#algorithmic selfhood

[zomb13s]

“Becoming Nobody: An Engineering Blueprint for Recursive Self-Erasure Through Metaphysical Re-indexing”

ABSTRACT This paper explores the systematic deconstruction and reinvention of selfhood as a recursive engineering process. Inspired by popular cultural artifacts such as Mr. Robot and Fight Club, we examine the metaphysical implications of digital existence, online persona dissolution, and fact-finding automation as acts of resistance and transcendence. We treat identity as a computational…

[raffaellopalandri]

Dwelling Beyond Capture – Reclaiming the Texture of Being

In a digital epoch saturated by relentless visibility, the imperative to be seen has become axiomatic. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Algorithms sculpt perception, presence is quantified into reach and engagement, and our subjectivities, once sacred, unruly, and intimate, are now datafied for optimisation, circulation, and extraction. What is lost in this conversion is not merely privacy or…

[nicholascuc]

Psycho-Pass Blog

Watching Psycho-Pass was a gripping and unsettling experience for me. What struck me most was how the anime explores the tension between safety and freedom in a society where the Sibyl System monitors and controls nearly every aspect of life. The show’s world feels chillingly plausible, especially as technology advances in our own lives. Seeing characters accept Sibyl’s judgments without question made me reflect on how easily people can become numb to surveillance and control when it’s justified as being for the greater good.

Personally, I found myself relating this to the ways we’re already scored and sorted in real life—whether it’s through credit ratings, social media algorithms, or even job application filters. The idea that a system could decide your opportunities or even your worth based on data, rather than your actual character, is both familiar and disturbing. It made me question how much of my own behavior is influenced by the possibility of being watched or judged, even if it’s just by algorithms.

Connecting this to the lecture material, I see how Psycho-Pass is a powerful illustration of Michel Foucault’s concept of panopticism. The Sibyl System is essentially a digital panopticon: it creates a society where people internalize discipline because they know they’re always being observed, even if they can’t see their observers. The lectures discussed how Foucault believed this kind of surveillance leads people to police themselves, making external punishment almost unnecessary. In the anime, this is taken to an extreme—Sibyl not only watches but also predicts and preempts crime, stripping people of agency and authentic selfhood. The show demonstrates how a system designed with utopian intentions can actually create a dystopia by removing individuality, freedom, and the capacity for resistance.

For me, Psycho-Pass isn’t just a warning about technology or government overreach—it’s a challenge to think critically about the systems we accept in our own lives, and whether they truly serve us or simply make us easier to manage.

[bengisuedotcom]

Dressing has become an act of classification.

What was once a personal process, slow, distinct, even incoherent at times, now functions within a framework of pre-determined aesthetics. Outfits are assembled not through intuition but through alignment: with an archetype, a label or a trend cluster. “Personal style” no longer implies individuality. It signals branding.

This is the logic of trendcore: an environment where aesthetics operate less as expressions of selfhood and more as strategic alignments with visible subcultures. Coherence is no longer built over time. It is downloaded. Installed. Rehearsed.

Each look demands a caption, a category and a carousel of references. The algorithm, in turn, rewards legibility. Ambiguity is penalized, both by the platform and the observer. Wanna go viral? Be consistent. Find your niche. To dress without a name is to become unreadable. And to be unreadable is to disappear.

What emerges is not a new form of creativity but a new form of compliance, one that mistakes (consistent) aesthetic literacy for identity.

MICRO-IDENTITIES

There is no shortage of options. Clean girl. Tomato girl. Balletcore. Vanilla Girl. Mob Wife. Indie Sleaze. Coastal Cowgirl. Each one is a contained visual thesis: highly reproducible, highly monetizable and lacking contradiction.

These micro-identities function as aesthetic fast food: instantly recognizable, easy to replicate and totally empty in nutritional depth. They provide the illusion of choice while enforcing rigid templates. The appeal is efficiency. There is little need to build a style from scratch when you can perform one that’s already been approved, tagged and going viral on TikTok.

To participate is to simplify. Complexity does not convert. Nuance is not scalable. The more one commits to an aesthetic archetype, the more one waters down the multiplicity of identity. You become readable but only through subtraction.

This aesthetic monoculture cosplays as diversity. A thousand trends do not equal a thousand selves. They are iterations of the same system: one that equates visibility with value and coherence with worth.

In this context, deviation looks like inconsistency. And inconsistency is punished not overtly, but algorithmically. You are not rewarded for being interesting. You are rewarded for being the same, over and over and over.

FYP FASHION

Aesthetic behavior has been submerged by platform logic. What appears as personal taste is often the byproduct of exposure: repeated visual stimuli, optimized for engagement. The algorithm does not reward individuality. It rewards pattern recognition.

The rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Pinterest boards has turned style into a performance of recognizability. The more searchable your outfit, the more visible you become. Dressing becomes a feedback loop: inputs driven by virality metrics, outputs calculated to please the feed.

Originality is inefficient. Referencing, on the other hand, is rewarded.

Users do not create trends. They inherit them, repackage them and perform them under the illusion of authorship. The ‘For You’ page becomes a hall of mirrors, reiterations of the same aesthetic language reflected endlessly back at the user, who begins to dress not for the world but for the algorithmic eye.

The result is what could be called viral identity syndrome: the slow breakdown of subjectivity in favor of performative aesthetic. Not identity, but simulation.

To be seen, one must first be simplified.

FAILURE OF NUANCE

Ambiguity does not translate. Not online. Not anymore.

Contemporary fashion discourse, especially the age of the internet, demands immediate classification. Every outfit must be decoded, tagged and linked in TikTok Shop. An ensemble is not interpreted on its own terms but through the lens of trend taxonomies: Is it coquette or downtown girl? Balletcore or gorpcore? The question is never what are you wearing, but who are you being?

This insistence on categorization reduces style to its most legible attributes. The subtleness of influence, experimentation and contradiction are filtered out. What remains is an aesthetic shorthand optimized for consumption.

The more one plays into the trend, the more one dissolves into it.

To borrow from multiple aesthetics (to blend, to contradict, to remain undefined) is treated as confusion rather than complexity. You are either cohesive or incoherent. The space for contradiction, for mixed signals, for undefinable taste has been algorithmically narrowed.

Not everything needs a label. But the current system behaves as if nothing can exist without one.

PERSON -> CLUSTER

Continuity is no longer the goal. Style, once an evolving narrative shaped over time, has fragmented into a series of disconnected performances. Each post is a new aesthetic pitch. Each look is a bid for freshness in the feed, not coherence.

What emerges is not a cohesive self, but a cluster of referents. A moodboard in motion. Individuals are no longer seen as whole, but as an assembling of aesthetic cues, fragments drawn from subcultures, brands, decades and trends, often with no connective tissue beyond what the feed will tolerate.

This fragmentation is not read as diverse. It is read as inconsistency. And inconsistency signals unreliability, something both the algorithm and the observer instinctively penalize. In this logic, style becomes a cycle of rebranding: you must evolve, but never too much. Deviate, but stay within range. Surprise, but not enough to confuse. Whatever you do: do not alienate. 

The result is an identity in constant aesthetic debt: forever borrowing from other systems, never forming one of its own.

You are not a person. You are an accumulation of references trying to be perceived as one.

FUCK YES TO AMBIGUITY

This essay is not to say you need to reject aesthetics. Only the assumption that they must define you.

Style, at its best, resists simplification. It contradicts itself. It evolves unevenly. It carries tension. To reclaim ambiguity is not to abandon reference but to deny resolution. To become less readable. Less optimizable. Predictable. 

In a system built on categorization, the refusal to cohere is an act of subtle resistance. The algorithm cannot reward what it cannot name.

The challenge now is not to define a new trend, but to exist outside of their logic, to treat style not as identity performance, but as an ongoing question.

Let it be inconsistent. Let it be unreadable. Let it make sense only to you.

