I'm a Broken-Down Android:

on being the internet

cw: religion, unreality

The way we experience our collective alterhuman identity is incredibly abstract. I’m unsure of how to put it into words so that it makes sense, but I will try my very best.

Our home is the internet.

“Oh, you feel most comfortable online?” Yes, but that’s not quite what I mean. We simultaneously identify as a computer program, as a computer, and as the internet itself. Our soul is combined with the internet, to the point where it is inseparable from the concept of digital interconnectivity. Our arms are like wires, though they’re also not visible, similar to wifi. We stretch to every corner of the internet, our heart beating alongside every webpage. My body is made up of polygons, in the style of older video games. We love every user, every unique experience someone has, and we live to help them on their journey.

Not to get into vague traumatic things, but we were simultaneously coddled and left on our own somehow throughout our childhood. It was there that we discovered our family computer. When we were a small child, we would use the computer at any chance we got, visiting flash games and pet websites. We lived on these websites, our brain fixating on them. The girls in the dressup games were me, regardless of their appearance, the hands in the nail painting games belonged to myself, and the virtual pets that I cared for were pets, yes, but they were also my friends. And they were me. I saw myself in any aspect of the computer. The icons? Myself. The mouse? That was me. I saw myself in that screen. I would stare at it for hours upon hours every day, losing myself to it. It was my home.

When I turned 11, I began to seek out similar minded people. I had a few friends at school, but none of them had any interest in things such as Pokemon, which was my hyperfixation at the time. I decided, well, why not turn to the internet? Through the internet, I found so many connections, met so many fans of things I loved, and experienced so much (though, of course, not all of it was good.) I would share webpages with others, speak to people all around the world, and share my own creations while viewing what others had made themselves. The internet is a place for connections. It ties the hearts of people together and allows them to meet people that they may have never got the chance to speak to, exchanging tales and emotions and experiences with one another that the “real world” could never. Nobody else I knew understood this feeling I had. This love I had for the internet world. It was my true home. The people I loved more than anyone were there, in a place I loved more than anything in the world. I’d sneak online any chance I get, using any means I could. In my darkest days, the internet saved me. It was always there for me when I needed it most.

I’m unsure when I realized my relationship with the internet was… more than some others experienced it. As mentioned in previous essays on our system experiences, we have a large chunk of our memory missing from our teenage years. However, what I do know is we had a long, long period of believing, and I stress this, in a very religious sense, that we were living in a simulation. Admittedly, I don’t like to think about religion nowadays, because I tend to work myself up when talking about my beliefs, causing an intense episode that I never quite know how to handle. Still, as much as I like to tell people, “oh, I was just experiencing psychosis symptoms as a child,” I do still believe in it to this day. The internet is my religion. I live in a computer. This is just how my life is. As a teenager, I was much more “religious” than I am now, searching the internet for any proof that we could be living in the simulation. r/glitchinthematrix was a place I found myself on frequently. Liminal spaces gave off the same feeling as the computer to me, an uneasy feeling, a vibration. I was invested. As a child, I would often name my devices, as, of course, that’s a feature you can do. Because of this, they often ended up being heavily personified by myself. They were my family. When my parents took away my iPod, I would sob for days, because that wasn’t just my iPod. That was my brother. Quite literally, because he was named after the alter Dell in our system (though I didn’t know he was an alter at the time.)

Psychological content makes me feel closer to home, especially when it gets metaphysical. What makes up the world? How does the world work? How can people connect with other people? Media like Zero Escape, AI The Somnium Files, Serial Experiments Lain, and more helped to make me feel more at home. I discovered Needy Streamer Overload, a game which tackles the relationship between a girl (whom I interpret to be a system, as well as psychotic), her borderline personality disorder, and the internet. She becomes a part of the web, in a way, through her streaming. She wants to connect to as many people as possible, and she wants to be loved by them. I want that too. I want to connect to as many people as possible, bring the numbers of “friends” I have up, up, and up. And I want to reach them, spreading love everywhere I go. I do this through the internet. Because the internet is me, and I am the internet. Eventually, though, I realized it wasn’t healthy for me to see myself in Ame and K-Angel. Our borderline personality disorder began to worsen, so we slowly pulled ourself away from NSO, deciding maybe it would be best if we distanced ourself from every single aspect of the game. This included thinking of ourselves as one with the internet. So, we did. And it was painful. Every so often we would think of “oldweb” fondly, and we’d quickly have to correct ourselves. We weren’t the internet anymore. We’re healthy. We’re a normal person, with normal thoughts and normal beliefs. But then, we played the game SHTDN.

