but divorce yourself from viewing these things as the priority of the individual. what happens in aggregate? what pushes changes in norms? how do these trickle down to people who have found themselves to be surplus population? i live my life every day with the fear that the taint of my surplus days will overwhelm what fragile things i’ve tried to build. but i know i shouldn’t be afraid. that experience of being nothing, being surplus, completely discounted and worth more as a number than as a being—oh, during those days i only cared for art—that is an experience that you need to have to understand what is happening. now that we are orbiting earth and shattering satellites, do you see what I mean? if not, look into my eyes instead. there is a sadness there, a sadness etched into my methlyated dna. perhaps you can feel it in my sweaty palm. this is not the time when we kiss. to behold this is not to render this tactile.

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what do the surplussies think? how are they acting and reacting? what comes from the members of our society who are not productive enough? what does it mean to live under the threat that all you had will be taken away? or under the threat that no matter what you do, you’re going to be so low-value you can’t obtain what is so essential to your being? i don’t like people who scorn the underclasses of the internet. because something is happening there. there is dreaming, slumber, and perhaps awakening. you can hold my hand a little tighter if you want. i still won’t kiss you. it’s not happening.

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the uncontrolled human id, the most basal desires, is spattered across the weird part of the internet. people develop a sense of belonging that crawls in strange fibers from beneath their skin. people develop a sense of belonging in the drugs they take, the shrooms they grow, the delusions they invite or banish. but what i think needs to be taken away from this is that the system we are in is making every essential need go unmet if one exists without submission. there are many who are enraged, who want to go back to older ways that they wouldn’t be able to tolerate. there are many who are delusional. there are some who want government-issue girlfriends. but the real question becomes: how do surplussies get to the point where there is nothing left to lose? how much hope do you need to lose to go out in a tragic blaze of glory? from up here, we’re safe from it all. don’t worry. no one will see us. we’re like ghosts.

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a creature becomes entangled in the web. it begins to struggle and this alerts us to its presence. can you feel the tension here? put your hand on the string and feel the waves that you cannot see. let’s slide down the string of the world’s highest kite and return to this earth. i hope you could see it a little differently, but we need a further illustration. or maybe not. maybe we need to feel the vibration. the turbulence. the emergent vibe.

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i feel like this could end up in a philosophical discussion about human relationality and the spectre of the other. but that’s not where i want to go right now. eros is not on the menu. i told you. no kisses.

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the critter in the web is trying to extricate itself. it is hoping that it will not die. it is hoping that nothing will come and liquify its tissues and eat off it. but it doesn’t know that it’s already a rotted out husk. it’s on too many psychoactive substances for that. it’s got too much culture for that. to admit that it is already what it fears. it is death walking. it has always been death walking.

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when every human need is commodified, financialized, farmed out as piecework to a deskilled public desperate for a little help, there’s nothing left to lose. the critter becomes enraged. the critter begins to scream and fight against the great cold and darkness of death. it only knows there here, just like we only know the here. it sees the threads that have trapped it as threats too late. it might try to warn the others. but in the age of the internet, it’s all webs, all the way down.

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so what i mean is that there’s a loss of hope. a darkness that clouds our hearts. it’s on the tip of our tongues. it’s a hopelessness we don’t know where to pin. this web must be the creation of a sinister spider. this web must be the creation of a cabal. there’s definitely good parts of the web, they argue. like when a leaf gets stuck on it and you can just sit pretty on your pile of debris. there are good silks, less sticky. we can try to talk ourselves into quietude as much as we want. it probably won’t work.

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all our organism needs has been turned into a lure that will slurp out our labor. all our organism is trying to survive from one day into the next because we don’t have a choice in the matter. so perhaps we need to see this interent not just as the sifter which lifts some who are destined to be great up to the top. perhaps we need to see that we are trying to meet some need, psychological, physical, basal. we post on craigslist and kijiji. we post on facebook. we peruse missed connections hoping that someone out there saw a flicker of the sadness, hope, whatever is lurking behind our eyes. someone might hear us struggling and cut us free. we tweet into the void and it gets gobbled up, your soul is reduced to content.

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maybe the internet is our cry. maybe it’s not. but if we theorize that this internet we have is the byproduct of a variety of systems of control, coercion, and capital—social, cultural, etceteral—and these are the expressions that are held within it—perhaps now we see not struggling undead critters, but the play of dew on a spider’s web, the glistening net that is made of it by the world beyond its comprehension. maybe there’s something in all the remixes and the strange net culture that shows something brilliant and beautiful about our humanity and its potential. maybe it shows how none of this is working. maybe it shows a way for us to burn this shit down. to fulfill those unmet needs. to let us blossom into something better than this.

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touch is a need. but please. you gotta let go of my hand. that’s enough for now. i want to go home. i miss my family. i am doing all of this because i hope for a chance to make good money and get good social/cultural capital for something that i don’t hate. i get what the game is and i am playing it. but i hate it. and i want to go home.