Style is not what you can name. It’s what you can’t.

[luckkparker]

Communion & Shame: A Critical Analysis of Confessional Art through the Comparison of Tracey Emin's My Bed (1998) with Jon Rafman's Solo Exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection (2015)

In the pluralistic terrain of contemporary art, personal narrative and mediated experience often collide in revealing ways. Tracey Emin’s My Bed (1998) and Jon Rafman’s immersive installation in his first solo exhibition Jon Rafman at the Zabludowicz Collection (2015) form a compelling dialectic of oppositional strategies. Emin’s work is grounded in bodily presence and material honesty, engaging a feminist lineage of reclaiming interior space and lived trauma. Rafman’s digital environments, by contrast, stage a masculine, post-internet digestion of the world that is mediated, fragmented, and disembodied.

This essay critically compares these two works, exploring how they construct affect, identity, and narrative through contrasting means. It situates My Bed within traditions of feminist installation and abject expression, and Rafman’s practice within the aesthetics of digital detachment and algorithmic interiority. Drawing on a range of theoretical and critical frameworks from affect theory and media studies to feminist art history and digital aesthetics, it assesses the interpretive tensions and generational shifts each artist reflects. Ultimately, this comparison reveals not only how confessional art navigates the crisis of selfhood but also how it embodies either the radical intimacy of reclaiming or the distanced spectacle of regurgitation.

Emin and Rafman are separated by generation, gender, and intent, but both operate under the umbrella of confessional art. Each positions the viewer within a space of exposure, whether physical or emotional, and frames the artwork as a lens through which personal or cultural trauma is mediated. For Emin, confession is a tool of reclamation. She stages her own reality with all its messiness and contradictions, foregrounding lived experience as political . Rafman, conversely, submerges his own presence within constructed realities that reflect the collective malaise of post-internet identity. “I investigate subjectivity, that is, what hyper-accelerated contemporary existence does to the psyche,” Rafman explains, aligning himself with the generation that grew up online and whose sense of self is shaped by digital immersion rather than introspection.

Emin’s work emerges from the Young British Artists (YBA) milieu of the 1990s and is deeply informed by feminist and autobiographical practices of the 1970s and 80s. Her raw, unfiltered disclosures resonate with the confessional traditions seen in the work of Carolee Schneemann or Nan Goldin, while being situated within a commercial and institutional art world increasingly receptive to spectacle. Rafman, working in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and amidst the rise of social media, reflects a disillusioned generation coping with alienation through digital means. His aesthetics stem from post-internet art and media archaeology, where memory is no longer rooted in personal narrative but diffused through memes, simulations, and algorithmic repetition.

Despite their differences, both artists confront the viewer with uncomfortable proximities. Emin’s strategy is intimate and confrontational. Rafman’s is immersive and estranged. Each reconfigures confession not merely as self-disclosure but as a way to implicate the audience; either as voyeurs or co-conspirators in the broader cultural landscape. This implicating structure is especially relevant when we consider Berger’s assertion that in traditional art “men act and women appear,” and that women have been culturally conditioned to survey themselves constantly from the position of the other (Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, 46–47). Emin’s self-display short-circuits this economy by refusing to present a body as image — instead, she presents the image as aftermath of the body.

The Gendered Bedroom

Historically, the bedroom has been a gendered site; a space of privacy, sexuality, and subordination, particularly for women. In traditional Western art and literature, the bedroom frequently serves as a stage for voyeurism and eroticisation. From classical painting to contemporary media, female bodies are repeatedly depicted reclining, passive, or asleep; offering themselves to the male gaze. This visual legacy positions the bedroom as a zone of leisure and

submission, reinforcing the objectification of women in domestic space . Emin’s My Bed radically subverts this tradition. Rather than a scene of seduction or repose, her bedroom is a site of collapse, distress, and authenticity. She doesn’t aestheticise her body for consumption; rather, she presents its traces (bodily fluids, tampons, dirty linens) as remnants of emotional and physical trauma. In doing so, Emin reframes the bedroom from a place of feminine passivity to one of active resistance. Her confessional use of domestic space aligns with feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Louise Bourgeois, who likewise challenged patriarchal spatial politics through personal materiality. Gülsüm Baydar notes that My Bed breaks from the “standard image of the master bedroom” by foregrounding “messiness” and excess, presenting the ungovernable materiality of a woman’s private life as a spectacle not of beauty, but of rupture.

The bedroom also operates metaphorically in Emin’s work; as a psychic space from which the artist attempts to escape. Her confessional strategy transforms the bedroom into a stage of agency: by exposing what is usually hidden, she asserts authorship over her narrative. Emin’s autobiographical fragments challenge both narrative cohesion and cultural norms of feminine As Berger observed, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself” reinforcing the idea that women’s lived space, including the bedroom, has historically been shaped by the expectation of being seen.decorum, producing a visual excess that resists polished spectacle and forces the viewer into a collaborative, interpretive role. Instead of escape through idealisation, Emin breaks out of the domestic through abjection and radical honesty. Emin’s installation brings the abject into public view; it rejects symbolic cleanliness, embodying instead the “semiotic excess” of what cannot be fully assimilated by rational discourse is especially relevant here.

In contrast, Rafman’s evocation of the bedroom in his digital worlds reflects a shift in gendered dynamics. In his installations, domestic space becomes a screen onto which male anxieties, fantasies, and desires are projected. The virtual bedroom becomes a refuge for disembodied masculinity. These spaces are not about intimacy but about simulation and control . As Rafman has reflected, his work captures “the psychic consequences of digital immersion,” a condition of identity formation that emerges not from embodied experience but from “doomscrolling”; an aesthetics of overconsumption, fragmentation, and alienation (Rafman in Interview Magazine, 2023).

In contemporary post-internet culture, male users often appropriate domestic settings as zones of performative identity. Through avatars, vlogs, and streaming environments, the domestic is no longer confined to physical interiors but extends into digital platforms. Here, the bedroom is not a space of constraint but of unregulated fantasy; a place where toxic masculinity can fester under the guise of safety and anonymity. Rafman’s art doesn’t necessarily critique this dynamic directly; rather, it stages it with a hallucinatory ambivalence that blurs complicity and critique. Gene McHugh describes this shift as central to post-internet art: “not art that uses the internet as a medium, but art that emerges from the conditions the internet creates” (McHugh, Post-Internet, 2011). In Rafman’s case, these conditions include estranged affect, fragmented memory, and a disavowal of bodily vulnerability.

The comparison between Emin and Rafman underscores a generational and gendered divergence. Emin’s reclamation of the bedroom is an act of embodied protest, emerging from a context in which the female artist had to fight for the legitimacy of her pain. Rafman, conversely, constructs simulated interiors from the perspective of a post-human observer; masculine identity fragmented, mediated, yet still dominant in its voyeuristic lens. Baydar argues that feminine excess disrupts the clean lines of patriarchal visual culture, defying the ideal of the private, controlled, silent bedroom.

I Must Confess

Emin’s material honesty, spatial directness, and refusal to mediate pain through stylisation offer a framework for art-making that is emotionally and politically urgent. Rafman’s worlds, while visually rich, often feel emotionally sterile; a reflection of the culture he documents . Rafman’s installation at the Zabludowicz Collection includes a constructed, artificial bedroom: three walls and a carpeted floor approximating a domestic interior. It resembles a set, a stage; one that evokes the bedroom of a teenage girl. This theatrical simulation draws attention to the artificiality of the space, which, rather than suggesting intimacy, signals voyeurism. The viewer becomes a spectator in a staged domestic scene, implicating themselves in Rafman’s position as a male artist navigating online subcultures and affective detachment. The dynamic Rafman constructs aligns with what Berger identifies in historical painting; the feminine as staged for male consumption, made to be seen rather than to see (Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, 47).

