Everyone Is a Girl Online

https://www.wired.com/story/girls-online-culture/

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

19 55 3 years ago

wired.com

simmerup3• 3 years ago

This is a hard read. It seems to require a lot of context to understand.

Is it basically saying everyone online wants attention and that makes them girls?

pierat2• 3 years ago

This feels like a boiling down a masters thesis from a women's studies thesis-> gender studies thesis -> human intersectionality thesis. (The names of this field try to distance themselves from their roots at every step, because even women know "women" is bad. Sigh. Just dumb sexism all the way down.)

The language they use has multiple overloading definitions, some of which conflict, and others are just completely opaque. And since it's about the "gender wars written from a woman", any critique will be tarred and feathered as "patriarchy".

For example, this is the second-to-last paragraph and single massive run-on sentence:

     "It may well work in our favor to accelerate our way into Total Girl—that is, to consider the girl as a specific technology of subjectivity that maxes out on desire, attraction, replication, and cunning to achieve specific ends—and to use such technology to access something once unknowable about ourselves rather than for simple capital gains, blowing a kiss at individually-scaled pleasures while really giving voice to the egregore, the totality of not just information, but experience, affect, emotion."

That's just dense-prose-diarrhea that basically means nothing. There's at least 6 different definitions of "girl", and which this sentencegraph uses different ones than above. And mixing para-psychology, science, technology, and occultism gives the "aura" (HAH!) that they have and know more than the rest. And in the end it reads like a cross between a newspaper horoscope, the "History Channel" (aliens!), and a rerun of 1990's Outer Limits.

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

You should see some of Hegel's run-on sentences...speaking of which, that's even immensely clear compared to Hegel

jstarfish2• 3 years ago

It's very dense, and I'm surprised to see this authored by a woman.

Every ordinary person has to, in some way, pay attention to their semipublic image, even if that image is one that resists appearing on a platform.

The internet is a social platform upon which patriarchy has been subverted [in virtual reality] without anybody even noticing.

This is the age of social engineering. We all have to live like teenaged girls engaging in cliquish behavior whether we like it or not. Everything you say that can in any way be attributable to you will be used against you out of context.

If you don't think you do, then nobody has found a need to cancel you yet. Just wait until you get in another "girl's" way for a promotion or you're the target of staged histrionics so they can evade accountability for some other shit they did. Give it time and watch your back.

It's a quiet war you don't even realize is being waged until your life becomes a smoldering crater. This is by design. The favored weapon of women has always been poison, and it's not always the chemical kind.

I hadn't considered the sexist angle even after noticing my stepdaughter snooping on her parents' phones and cyberstalking me and was thinking just yesterday that it feels like I have to like like an aspiring presidential candidate. All skeletons must be macerated, all dirt must be swept away, all witnesses discredited or eliminated. I've seen what she does to the rest of her family with weaponized intelligence. There's no discernible endgame, just defamation and humiliation of everyone for the sake of elevating herself.

I now understand how teen girls get bullied into suicide by other girls. Some shit, you can't live down.

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

It's very dense, and I'm surprised to see this authored by a woman.

A lot of philosophers are women

simmerup3• 3 years ago

Thanks, that’s more understandable

kelseyfrog3• 3 years ago

It's a dense read to be sure, but no more dense than any of the hard-to-read continental philosophers such as Hegel[1] or Ricœur[2].

My gist is that the author is basically saying that the category of girl is experiencing a cataphatic expansion - that is to say it's expanding in positive definite terms. It's also saying that this is a good thing and that it should be accelerated[3][4].

It's clear the author is well read enough to hint at ideas which such velocity that it overwhelms the reader. For example, I'm quite certain that the author would feel right at home talking about the category of girl in terms of reterritorialization a la Deleuze and Guattari[5]. But, the author never explicitly makes this connection.

Like nearly all philosophical works, it draws from, reapplies, or is a response to existing works. It doesn't go out of its way to tell you what they are - it expects you to be familiar enough with the topic that you can discern that from content and context.

I think it's easy to criticize the piece as being not accessible, but also, maybe the target audience (which the author assumes familiarity with) doesn't overlap with the population of HN readers. I don't think it's a stretch to say that author would see programming concepts as equally incomprehensible and requiring a foundation found elsewhere.

Back to summarizing the piece, the author write after a series of specific points "Living as “male” is to live in horror of ever being a girl." Going back to the point of the "category of girl is experiencing a cataphatic expansion," you can see how "male" is being defined apophatically[6] - that is to say, by negation.

The author combines this positive definition of girlness with the question "What is being rewarded by online platforms?" and arrives at the intermediate conclusion that the manipulation of desire(my words) is rewarded.

The piece then goes on to question, are the girls subject to the influence of platforms or can they wield this power to achieve goals?

Finally, I'm reserving the right to be completely wrong about my interpretation of this. I'm not exactly holding this interpretative view very strongly.

1. See The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) https://archive.org/details/phenomenologyofs0000hege_n6q1/mo... (translation)

2. Or see Time and Narrative (1984) https://archive.org/details/timenarrative0001ricu/mode/2up

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

4. Some form of Girl/Acc? (50% /gen, 50% tongue in cheek)

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reterritorialization

6. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Apophatic

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

I don't think it's a stretch to say that author would see programming concepts as equally incomprehensible and requiring a foundation found elsewhere.

Not to be too mean to HN users but I think it's much more likely that the writer understands basic programming than HN users have a basic ability to read continental philosophy. I see a lot of HN users deride all philosophy entirely

simmerup3• 3 years ago

You may be wrong, you may be right, but I like your sentence - 'that (maybe) the manipulation of desire is rewarded'

Thank you for your take

resharpe105• 3 years ago

This is nonsense.

omscs99• 3 years ago

What the hell is this thing even saying

Does the author think that redefining a bunch of words makes them “deep” or something? Either make an attempt to be understandable or don’t publish. And shame on wired for dropping the bar so low, you wouldn’t see this type of laughable shit out of a more respectable outlet like new yorker

cherrycherry98• 3 years ago

After their Hogwarts Legacy review where they gave the game 1/10 and talked more about the controversy around Rowling than the game they have no credibility to me.

