Mecha Goliath on a skateboard, and the part where Moses unleashes a plague of “dudes getting pounded by horse dicks” on Pharaoh, and Super Jesus exploding instead of being crucified, it’s all basically the same stuff.
Keeping in mind that all Internet metaphors are stillborn failures, I think that Regular Bible’s parable of that damnable apple from Genesis is about as close as you’re going to get. Snake Devil tempted Eve by telling her when she took a bite of the forbidden fruit of Knowledge her eyes would be opened and “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That ruined the good times for Adam and Eve in a hurry, but they knew a lot more than they did before.
Like the apple, the Internet gives each of us access to wondrous and limitless knowledge. But, the revelation of the Internet is that we discovered our vice was also limitless. Our egos and super-egos were joined by our raging ids, unleashed on a seedy world of our creation.
Adam and Eve felt shame and found the need to tie some leaves to their junk. Our forbidden fruit evidently made us shameless and gave us the knowledge to use a camera to show our junk to strangers.
This model didn’t seem so bad when the Internet first began and the knowledge was a whole lot less limitless. A bunch of nerds posting to Usenet and bulletin boards about Star Trek and boobs and Dungeons & Dragons didn’t cause society to collapse into anarchy. It was easy to see how the pros outweighed the cons.
Nerds, the perpetual outsiders and fringe characters, established themselves as the de facto rulers of the Internet. For nearly twenty years their superiority was unchallenged, but as their virtual kingdom spread it attracted new audiences and new enthusiasts. The number of Internet users grew slowly at first, but with the creation of the Web and Internet browsers those numbers began to grow exponentially.
Millions of newcomers were learning that they could establish a new identity on the Internet. Without a body to get in the way, they could literally become whoever they wanted, and as the Internet spread these identities grew in importance. Without geographic constraints like-minded individuals were able to seek out one another around the world. This allowed subcultures to flourish.
These tribes began to form on the Internet almost from the beginning, and many of the subcultures discussed in this book predate the creation of the Web. It was the Web that drove these subcultures to prominence. It made them accessible and appealing to millions. Furries and otherkin were among the first, but stranger subcultures fragmented from the originals or appeared from nothing, and narrower interests found audiences.
If you’re going to write a book that deals with questions of identity and tribalism on the Internet, sooner or later you probably need to talk to an expert.
I was three months into the process of writing the book. I had amassed a collection of websites, saved forum posts and IM conversations. I had talked to some old friends in Arizona, erotic puppeteers, conspiracy theorists, End Times believers, and various and sundry other odd individuals.
I was preparing to embark on my journey to meet with and interview as many of these characters I had come in contact with as possible. I could feel the wind at my back and the book project was developing a real sense of momentum, but I still felt a lingering doubt. It was as if there was something missing. I needed a clearer sense of direction.
It took me a few days, but I decided what I needed was the spark of insight that I could not create myself. I needed someone with a professional’s perspective. Before I learned who my weirdos were firsthand, I needed to talk to someone who knew how the Internet shapes identity and community.
With a little help from the University of Chicago humanities department, I contacted Anders Zimmerman, a graduate researcher of “cyberspace anthropology” who claimed to be working as “part of the University of Chicago.” He referred to his specific field of study as, “Inner Self Manifestation.”
Most of Anders Zimmerman’s published research involved the use of a sort of sensory immersion technique. In papers he referred to it as “The Chamber,” but its exact purpose was confusing to me and his research was light on the specifics. All I knew was that he was searching for the same sort of truth about identity that was at the core of my book.
When I spoke to Anders on the phone he sounded very excitable and very German, an over-caffeinated Freud. The mention of my book project immediately piqued his curiosity.
“Ooh, a buch, ja? I have zee reimagining chamber,” he said. “Come to meine shtudio und we can do some experiments.”
“What sort of experiments?” I asked.
“Ve re-imagine you,” he said, and then added, “In zee chamber.”
I was a bit hesitant to subject myself to “zee chamber,” a hesitancy that only re-hesitated when my taxi arrived outside a carpet outlet store in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood.
There are worse neighborhoods than Hermosa in Chicago, neighborhoods with more violent crimes, but this was the sort of area where some really horrible and weird shit might go down. It was the sort of area where a beloved grandma gets decapitated by a scythe or a city bus making its late-night rounds stops to pick up passengers only to find three skeletons sitting at one of the bus stops. Hermosa is the sort of neighborhood where you’re walking along and you find a baby laying on the sidewalk and you pick it up and it has your face.
The eerie desolation was nerve-wracking, but it was broad daylight. Anders’s “shtudio” was located adjacent to the carpet outlet, behind an unmarked green security door. There was an intercom next to the door with three buttons. A small placard beside the top button read SCIENC, and the other two placards were scratched out. Someone had hastily scrawled a penis and testicles in black marker across the front of the intercom.
I pressed the top button. Nothing. I pressed it again and longer.
“JA! Ja! Okay, vas?” Anders’s voice blasted from the over-amped speaker.
I leaned down to the speaker and loudly said, “I’m here to see Anders Zimmerman.”
“Ja! Shit, you don’t have to shout.”
The door buzzed and I hurried inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The expansive ground floor was dusty and smelled of machine oils. Large presses or lathes of some sort were covered by plastic tarps. The overhead fluorescent lights and most of the windows were high and painted over. Thin beams of light were breaking through the crackling paint and in their shafts I’m pretty sure I could see asbestos particles.
A heavy door opened and closed somewhere far away inside the building. There was a loud click followed by a buzz as one by one the fluorescent lights switched on.
“Gutentag, Herr Parsons,” said Anders from very near to me.
I jumped, realizing the anthropologist had closed to within a few feet of me while I was staring up at the lights like a rube. He was a little shorter than me, a little older, but he had a youthful head of spiked blond hair that was thinning a little bit on top.
His facial features seemed drawn by gravity to his chin, which left a lot of empty real estate above his gray eyes and horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed like a member of the merchant marine. He was a nightmare vision from a J. Crew catalog in a worn cable-knit turtleneck, ridiculous white canvas pants, and a pair of decaying army boots he had apparently inherited from a combat veteran.
“Hello,”