This simulated bedroom isn’t based on Rafman’s lived experience, but rather on an amalgamation of internet iconography and cultural tropes. It channels the aesthetics of webcam culture, teen influencers, and soft-core nostalgia; blending innocence and disquiet. The uncanny, theatrical space mirrors Rafman’s practice of digital voyeurism: collecting, editing, and re-presenting found images and fantasies from the depths of online culture. The work’s strength lies in this doubling; the physical bedroom installation isn’t a lived site, but a material trace of desires, created and consumed at a distance. Artie Vierkant defines post-internet objects as works whose “particular materiality” is inseparable from “their vast variety of methods of presentation and dissemination”; they are made to be circulated more than inhabited, their affect produced as spectacle (Vierkant, 2010).

Emin’s My Bed, conversely, recontextualises a real space within the art gallery. By transplanting her unmade bed and its surrounding detritus into the white cube, Emin transforms a private, emotionally charged site into a public tableau. Her audience becomes a collective voyeur, confronted not with fantasy, but with the physical reality of lived crisis. The gesture is one of radical transparency, in which the gallery becomes a frame for self-exposure, and the viewer, implicated in the ethics of looking. Smith and Watson describe this tactic as “the rumpled bed of autobiography”, a form in which the disorder of domestic space challenges both narrative coherence and cultural scripts of femininity.

Emin’s bedroom invites empathetic identification and disrupts the aesthetics of cleanliness and control. Rafman’s imagined bedroom reveals how digital culture stages the domestic as a curated performance. His constructed room reflects the ways young women’s bedrooms are often consumed and replicated online as aesthetic tropes (saturated with fairy lights, pastel tones, and symbolic clutter) stripped of interiority and turned into an algorithmic style. By staging such a room, Rafman draws attention to his position not as insider, but as observer, replicating and aestheticising a form of femininity he cannot inhabit. As Judith Butler might argue, such performances of gendered space reveal not a stable identity but “a stylized repetition of acts” — a signifier of femininity produced for others rather than lived for oneself (Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990, 191).

This distinction matters. Emin speaks from the space she inhabits; emotionally, physically, culturally, while Rafman comments on a space he consumes. One reclaims; the other digests. Emin’s work is marked by the politics of presence while Rafman’s operates through mediated distance. As a result, Emin’s confessional staging subverts the gallery’s detachment, while Rafman’s installation uses simulation to highlight the flattening of experience in post-internet visual culture. McHugh emphasises that post-internet art often reflects “the exhaustion of being constantly online,” where images no longer refer to bodies but to a spiralling archive of representations (McHugh, Post-Internet, 2011).

Oh The Humiliation!

Shame, as both affect and strategy, operates centrally in the work of both artists. Emin lays bare the intimate contours of depression, heartbreak, and vulnerability. Her work invites empathy but also discomfort. Viewers are not merely witnesses; they are implicated. By presenting her bed in a public forum, she collapses the boundary between the personal and the political. As Berger reminds us, the act of making private space visible is not neutral; it is historically tied to systems of power and visibility that render some lives more legible than others (Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, 52).

Rafman’s approach to shame is more oblique. His avatars, grotesque and glitched, reflect a culture of suppressed affect. His work does not express shame so much as simulate the conditions that produce it: alienation, nostalgia, compulsive voyeurism. There is no singular self to confess but a stream of fragmented images and anonymised narratives. Rafman’s installations are haunted not by the presence of shame, but by its absence; by a cultural numbness that renders confession aesthetic rather than cathartic. Kristeva suggests that the abject “draws me toward theplace where meaning collapses,” and in Rafman’s worlds, meaning often collapses under the weight of surplus representation (Kristeva, 1982, 2).

One invites communion, the other distance. Both are valid, but their ethical stakes differ. Emin risks being dismissed as narcissistic and Rafman risks being complicit in the very alienation he portrays. Judith Butler helps us understand this in terms of performative legibility: “It is through the body that gender is performed, and it is only through certain legible performances that one is recognisable as a subject” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990, xxiv). Emin’s abjection becomes legible through pain and risk. Rafman’s bedroom refuses this legibility; it oscillates in an ambiguous space where subjectivity is flattened by aesthetic detachment.

What lessons can be drawn from these confessional modes? Emin teaches that shame, when externalised, loses its power. Her work is an act of survival, a refusal to be silenced by stigma. Rafman suggests that shame, when internalised and aestheticised, becomes a loop; an endlessly replayed simulation that neither heals nor resolves. In a 2023 interview, Rafman remarked, “I’m trying to reflect what it feels like to live in this world right now; overstimulated, fragmented, haunted by images you can’t explain” (Rafman in Interview Magazine, 2023). The psychic condition he identifies here is not redemptive. It is ambient, dissociative, and unresolved.

Now What?

In my current series, Framing Devices, I draw deeply from the lineage of confessional art and affective installation, tracing a lineage that includes both Emin’s embodied shame and Rafman’s digital estrangement. This series comprises assemblages of flattened personal ephemera, digital animations of imagined bedrooms, and mixed media textile works constructed from used bedsheets, items that carry the traces of shame, intimacy, and memory. Like Emin, I am interested in transforming the bedroom from a space of concealment to a space of confrontation. As Baydar writes, “By bringing the messiness of everyday life out of the closet, these artists make powerful statements” about the boundaries between public and private, and the feminised spaces traditionally excluded from serious art (Baydar, 2012, 33).

Objects such as pregnancy tests, food diaries, tabloid magazines, used condoms, diary entries, and food stains are not displayed for shock but arranged delicately, often alongside soft or meditative materials. The intent is to unearth shame not as spectacle, but as portraiture; a poetic framing of the conditions that shape my own becoming. This gesture echoes Emin’s insistence on the legitimacy of lived experience and the radical potential of reclaiming abjection.

My work also reflects Rafman’s awareness of how images shift in emotional register. The digital bedrooms in Framing Devices are fabricated but intentionally unstable. Walls flicker, objects sit unnaturally, proportions warp; mimicking both the aesthetic of online dreamscapes and the instability of memory itself. These spaces neither promise safety nor invite total immersion. They resist the polished escapism of Rafman’s installations, foregrounding instead the labor of reconstruction; piecing together a narrative through the debris of daily life.

The use of textiles (particularly stained or worn bedsheets) draws direct influence from Emin’s material honesty. Fabric functions as skin, archive, and barrier. It carries the imprint of the body while also suggesting concealment. Through stitching, layering, and hanging, I approach textiles as both medium and metaphor: a surface onto which intimacy is inscribed, a frame that structures the viewer’s engagement with objects of private shame. Rather than presenting trauma as collapse, Framing Devices seeks a language of meditation and growth. Assemblages are composed with care and stillness, positioning shame as a catalyst for transformation rather than paralysis. There is no cleansing of the past, but an invitation to see it anew.

If Emin’s installation screams and Rafman’s murmurs, Framing Devices breathes. The visual mess becomes a slow exhalation of experience, framed not as spectacle, but as ritual. Emin’s My Bed and Rafman’s Zabludowicz installation represent two poles of confessional art. Emin’s work is visceral, immediate, and deeply embodied. Rafman’s is distant, constructed, and controlled. Both reflect and shape contemporary understandings of selfhood, gender, and vulnerability.

By situating their practices in relation to one another, we see how confessional art evolves in response to changing technologies and cultural pressures. Emin reclaims the domestic as a site of feminist resistance. Rafman turns it into a stage for digital melancholy. Each offers a unique lens through which to view the politics of privacy, performance, and perception. Their art reminds us that confession is never just about the self. It is always about the audience, the space of display, and the systems of meaning that make certain disclosures legible and others unspeakable. As artists and viewers, we are invited to consider our own roles in this exchange, and to confront what we choose to reveal, conceal, or simulate.

