“We are all hopelessly terrified of the Beyond and so addicted to our phones that we look to them for answers to almost everything.”
“I view this habit as simply the first part of us becoming full-on cyborgs, which I am super excited for.”
“The moment we can safely embed our cellphones into our skin for easy access, count me the fuck in. Can you imagine? We would never lose our phones, never break them, never have to worry about missing an important text.”
“Once that happens, the internet very literally becomes the Self and I never have to worry about the Beyond again. As someone who feels like the world is constantly out to get me and the internet is my only safe space, that sounds like a beautiful paradise.”
“Judging by the way my response to this question has digressed, I guess I am mostly interested in drawing (or rather, not drawing) a distinction between the Self and the internet and pretending the Beyond doesn’t exist.”
“People often ask me if what I do online is “real” and I am never sure how to respond. Why is everyone so obsessed with whether or not an online presence is “accurate” to reality? That question assumes that the internet is not also part of reality, which seems not only incorrect but completely insane to me. Of course all online presences are “true” and “real,” in that they are the accurate representation of how a person would like other people to see them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every aspect of a person is represented in their Twitter account, because that is impossible.”
“So in that sense, the distinction between the Self and Beyond is just that: The Self is constant, unending, inescapable, and mostly boring. The Beyond is anything you want it to be, which can be more terrifying than it is freeing. The Beyond is how you choose to present yourself to people, and the Self is how you present yourself to yourself.”