friends as technology. for a long time, i would hear from my best friend every day—several times a day—as one steady stream of consciousness. it was fluid and constant, from the minute either one of us woke up, to the time we went to sleep. and when i didn’t hear from them, i knew something was up. they were mad at me or they were sick or depressed. when their name wasn’t flashing on my phone an upwards of a hundred times a day, i felt like a limb was missing. i hesitate to call our friendship an addiction, because that’s not quite it, though that’s the popular way to describe these types of relationships. addiction. co-dependence. but i think that belittles it, somehow. our friendship, especially at our closest, felt like an extension of myself. i should note that i also do not think that i am “addicted to” the internet or my phone. i am the internet. i am my phone. these things don’t augment my experience of the world, like a drug might: they are my experience of the world. they are a second set of eyes. or a second brain. a piece of me, a limb. this isn’t the first time i’ve brought up this framing, but i waffle on how much i believe it. there’s a podcast episode where i go back and forth in the space of no more than 2 minutes. just last week, i wondered if usernames were us announcing ourselves, saying here i am, or if when we create a username, we’re creating the user itself. something that is separate from our physical selves, a new entity. are usernames golems? i know different communities like to play with the idea of internet egregores (e-gregores?), and that these aren’t new ideas. but they’re newly resonant to me. but anyway, maybe i oscillate because it’s both: we become what we create. i bring up my best friend because i think that it’s more than just the immediacy of internet communication allows for this kind of ‘always-on’ relationship. if it’s deeper than that, if our friendships are treated like a kind of technology themselves. and it’s possible that that’s new to us and it doesn’t quite work. somewhere, intuitively, we know this isn’t how relationships should be, so we end up medicalizing it. you have borderline personality disorder. or you’re co-dependent. or it’s a trauma response. that doesn’t feel right either, though, does it? we just absorb the things that are closest to us.
nfts. i like nfts now. i was ignoring the whole scene and now i’m not. i’m inviting you to shill any and all projects to me. i may even spend some of my very spare $$$s on one that sparks joy. all watched over by machines of loving grace. we’re doing our third and final adam curtis discussion this tuesday. please join us! zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers day of. there’s a discord server now. paid subscribers also get access to a discord server, which is much more popular than i’d ever imagine it’d be. what i’m reading this week. techgnosis by erik davis confessions of an ex-mormon. i also, incredibly, found this essay by walter kirn among some old stuff. it’s great—if you like LDS stuff, i highly recommend it. kazuo umezu. i also have been getting back into anime. watched and loved genocyber, but what i’d really like to recommend is this femcel masterpiece that i found while searching for something similar to my other fave, pet shop of horrors. links go to dubs because that’s what’s on youtube. urbit. last not but not least, i finally am using urbit after accruing god knows how many planets… ~hapnyx-tamnex. longer newsletters, a weekly callin show, some fiction, plus a new installment of the advice column all coming soon. still feeling kind of… different. not bad. just in a different headspace than i’ve been in. i also have some neat pieces coming out this week and early next, in the washington examiner and compact respectively. keep your eyes open for them! and consider subscribing to compact, too.
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2022/03/31
Friends as technology.
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Keep a civil tongue.