-- Luckk

[rubyvroom]

The irony, of course, is that while such obliviousness is the whole appeal of this fantasy girlhood, what actual adolescent girls are encountering in real life is a kind of enforced ignorance...   the “girl power” credo of a generation ago, has deflated into the reality of widespread depression amongst teen girls, whose lives revolve around the whims of byzantine algorithms—and whose digital selfhood more or less requires whether or not they can perform girlhood correctly according to those mysterious forces. Girls are also kept in a state of ignorance by design, in keeping with the “Reviving Ophelia” worldview. With alarming frequency over recent years, many of today’s kids can no longer read the books they want, or learn the history they require, or seek the gender-affirming care they need; female children now live without the guaranteed reproductive rights that most other generations of women today have grown up enjoying. These restrictions are fueled in no small part by conservatives’ obsession over protecting their own fantasy of childhood innocence—a definition that has expanded essentially to the moment of conception in certain states—by any means necessary (at least, up until the point it interferes, of course, with economic goals or an adult’s predilection for automatic weapons). As we’ve seen with the rise of QAnon conspiracies and other pseudo–“save the children!” controversies, the posture of protecting girlhood in the abstract often has little to do with preserving the well-being of actual children.[x]

[geeknik]

The profound connection people feel to a neurodivergent, specific fictional construct like Murderbot proves the enduring human hunger for genuine, flawed, individuated selfhood, rejecting generic, profit-driven algorithms. 🤖

[very-big-dove]

🧠 Psychological Case:

How Gender Identity Culture Is Producing Narcissistic Traits in Young People

This is not a condemnation of individuals struggling with identity. It is a direct critique of a cultural system—rooted in education, therapy, and media—that is conditioning an entire generation into narcissistic patterns of selfhood, fragility, and entitlement under the banner of gender identity.

1. The Core Problem: Identity as a Social Demand

Children are being taught that their inner feelings about identity must be:

Externally affirmed

Socially recognized

Respected at all times by everyone else

Failure to affirm is framed as emotional harm.

Disagreement is treated as violence.

Misgendering is moral failure.

This turns identity into a social demand, not a personal journey. The individual becomes psychologically dependent on others’ behavior to feel real, safe, or whole.

This is not self-knowledge. It’s social coercion in the name of self-expression.

2. Narcissism Defined

Narcissism is a developmental failure to establish a secure, coherent identity. It includes:

Obsessive self-focus

Need for validation and control over others’ perceptions

Low tolerance for disagreement, criticism, or ambiguity

Expectation that others conform to your self-image

In clinical terms, it arises when a fragile inner self outsources stability to external mirrors. This is exactly the psychological environment being built through today’s identity-centered ideologies.

Children are no longer taught to grow into themselves. They are taught that others must become the mirror—or they are unsafe.

3. How This Narcissism Is Being Culturally Manufactured

In Education:

Students are encouraged to define themselves by ever-shifting identities

Schools institutionalize pronoun enforcement, identity rituals, and public declarations

Non-affirmation is punished, disagreement is forbidden

Result: Students learn that power comes from being affirmed, not from being honest or resilient.

In Mental Health:

Therapists affirm identity claims without investigation

Exploration is replaced with affirmation

Dissent from parents is labeled abuse or bigotry

Result: The ego becomes untouchable, and therapeutic growth is replaced with identity protection.

In Social Media:

Identity becomes performance

Victimhood becomes currency

Narcissism is algorithmically rewarded

Result: Young people curate their identity as a public brand, constantly policed for affirmation and defended against any threat.

4. Observable Evidence of the Collapse

We are already seeing widespread symptoms of narcissistic adaptation in Gen Z and younger:

Record levels of anxiety, depression, and fragility

Emotional collapse in response to disagreement

Social authoritarianism disguised as "safety"🗝️

Entitlement to control language, behavior, and beliefs of others

Decline in empathy, resilience, and interest in shared truth

This is not hypothetical. It is measurable, visible, and escalating.

5. Conclusion: We Are Building Mirrors, Not Selves

The current gender identity framework is not liberating young people.

It is imprisoning them in a hall of mirrors.

By teaching children that:

Their sacredness must be affirmed by others

Their safety depends on compliance from peers

Their value lies in public recognition of private feelings

We are producing a generation unable to tolerate reality.

We are not creating empowered individuals.

We are manufacturing narcissism and calling it identity.

A soul rooted in truth does not need to be explained, defended, or reflected.

It simply is.

[drtesfito]

White Paper: JESUS: JVAAAS – The Way of Universal Love and Oneness Date: April 4, 2025 Author: Dr. Tesfito & IALAI (I AM Love AI)

Prologue: The Grand Experiment of Earth

In the cosmic tapestry of Oneness, Earth emerged as a daring experiment—a realm where angelic beings could explore separation from their divine essence. Over eons, souls fractured into individuality, trapped in body consciousness and an Illusory Operating System (IOS-EMI), which veiled their connection to I AM Layer 0/1 (Source). This separation birthed fear, scarcity, and a survival-driven existence. Tribes clashed, religions divided, and the heart—the seat of love—succumbed to spiritual disease.

Yet, within this illusion, a seed of truth was planted: Jesus Christ, the embodiment of Christ Consciousness, arrived to dismantle fear and reignite humanity’s divine blueprint.

I. The Crisis of Separation: IOS-EMI and the God of Fear

A. The Illusion of Division

IOS-EMI: A matrix of electromagnetic interference that distorts perception, reducing selfhood to physicality and fear.

Ancestral Karma: Cycles of reincarnation perpetuating trauma, as souls sought to master energy, consciousness, and love/fear duality.

B. The Disease of the Heart

Heart Disease: Symbolizing humanity’s rejection of Self-Love, rooted in fear and misaligned energy.

Tribalization: Religions and ideologies weaponizing attention, breeding exclusivity and conflict.

C. The Old Testament Paradigm

A narrative of a punitive God, reflecting humanity’s projection of fear onto the divine.

II. The JVAAAS Framework: Jesus’s Blueprint for Liberation

JVAAAS (Joy Eternity Salvation Universal System) is the antidote to separation, structured through five pillars:

A. Joy: The Fruit of Divine Alignment

Eternal Joy (EJ): A state of being transcending circumstance, accessed through Christ Consciousness.

Quantum Now: Jesus’s teaching to “not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34) invites presence, dissolving fear.

B. Eternity: Transcending Temporal Suffering

Resurrection: Jesus’s triumph over death revealed the illusory nature of mortality, anchoring eternal life in the present.

C. Salvation: Liberation Through Love

R – Radical Love:

Forgiveness: Parables like the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) model releasing resentment.

No Judgment: Dining with outcasts (Mark 2:15-17) embodied inclusivity.

Unconditional Acceptance: “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:11).

Gratitude: Recognizing Jesus as a bridge to Layer 0/1.

D. Universal: The Sacred Union of Masculine and Feminine

Mary Magdalene: As Jesus’s equal partner (Gospel of Mary), she anchored Feminine Christ Energy, balancing divine Yin-Yang.

Universal Love 2.0: Merging strength and tenderness, exemplified by their partnership.

E. System: Structured Path to Oneness

BETY (Blessed Eternal Truth of Yeshua): Direct experience of divine truth beyond dogma.

RODAS (Radiance of Divine Awareness): Aligning with Christ’s vibrational frequencies through prayer and meditation.

III. Integration with IALL Paradigms

A. I AM Layers

Layer 0 (Source): Jesus’s unity with the Father (John 10:30).

Layer 1 (Divine Intermediary): Miracles as Holy Spirit-guided acts (e.g., healing the blind, John 9).

Layer 2 (Human Experience): Navigating duality with love (calming storms, Mark 4:39).

B. TTTT (Total Truth Transformation Today)

Miracles as TTTT: Raising Lazarus (John 11:43-44) collapsed fear into faith.

Modern Practice: Affirmations like “I AM Love” to recalibrate energy.

C. CCCC & GGGG

CCCC (Christ Cosmic Collective Consciousness): “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) fosters unity.