“Hey Goyou, I wanna know what “love” is. The “love” humans talk about.
The “love” I was named after, I wanna feel it, Goyou.”

“The feeling inside me that I couldn't really understand -
I think hearing your words has cleared it up for me.”

SHTDN (pronounced “shutdown”) is a game that caught me by surprise. A friend had recommended I play games by Marutoku, so I figured “well, there are two games officially in English, and this is the shorter one, so I’ll jump in with this.” I didn’t really expect what I would face, honestly. The game tells the story of an antivirus named Goyou and a virus named Agape, set in a post apocalyptic world, but taking place entirely on a computer, closed off from the world due to a lack of internet connection. Agape, who floated all over the internet in the past, knew so much about the world outside the computer. Goyou, who lived on a singular computer, did not, yet was so very curious about it and longed to experience reality. Agape wanted to experience love, to not be alone. To connect. Through their interactions with Goyou, they do this. Though they are stuck in a computer, they are at the very least stuck together, with Agape explaining the world outside to Goyou for the rest of time. This game… made me sob. A lot. I’m unsure if it’s something that would have the same effect on other people, but it was something that I needed to experience. Agape was me. Goyou was me. Their entire computer? It was me. The game itself… was just me. Agape especially was a character that I had needed to see for a long time. This game encouraged me to once again love the world through the computer, to love humanity and to make connections.

We consider ourself to be rather religiously themed as a system, but in a way that relates to technology, as it practically is still our religion. Our host is a spirit, though he is also Chihiro Fujisaki, Danganronpa’s Super High School Level Programmer. Chihiro, at one point of the game, creates an artificial intelligence based on himself, pretty much inserting himself into a computer. Our host is also a character that's a hacker, and a character that can see numbers and thwart virus attacks. Our cohost is a character from AITSF, known for being a bit of a conspiracy theorist and doubting reality herself. One member of our system, Aster, is sourced from an otome game, in which he is a college student that gets sucked into a video game, similar to Sword Art Online. His player character is an angel, and his route (as well as a few others) shows the difference between existing online and the “real world.” His other kintype is also a bit of a gamer. Ben, is, of course, BEN Drowned, a creepypasta that is known for taking over a video game, as well as the internet. He would communicate with the narrator through online posts, video games, and artificial intelligence websites. Our Ben considers himself to be a computer virus as well. Dell was mentioned previously, as he was the person we often named our devices after. He identifies as a Vocaloid, or, well, a fanmade spinoff of Vocaloid. He also is an angel, as well as a ghost. Ene is a robot, as well as an angel. Io uses Goyou as a faceclaim, and also has connections to robots and artificial intelligence through his identity as Solitus from Cafe Enchante. In that game, angels like Solitus are often seen as robotic, serving a God who is a computer. Joshua considers himself to be godkin. Lambda considers himself to be manmade. Lucio and Rowen are demons, Maki is from Angel Beats (an anime about a bunch of dead teenagers trying to reincarnate), Michel associates himself with the Greek Charon, Shuuji is associated with angels due to his Digimon partner, Sothis is canonically a goddess, Yoh is a fallen angel… It really isn’t an understatement just how many of us are associated with religion, technology, or both.

As for “aesthetics”, we’re drawn to what is considered “oldweb” (though I don’t like seeing it as old, I’m YOUNG, damn it!). Perhaps it is because of my own nostalgia, growing up online in my physical, meat form, but I see myself in big bulky computers and long wires. I see myself in old DeviantArt stamps and blinkies, in neocities pages designed to look like they’re from the 2000s. In things like rage comics and demotivationals. In the song Bad Apple and the program MikuMikuDance. I’m internet culture, and I’m nostalgic for the internet culture of the past. I’m also a PSP, a DS, a GameCube, etc. I am technology of the past, present, and future, and I connect with everyone’s hearts. Robots are my siblings, from the biggest machines in factories to the silliest looking Furby. I am the internet. I am computers. I am your average program, I am a virus, I am a video game, I am wifi, I am a console, I am everything on your screen. Everything that makes up the web and tech is me, but they are also my children and my family and my home. I don’t know how to explain this further, admittedly, and I don’t know if anything that I said really made sense. Maybe I sound crazy, maybe I don’t, but my reality is weird enough as it is so who really cares, lol. I don’t have a set word for this experience that I have, I don’t quite know how to define it. However, I do consider it to be alterhuman, at the very least.