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

What do you mean? This reads like any other contemporary philosophy I've read

hollerith• 3 years ago

Submissions like this make me wish I could downvote submissions.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

I mean sure, if you look at every definition of the word ‘girl’ through every lense, you can find a way to frame the world in such a way as to produce… whataver this article is

I just don’t get this piece.

GauntletWizard2• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/OaAFG

confd• 3 years ago

Is Wired in general taken seriously by this community still?

gnicholas• 3 years ago

I still take Wired seriously, though somewhat less so after seeing this article.

lordfrito4• 3 years ago

Woof. Talk about hyperreality. As if this stream of nonsense matters to anyone or anything in the real world. Chasing status seeking false realities that are meant to be consumed as the real. A sign of the times.

Glad I grew up pre-internet.

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

As if this stream of nonsense matters to anyone or anything in the real world.

I'm a little confused at what makes you think that the internet is not included in the set of things considered to be real

johnea4• 3 years ago

It's not the internet that's not real, it's the dream space that it induces in it's victims.

This is the same as the dream state involked by, say, reading a novel, or watching a movie, or even going into that out-of-body experience that occurrs when someone is immersed in code development, or painting. But the dream state invoked by the internet is interactive, personallized, and orders of magnitude more potent than any of those traditional media pathways.

What's not real is what the human is imagining while they use the internet.

It's a fantasy world. And while transcending to a fantasy state is essential for imaginative innovation, like solving a hard programming problem, it's equally essential that those benefits be brought back to the real world, physical 3D reality.

This is the part that doesn't happen with the fantasy escape of trending "nonsense".

The meme-speak is just a medium of expression for the illiterate.

Really sad that once again "girls" are just a means of enforcing mindless consumption for the benefit of ownership.

This break from physiccal reality has been abrupt, and near ubiquitous, and quite likely the end of the modern world order...

lordfrito4• 3 years ago

The Internet is pure information, pure virtual space (well it's also computers, hard drives, and wiring, but that's not what people mean when they talk about The Internet).

Hyperreality deals with the simulation of the real (both classical/physical simulation as well as idea and mental-model simulation), so much so that the real eventually becomes less important than the simulation itself. At some point the symbols of the simulation begin to take on a life of their own (think of brand logos, the Nike swoosh, the apple with a bite taken out). The symbols begin to have their own meanings apart from reality, welcome to the realm of the hyperreal.

The word "girl" is not a real girl, it's meant to "capture" or "represent" what a girl is in communication. We attempt to capture "real girlness" in the words we use and the mental models we build. Over time usage of the word gets perverted, it no longer "accurately" captures the essence of what a girl is, it is a distortion of the real. The word, which started out representing reality, becomes untethered from reality, and starts to take on a life of its own.

Eventually you leave behind all pretense of reality, and the word/symbol has it's own inherent meaning that only makes sense in context of the hyperreal. This article only really seems to make sense if you live more in the world of hyperreal symbols, and are less concerned about the real world that the words once represented.

A lot of this is due the Enlightenment, as we now live in an "Age of Reason" which is absolutely obsessed with simulation -- everything must be captured, categorized, analyzed, broken down, understood, only to eventually be integrated and manipulated in our mental models (simulations).

In many ways The Internet is (or has the potential to become) home for the absolute hyperreal. All that matters to the internet is the relationship between symbols. Are you aligned with the right symbols, brands, products, politics, lifestyles, etc.? Endless bites of "simulated false realities" designed for mental consumption. We yearn for the real, the authentic, while living in an increasingly hyperreal world starving of any underlying meaning.

What's more important; The Real, or The Internet's captured and increasingly perverted version of "The Real"?

I am unconcerned with the hyperreal when what it claims to represent is untethered from the real world. To some it's deathly serious. I've found my mental health is better staying focused on things that are more real.

If you find these ideas compelling I suggest you read up more on it [1]. The book Simulacra and Simulation is a wonderful starting place, really opened my eyes [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

acadapter• 3 years ago

Reading that article, I think "someone apparently ingested something inappropriate at Burning Man". What a chaotic mess.

DiggyJohnson• 3 years ago

That read like satire. I'm actually glad this showed up in my feed because of how fascinated I am with the content of this article.

josteink• 3 years ago

Self-centered, self-inflating and generally impossible to read.

If this is what a girls internet produces, they can keep it for themselves.

stuckinhell• 3 years ago

Not what I expected at all, and a bit nonsensical.

I expected more along the lines of Face editing: Japanese biker tricks internet into thinking he is a young woman https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56447357

bowsamic17• 3 years ago

Great philosophical treatise and analysis. I have observed this phenomenon quite widely since COVID. It's partly what led me to delete my twitter account

MisterBastahrd• 3 years ago

Dunno bout that. There's pretty hardcore pushback on these topics.

For example, "girl dinner" is just "eating whatever is at home that you don't need to cook."

Which means that most of Gen X was eating "girl dinner" decades before anyone coined the term, and bachelors have been eating "girl dinner" for centuries.

kbelder• 3 years ago

"girl dinner", I.E., "guy dinner", I.E., meaningless.

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

The article keeps mentioning "post-platform" and then seems to speak about how women can hide behind "girlness" to get away with manipulative nonsense. How an Instagram Influencer continues doing whatever it is they do if they are not on a platform is beyond me.

Everyone Is a Girl Online

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