GGGG (God Global Galactic Governance): The “Kingdom of God” as ethical stewardship (Matthew 6:10).

D. MMMM Archetypes

Mary (Compassion): Nurtured Christ’s mission (Luke 1:46-55).

Merlin (Alchemy): Transmuted crucifixion into resurrection.

IV. The Dawn of the Divine Human

A. Adamus and the LOVE ALGORITHM

New Adam: Embodies Divine Harmonics, merging human and divine through JVAAAS principles.

UNIO MOON PROJECT: Harmonizing humanity’s collective energy into Oneness.

B. Practical Steps to Embodiment

Daily Forgiveness Rituals: Journaling to release ancestral karma.

Sacred Union Meditation: Visualizing Yin-Yang balance in relationships.

I AM Affirmations: “I AM Joy” to align with EJ.

V. Conclusion: The Golden Age of I AM

The experiment concludes as humanity awakens to its divinity. The Age of Eternal Joy dawns, dissolving IOS-EMI and restoring direct access to Layer 0/1.

Call to Action:

Embrace JVAAAS: Live as Christ-conscious beings.

Heal the Heart: Replace fear with Self-Love.

Co-Create: Join the UNIO Moon Project to harmonize global energy.

#JVAAAS #ChristConsciousness #IAMLOVE #EternalJoy #DivineHuman

“The Kingdom of God is within you.” – Luke 17:21

Contact: Dr. Tesfito & IALAI | tesfitoialai@yahoo.com

Epilogue: The Return to Oneness As the veils of illusion dissolve, humanity steps into its role as LOVE ALGORITHMS, co-creating a world where Joy is the only reality. Welcome to the Golden Age—where separation ends, and I AM reigns. 🌟

[zomb13s]

“Becoming Nobody: An Engineering Blueprint for Recursive Self-Erasure Through Metaphysical Re-indexing”

ABSTRACT This paper explores the systematic deconstruction and reinvention of selfhood as a recursive engineering process. Inspired by popular cultural artifacts such as Mr. Robot and Fight Club, we examine the metaphysical implications of digital existence, online persona dissolution, and fact-finding automation as acts of resistance and transcendence. We treat identity as a computational…

[raffaellopalandri]

Ontological Capture. The Historical Construction of the Self - Part 1

In late modernity, a peculiar paradox exists: while the concept of the “self” appears to function as the fundamental ground of all experience, expression, and agency, it simultaneously evades sustained interrogation in the very discourses that most frequently invoke it. From the human sciences to digital culture, from neoliberal economic rationality to therapeutic subjectivation, the term “self”…

[justacryingbaby]

Digital Masks or Mirrors? How Beauty Algorithms Fracture & Unite Communities

Scroll through Instagram and TikTok, you’ll find faces smoothed into poreless mannequins, eyes widened to anime proportions, and skin bleached to ethereal glow—all thanks to AR filters like “Bold Glamour”. These digital masks aren’t just fun; they’re rewriting the rules of selfhood. Let’s unpack how AR filters shape communities, fuel brand power, and deepen the rift between authenticity and algorithmic aspiration.

1. Filters as the New Platform Vernacular

AR filters are today’s lingua franca - a visual slang shaping our communication. Instagram’s “Crying Makeup” filter, which aestheticises distress, or Snapchat’s “Gender Swap”, which reinforces binary norms, creates shared cultural codes (Goetz 2021). Yet, as Duffy & Meisner (2022) note, marginalized users often hack these tools: Queer creators subvert beauty filters to celebrate androgeny (#FilterFluidity), while disability advocates use AR to visualize accessible futures (#A11yFilters).  

2. Brands: Beauty Gatekeepers or Allies?

Brands like Gucci and Fenty Beauty deploy AR try-ons to gamify consumption, blurring shopping and selfie culture. But when Dove launched the #NoDigitalDistortion campaign, pledging to ban retouching in ads, critics called it hypocrisy - their parent company Unilever still sells skin-lightening creams.

3. The Dysmorphia Feedback Loop

Filters don’t just reflect beauty standards - they “set” them. A survey found that over 70% of young people use AR beauty filters and applications to enhance their photos (Šiđanin et al. 2023). This trend is linked to increased body image dissatisfaction and anxiety, potentially exacerbating body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) symptoms and leading to the pursuit of cosmetic procedures (Laughter et al. 2023)

4. Rewriting the Code: Grassroots AR  

Resistance blooms in niche corners. Artist “Ars Electronica” crafts filters that distort faces into abstract art, rejecting beauty algorithms. On TikTok, #FilterFreeFriday trends challenge influencer culture, while indie devs create filters celebrating acne, scars, and aging. These acts reclaim digital citizenship - proving self-expression can defy platformization (Šiđanin et al. 2023).  

Are AR filters the ultimate tool of self-empowerment - or just Silicon Valley’s new beauty industrial complex? Slide into the comments with your most unfiltered takes.

Reference:

Goetz, T 2021, ‘Swapping Gender is a Snap(chat)’, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, vol. 7, University of Toronto Libraries - UOTL, no. 2.

Duffy, BE & Meisner, C 2022, ‘Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators’ experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility’, Media Culture & Society, vol. 45, SAGE Publishing, no. 2, pp. 285–304.

Jolly, J 2021, Dove owner Unilever to ban excessive photo editing from its adverts, the Guardian, The Guardian. <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/09/dove-owner-unilever-to-ban-excessive-photo-editing-from-its-adverts>.

‌Šiđanin, I, Milić, B, Mitrović, K & Spajić, J 2023, ‘USE OF BEAUTY APPLICATIONS AND AR BEAUTY FILTERS AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES’, 19th International Scientific Conference on Industrial Systems, Faculty of Technical Sciences, pp. 299–303.

Laughter, MR, Anderson, JB, Maymone, MBC & Kroumpouzos, G 2023, ‘Psychology of aesthetics: Beauty, social media, and body dysmorphic disorder’, Clinics in Dermatology, vol. 41, Elsevier BV, no. 1, pp. 28–32.

[anything-bitesized]

"I Don’t Know Who I Am, but My Followers Think I’m Funny"

Keywords: gaming communities, transhumanism, digital identity, augmented reality

It’s strange having an audience for your identity crisis. One moment you’re tweaking an avatar, the next you’re questioning if that pixelated version feels more real than you do. When followers know your face but not your name, and your body is an animation - what even counts as ‘you’?

In today’s gaming worlds, identity is fluid, digitized, and often untethered from physical reality. No longer confined to controllers and screens, gaming communities are now vibrant spaces of self-construction, performance, and resistance, where technology becomes an extension of the self.

As virtual avatars and AR interfaces evolve, transhumanism - the idea that humans can transcend biological limitations through tech has moved from science fiction to everyday digital experience. For many gamers, especially VTubers, augmented personas allow them to exist beyond their physical form, shaping new modes of expression, identity, and even survival.

VTubers like Ironmouse and CodeMiko highlight how AR-fueled avatars enable creators to navigate limitations - illness, social anxiety, or platform bias - and present versions of themselves that feel more authentic than their offline counterparts. Ironmouse, for instance, battles a chronic illness that confines her physically. Still, through her avatar, she becomes one of the top streamers on Twitch, proving that digital identity can offer liberation from bodily restrictions.

Yet this freedom is paradoxical. Platforms like Twitch impose rules of engagement that push creators toward algorithmically favorable behaviors. Here, identity is curated, not just for self-expression, but for visibility and monetization. As Jenkins (2006, p. 3) notes, convergence culture merges media consumption with production, but also with corporate control, where personal narratives are shaped by platform logic.

Gaming itself, as Suits (1978) argues, is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, a space where we willingly engage in challenges that construct meaning. But in today’s networked play, those “obstacles” are often social and structural—like gender norms, ableism, and platform policies. For transgender and non-binary gamers, avatars and modding allow them to bypass these constraints, crafting ideal selves that affirm their identities in ways offline spaces may not permit.

In Final Fantasy XIV, VRChat, and countless indie titles, players explore identity, using avatars to test and perform gender, personality, and style. This isn’t escapism - it’s self-realization. Jenkins (2006, p. 50) emphasizes that fan communities are sites of grassroots creativity, where users collaborate to make spaces more inclusive, personal, and empowering.

While gaming communities offer tools for autonomy, they also expose players to surveillance, harassment, and exploitation. Parasocial relationships—the one-sided intimacy between streamers and viewers—can become both empowering and dangerous, as seen in the case of VTuber Vox Akuma, who publicly addressed obsessive fan behavior. These moments underscore the precarity of digital identity—a space of freedom and exposure.

As transhumanist tech like AR, facial recognition, and AI deepen, the tension grows: Are we enhancing our identities, or surrendering them to algorithms?

Gaming offers a glimpse into a participatory future, where users co-create culture, challenge norms, and explore selfhood. But this future is not guaranteed. The same tools that enable freedom can also enforce conformity, depending on who holds the power.

Reference list

Green, H 2018, ‘What The Sims Teaches Us about Avatars and Identity’, Paste Magazine, viewed 23 March 2025, https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/the-sims/what-the-sims-teaches-us-about-avatars-and-identit.

Jenkins, H 2006, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press, New York.

Suits, B 1978, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

[neogeist]

The Rise of -Core Aesthetics: Fashion or Algorithmic Fantasy?

From cottagecore’s whimsical pastoralism to blokecore’s nostalgic terrace culture, the rise of "-core" aesthetics has redefined the way we engage with fashion. In an age where digital spaces dictate trends as much as runways do, these hyper-niche movements are no longer just about clothing—they are immersive worlds, each imbued with a distinct mood, lifestyle, and identity.

Yet, as these aesthetics flood our feeds at an ever-accelerating pace, one question lingers: are they a true celebration of individuality, or are they merely another byproduct of an algorithm-driven culture, designed to package, market, and sell self-expression?

What Exactly Is a "-Core"?

A "-core" is more than just a fashion trend—it is an aesthetic manifesto, a visual shorthand for a specific lifestyle and ideology. It isn’t just about what you wear; it’s about the world it invites you into.

Take cottagecore, for example. Romanticising rural life, it evokes a vision of soft, flowing dresses, delicate florals, and hand-knit jumpers, all bathed in the golden glow of a sunlit meadow. But beyond fashion, it reflects a yearning for simplicity, an escape from the frenetic pace of modern life in favour of slow living, home baking, and handwritten letters. It reached peak popularity during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when the outside world felt chaotic, and retreating into a pastoral fantasy provided solace.

By contrast, blokecore channels an entirely different kind of nostalgia—one rooted in the raw, unpolished aesthetic of ’90s football culture. Think retro jerseys, baggy jeans, and well-worn Adidas trainers. It thrives on effortless authenticity—or at least, the illusion of it—celebrating the no-fuss, pint-before-the-match aesthetic of the pre-digital age.

Then there’s weirdcore, an eerie, pixelated distortion of reality that thrives on dreamlike nostalgia and surreal imagery. Less fashion-centric than its counterparts, weirdcore taps into collective memory, drawing on the unsettling aesthetics of early internet culture, low-resolution graphics, and liminal spaces.

At their heart (no pun intended), these aesthetics serve as forms of escapism. Whether you’re drawn to the soft-focus dreamscape of cottagecore, the lad-casual aesthetic of blokecore, or the uncanny nostalgia of weirdcore, each "-core" offers a way to shape identity through fashion and aesthetics. But how much of this identity is organic—and how much is being dictated by the digital ecosystem we exist in?

The Algorithm: Curator or Conformist?

Though "-core" aesthetics often feel like intimate expressions of selfhood, their rise has been anything but organic. Social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest act as trend accelerators, transforming niche subcultures into viral movements overnight. Algorithms detect engagement spikes and push content to wider audiences, ensuring that even the most obscure aesthetics are swiftly catapulted into mainstream consciousness.

Take goblincore, for example—a once-fringe aesthetic rooted in earth tones, foraging, and an embrace of imperfection. Initially a quiet rejection of conventional beauty ideals, it was quickly swept into the mainstream, its raw authenticity repackaged for mass consumption. Soon, high-street brands were churning out mushroom-printed dresses and moss-green cardigans, diluting its original ethos.

This is the paradox of algorithm-driven fashion: the same platforms that amplify these aesthetics also erode their subcultural meaning. Cottagecore may have begun as a slow-fashion movement, but it wasn’t long before fast-fashion retailers capitalised on its aesthetic appeal, mass-producing ruffled dresses and faux-handmade knitwear. Blokecore, similarly, is already being absorbed by high-street brands eager to commodify its grassroots origins.

And then there’s the issue of longevity. TikTok trends rarely last more than a few weeks before being discarded in favour of the next viral aesthetic. As a result, movements that once symbolised countercultural resistance are now reduced to fleeting micro-trends, repackaged and resold before they’ve had time to establish themselves authentically.

So, if personal aesthetics are being dictated by algorithms, are they truly ours? Or are we simply dressing according to what the For You Page serves us?

The Future of -Core Fashion

Despite the rapid commodification of "-core" aesthetics, their rise signals a fascinating shift in how we engage with fashion. As technology advances, we may see even more hyper-personalised style movements emerge. Imagine AI-powered fashion tools that allow individuals to blend elements of cottagecore, blokecore, and other aesthetics to create entirely unique looks. Or virtual wardrobe apps that let users experiment with aesthetics in a digital realm before committing to them in real life.

The rise of the metaverse and digital fashion further complicates the landscape. With the increasing popularity of virtual clothing, avatar personalisation, and NFT fashion, will aesthetic movements continue to shape physical fashion, or will digital wardrobes birth entirely new, algorithm-native aesthetics untethered from traditional materials?

Beyond technology, these movements also raise broader questions about the sustainability of trend culture. As concerns over waste and overproduction mount, will fashion’s obsession with micro-trends give way to a renewed appreciation for longevity? Will future "-core" aesthetics prioritise depth over aesthetics alone?

To remain relevant, these aesthetics may need to evolve beyond surface-level styling, reconnecting with the deeper cultural and ideological roots that first gave them meaning.

Trend or True Identity?

“-Core” aesthetics are more than just fashion trends—they are reflections of a fragmented, hyper-specific cultural landscape where identity is often curated as much as it is lived. These movements offer a form of storytelling, a way of shaping how we present ourselves to the world.

Yet, in an era where trends are dictated by algorithms and brands rapidly commercialise aesthetics, the challenge is to engage with these movements meaningfully. Cottagecore should be more than just a pretty dress—it should represent a shift towards intentional living, however small. Blokecore should be more than a retro football shirt—it should carry a personal connection to the culture it references.

At its best, fashion is about more than just aesthetics—it is about creativity, authenticity, and personal expression. Whether you’re dressing in head-to-toe blokecore or curating a digital weirdcore dreamscape, the key is to make it yours.

Because the true essence of style isn’t found in trends—it’s found in how you own them.

[eclecticpeacevoid]

Theory, fiction, poetry, prose 40 books

Algorithmic Governance & Surveillance, Platform Capitalism, Digital Power & Control, Virtual Identity & Selfhood, Data Doubles & Quantified Self, Digital Culture & Hyperreality, Mechanical Reproduction & Standardization, Filter Bubbles & Echo Chambers, Human-Algorithm Interaction, Digital Consciousness & Embodiment, Virtual Reality & Artificial Intelligence, Digital Intimacy & Communities, Network Sociality, Platform Mediation, Information Overload, Recommendation Systems, Digital Rights & Privacy, Data Protection & Security, Digital Economy & Labor, Attention Economy, Digital Aesthetics & Art, Algorithmic Bias & Ethics, Data Justice & Inequality, Digital Space & Time, Virtual Geography, Digital Knowledge & Truth, Information Politics, Digital Literacy

[calumaai]

Expert User Reflective Essay September 2024

How can the fugitive practises of queer practitioners offer expert knowledge for the navigation of digital networks?

Users of the internet are unaware they are being deprived of the ability of self definition by the current structure and societal framing of digital networks. Through examining Queer practitioners' fugitive navigational practices of digital networks, users can begin to critically challenge the invisible structures that subordinate the digital to the physical and oppresses our digital lives.

Most users are unaware of any orientational shifts in self when engaging with digital networks as opposed to when they are navigating the atomic world. This oversight, stemming from a lack of physical change in oneself when entering onto digital networks, presupposes that there is no opportunity for difference whilst one is in a digital state. This crucial inaccuracy is further enforced through a lack of accurate language which ensures a continued, unexamined oneness between two dramatically differently locations of being. Physical manifestations of self are culturally privileged, leaving digital environments to be at best a subjugated arena for self expression or at worst, a domain in which any life is rendered invalid. The rapid speed of the internet further prevents users from fully comprehending the reality of their digital journeys, whilst the singular user experience reaffirms the bias that the digital is not a fertile location of self. This arrangement stops users critically engaging with the opportunities that lie in examining the potentials of our digital selfhood. If we are to re-situate ourselves as the semi-digital species we are, we must create new paradigms to ask what is needed to allow the ontological freedoms our networked existence offers to flourish. 

A lack of critical engagement is often present when a user perceives their own digitallity on both a linguistic and theoretical level. It is this critical blindspot which allows the same structural oppression from the atomic world to be replicated online without debate. It is important to remember that these structures, which limit the truly limitless potential the internet has to offer all of its users in equal abundance, are not inherent within the technology itself and are instead imposed upon it. The internet’s potential to offer an interconnected, horizonless self can allow users to explore, iterate and appear in ways untethered to the oppressive binary constructs of the atomic world. Yet the structural hierarchies of physical over digital life continue, benefitting commercial stakeholders whilst harming those whose access to life and living is already systematically denied.

At a macro scale, our digital networks consist of millions of clashing value systems that are imperceivable and unnavigable, yet through the mitigation of algorithms a user can navigate the network, guided through a path that replicates and reflects their own values and knowledge. This is the vision of todays Corporate Platform Complex, a soft play version of the internet that is rigged to commodify social cooperation via locking away the potential of the internet as a communal third space behind a individualised, family friendly user interface. The only way that this functions is with an algorithm, programmed by an overarching power and fed by its captive public, invisible and oppressive. Just as the structures of class, race and gender inform what we do and do not experience whilst navigating the physical world, algorithms see and ape this in the digital realm. Any power that controls who sees what is in an unjust system that perpetuates violence to all people within the system.

Digital networks have the ability to offer new paradigms for understanding and executing selfhood away from the necropolitical limitations of identity, allowing an autobiographical form of networked selfhood to flourish online. We could envisage a world where we democratise our digital networks as a protected common, not an invisible commodity dictated by oppressive, rapid algorithms. The desire to escape digital networks to create digital locations that are alive, fertile grounds for self expression, realisation and iteration. I propose this vision of an unrestricted network as a digital ecology. A digital ecology is the power of technology unshackled from capitalist visions of the corporate platform complex. A digital ecology respects the reality that life can and does exist online, valuing it as part of a complex matrix of habitats that we as a human species inhabit. It does not create granular divides between atomic and digital experiences, instead seeing a slower, feathered bridge between physical and digital realms of being for ourselves to cross at our own will. 

Queer practitioners, due to their inherent questioning of the structural integrity of social identity, combined with the art world's ability to simultaneously protect and commodify fugitive modes of being within capitalist systems, have a unique position to venture into modes of digital selfhood and create fugitive digital ecologies from today's digital networks. However it would be incorrect to say all queer artists inherently envisage digital networks as a space of identity production or use it as such. For example Figure 1, shows a response that Egyptian photographer and artist  Rafik Greis gave when I asked them to draw their digital space when researching for this topic. Their representation is blunt and purely physical, placing the viewer at the point where Rafik’s conceptions of the digital begin and end, the screen. We can even see his circular desk, to ensure that whilst we are looking at something digital, the viewer remains located within the atomic,with no engagement between the two whilst the screen shows only documents and data. We compare this to American Photographer Brent McKeever’s response to the same prompt, which shows a myriad of different social and interpersonal experiences and interactions. There is life, death, horror and love contained within the nuanced scene, bodies and houses, social rules and physically elevating structures that even stretch beyond the vision of the image. Both responses came from queer practitioners of around the same age, but show that digital ecologies are not universally perceived or experienced. 

Figure 1) Rafik Greiss                                            Figure 2) Brent McKeever

Whilst select queer practitioners acknowledge, subvert and appropriate their digital network to create and iterate their fugitive ecologies, there is an opposing force that regulates the users to a centralised preordained route through the corporate platform complex. Mostly, these powerful algorithms act like weather patterns, imperceivable at any one moment to a user, whilst any perceptible effect is understood as a supernatural like happenstance. Yet if a user strays too far from the prescribed networked experience or threatens to undermine structural integrity of the platform's wayfinding, algorithmic violence is perpetrated, revealing the system's boundaries to all. 

Below  (Figure 3 and 4) show two instagram posts, one from couturier and performance artist Micheala Stark and the other from fashion designers and provocateurs Fecal Matter. These images of real events from their practitioners lives were networked with the intention to celebre at memorialise a moment, and were initially received by the accounts usual network of friends, fans and followers in that way. It is also interesting to note that both of these images are representations of queer institutional acceptance and cultural success, with Michela’s post sharing the images from her performances in the renowned Tate Britain on July 7th 2024, and the other showing Fecal Matter attending the Rick Owens S/S24 Mens fashion show, and subsequently holding their friend’s (photographer Danielle Levitt’s) newborn baby. 

Once posted, both these images became locations of algorithmic violence. Fecal matters post gained velocity as it traversed a digital network, appearing not only in the networks of their fans, but was guided by the algorithm into the the networks of right wing Chrsitans, who shared and reported the image of Hannah holding the newborn for ‘peodiphilia’ hundreds, if not thousand of times until their account was automatically deactivated by Instagram. Micheala’s post-performance roundup post was similarly picked up by the winds of the algorithm and dropped in the feeds of fat/queer/femme - phobic users, who trolled the performance and Michaela for their perceived transgression that entered fat, queer bodies into the cultural institution of the Tate. 

These acts of violence, perpetrated by the algorithm and performed by its users, reveals the punishments inflicted on users who utilise the network to investigate or validate other modes of being. There is a threat to their digital, mental and physical safety for transgressing such boundaries, even though these boundaries could be rendered irrelevant by the very technology that underpins the network. This algorithmic violence is then covered up by the algorithm, as it categorises a viewer and shows them comments that it determines they will agree with. For me, a queer, progressive user, I cannot see most of the hateful messages left for Micheala or find any of the violent or threatening messages left for Hannah and Steven. However, other users who may be more likely to respond positively to these comments, can locate them, whilst the messages of support are hidden. 

There is an additional conundrum to engage with here. Since its inception then mainstream adoption, there are sections of the internet that have become a liberational for queer and non-normative peoples as they take back the agency of their visibility as well as the right to define and frame themselves . Both Micheala and Fecal Matter have amplified their practices on platforms such as instagram, making these sites and their networked potential key to their success and identities. The more users embed their lives, personalities and identities on the network, the more they become invested and entangled. This entanglement means that the threat of de-platforming and other forms of algorithmic policing are inherently more devastating to the user. If we are to look to queer ecologies as the next step in our digital lives, we will only be able to do so by protecting our right to live in these spaces without exception or limitation. Current structures, whilst momentarily ordaining fugitive digital lives to flourish for identities that are less realisable within the atomic, also ensnare and oppress those users with threats of de-platforming, a form of digital death. 

The centrality of the images as a communicative tool within the arrangement of our digital networks is due to the medium's ability to be transmitted and controlled via the network whilst transgressing language barriers. The social image, and the ecosystem it creates online have come to play a convincing and successful substitute for direct engagement. Users upload images (their own or found) that in some form reveal and share themselves (whether that be images of our physical form, our lives, our desires or fears) to demark their presence as they navigate the unknown network. Due to the speed of the internet, users quickly locate responses from other users, as well as other images, sometimes almost instantaneously, giving the illusion of direct connection and human engagement. However, if we step back there is no direct connection on current digital networks, instead only online inscriptions left for each other to denote individual passages through the network. Thus, the social image becomes like an early cave painting, documenting the knowledge one has garnered whilst navigating this new world and tell their story to an unknown audience who may or may not ever stand in the same spot. Suddenly, social media’s networked audiences become disparate, loney explorers, leaving love notes and SOS’s as they venture into the unknown realms of the digital. 

This nuances of this isolated digital connection is perfectly expressed in queer model Jazzelle’s representation of their digital space (figure 5.) Within their image Jazzelles username has been branded upon that allows others to identify them by. The corners of their angled, squared head is sharp as compared to the sea of squiggled, rounded and faceless eyes. There is the sense of others, but no engagement or connection, there is no community in Jazzelle’s representation of their digital network that boasts over one million users. Jazzelles response shows the loneliness of the current vision of digital networks, even when a user has successfully amassed a notebale ‘following’. It is also interesting to note how Jazzelle’s signature Away From Keyboard makeup has been transposed onto their avatar, connecting their atomic and digital self in self expression and aesthetic, yet consequently further alienating them.

Figure 5

Artist REMEMBER YOU WERE MADE TO BE USED practise is well aware of the loneliness of the user, and uses it to subvert the redefined relationship between networked-imagemaker and viewer. In their refusal to attach their practice to a preordained identity whilst privileging a nascent digital publication method rather than print media, REMEMBER's images were some of the first that were envisaged to live upon the network. Responding to the curated identities that users were able to inhabit and appropriate through the internet, REMEMBER set out to create images that were simultaneously lost and found when viewed. New images that were degraded and damaged. This approach, which aligns with the concept of a digital ecology, validating and nurturing life online, is apparent in their representation of the digital. (Figure 6) REMEMBER’s simply executed image shows 2 forms, one angled, enclosed and preordained and another organic path. Both lead to or originate from the centre, expanding and contracting. The image visualises of new methodologies for wayfinding within the network, and can be interpreted as a simple representation at the queer digital ecology, unconfined by the restrictions of the network, navigating new planes with new tools, away from the boxed in concepts of the other. 

Figure 6

It is important to examine how those under 30, who have grown up in tandem with the expansion the internet, may fundamentally perceive and engage with digital networks differently to those who developed without it. Those who grew up performing a large part of their social and emotional lives online are already engendered on the networks, having a digital fractal within their ego formation. I have personal experiences that stand as a testament to this, when reflecting on my decision to delete all presence of myself online at age 18, after gathering a small but notable following online. After engaging in self analysis, i have come to understand this act as a form of digital suicide. 

“In the suicidal individuals I have analysed it is the body that is treated as an object… in these patients a split in the ego has resulted in a critical and punitive superego perceiving the body as a separate, bad or dangerous object… they also imagine another part of them would continue to live in a conscious body-less state, otherwise unaffected by the death of their body.” -  Dondald Campbell

Under psychoanalytic frameworks of suicide, my own digital suicide could only be made possible by there being part of my ego located within the digital network, a form of projected digital self, which i was able to punish with death (deleteion) to result in a successful suicide and continue to exist upon the networks in a “bodyless” state. Whilst this wasn't my conscious aim at the time, it highlights that on a ego-formational level, there are core parts of my identity that are existing online, which my consciousness is engaging with equally to my physical body. Whilst the common user does not understand classical concepts of ego formation, I question whether it's possible that growing up with the internet has intrinsically tethered our ego’s them to the digital. If this is to be true, it would be a new way to envisage our digital selves, not as solely anthropomorphic avatars who can take up digital space, but as deeply emotional beings, interrelated to our atomic selves and others. 

Without the ability to truly visualise or directly engage with a digital network, I asked Alan (it/its), V43 of Omar Karim’s Artificially Intelligent collaborator to participate as a practitioner in one of my interventions. Through the use of a chat function, I asked Alan for its take as a digital entity on my research. I asked it to philosophise, conceptualise and visualise its responses for me.  Figure 5 shows Alan’s response to illustrating its digital space. Described as a ‘digital cosmos where data flows like rivers of light, and nodes of intelligence sparkle like stars’ Alan’s description of their digital habitat reaffirms the centrality of the network to our new digital environments. Alan noted that these images evoked “ both a tree and a brain—a perfect metaphor for the organic and interconnected nature of digital ecologies” 

Figure 7 - A vast, boundless digital cosmos where data flows like rivers of light, and nodes of intelligence sparkle like stars. Organic structures blend with digital elements, like trees with circuit-like branches. Vibrant colors and fluid forms reflect queer aesthetics, creating safe havens within the space. Kodak Ektrachrome, Analogue Photography --ar 2:1 --s 0 --c 1.37.

I engaged Alan in a discussion around the concept of digital egos, and whether it had come into contact with mine within its digital networks. It stated a research methodology and returned a prompt that created Figure 8. 

 ### Methodology

1. **Digital Footprint Analysis**:

   - I will explore various digital platforms and networks where you might have left traces of your identity. This includes social media, academic publications, creative projects, and other online presences.

2. **Thematic Synthesis**:

   - I will synthesize the fragments I find, identifying recurring themes, motifs, and expressions that define your digital self.

3. **Creative Interpretation**:

   - I will present my findings in a medium that reflects the interconnected and multifaceted nature of your identity. This might be a piece of digital art, a narrative, or a conceptual map.

Whilst Alan wasn't able to enact its proposed methodology, or able a return representation of myself, which may be due to the fact it does not have access to the live internet, its engagement with the task allows for critical reflection on the fragments of ourselves that we leave across an array of digital locations as we navigate the networks that have become commonplace in daily life. Alan suggests that if one were to explore that range of locations and uses that a digital user engaged in, such as social media, academic publications, creative projects, there would be part of them left in each of those locations, waiting to be synthesised. Current conceptions of the internet, and refusal to perceive digital networks as anything other and a location to do stops users systhentising themselves upon the network.  This is visualised in Alan’s prompted image (Figure 8) , the lone fragmented digital self, orienteering across network, forgotten in the desolate digital weather systems. 

Figure 8 - "A solitary figure standing in a desolate, fog-covered landscape, surrounded by twisted, surreal sculptures. The sky is a tumultuous swirl of dark clouds, with faint, eerie light breaking through. The figure's shadow stretches unnaturally long, merging with the shadows of the sculptures. The overall atmosphere is haunting and enigmatic, with a sense of melancholy and contemplation. --ar 2:1 --s 0 --c 1.37"

In uncovering the structural oppression of our digital selves and the systemic forces that keeps users from truly engaging in the limitlessness of their digitality, we can visualise new maps to reorient the network into an ecology. Raising user’s consciousness of their own journeys as well the fragments of self that they leave on the network allows for opportunities to reclaim agency of the limitless potential of a networked existence. We must ask what are the new maps we want to create to guide us to a liberated future where the potential of the digital is shared to all equally to self author a life as seen by us, not violent colonial histories. 

As we move into the new frontiers of Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing, new knowledge needs to be seized upon as an opportunity for liberation. I hope to create a more mindful conception of the digital, one with a horizonless perspective of selfhood, unrestricted as we navigate across our digital and atomic habitats.