The Computer Room

This is a story I wrote in 2021? 2022? Published in Compact Mag (not the political site). I’ve posted and re-posted it here several times. Here’s a radio drama version. As usual, I ask for your patience with audio quality. default.blog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. “Here is natural instinct and here is cont...

Today on The Computer Room, Katherine talks to Dr. Josie Zayner of the Los Angeles Project about genetic engineering and building the impossible. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

On today’s episode of The Computer Room, Katherine talks to Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, not just about Second Life, but about other synthetic lives. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

Join Katherine and producer Taylor McMahon as they discuss Meta’s plans for AI-generated users. Gio returns next week for his regular hosting duties. Read Katherine’s article on the same topic here . 00:00 Introduction and Greetings 00:39 Meta’s AI Generated Users 02:47 Implications of AI in Social Media 04:56 Human Element in Social Media 08:17 AI's Impact on Culture and Taste 21:39 Fictosexualit...

Leah Prime from our fantastic Art Bell episode and of the blog We Own the Night and I talked about my initial reaction to friend.com’s chatbot launch… and why I might be wrong about it after all. This is an experimental format I’m releasing to paid subscribers only right now. Please share your feedback! It’s very likely that a more polished version will be un-paywalled later in the week… But I wan...

Katherine talks to Sam L. Barker about the enduring legacy of pop-punk and emo, and crucially, about how it all coalesced online. You can also listen to this on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube .Read Katherine’s article about blink-182’s unique brand of humor here .Subscribe to Sam’s Substack here . A note from Sam: Be My Escape is an essay and podcast project where I look over some of the m...

Paid subscribers are receiving this a little bit earlier than free subscribers. Katherine reads her Tablet article, “Adam Lanza Fan Art,” a deep dive into the elusive True Crime Community (TCC), a small fandom of mostly adolescents and young adults who treat school shooters and serial killers in the same way other fans might treat boyband members. After the show, in a special Q&A with producer Tay...

In this episode of The Computer Room, Katherine and friends talk about Art Bell's legacy. We meet Leah Prime, who's writing a book about Art Bell, John Steiger who on a mission to hand transcribe every single episode of Coast to Coast AM, and Joseph Matheny, the mind behind Ong's Hat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, vi...

Katherine and Gio discuss “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke,” a novella by Eric LaRocca about a complex BDSM relationship between two women that unfolds through emails, forum posts, and instant messages in 2000. They talk about what it meant to “log on” in 2000, lesbian media, and whether online relationships are uniquely suited to BDSM dynamics. Gio also reveals that, somehow, he didn...

“The most un-American thing you can do is reject fame.” In a recorded phone call, Katherine and Laura Albert, the writer best known for JT Leroy, explore the fuzzy boundaries of truth and fiction in our digital era. They discuss the telephone as a medium, catfishing, imagination, and lying as a form of storytelling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or...

Katherine talks to a brony Zoomer about being online, mediated friendships, the fantastical world of My Little Pony, and the revival that the fandom is experiencing right now. Buy your Mare Fair tickets here , read the infamous MLP fan fic “The Lunar Rebellion” here , and watch the first four seasons of MLP here . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or ge...

Kickstarter and Metalabel cofounder Yancey Strickler walks in on Gio and Katherine gossiping. Together, they talk about the meaning of gossip, the Internet as a source of power, and what happens when everything moves from main to the group chat. Check out Metalabel . Read Yancey's writing: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet  The Post-Individual This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus...

Lauren and Grady are Chicago’s hottest couple. Katherine and Grady talk about playing a role that’s not yourself but based on yourself, their appearance on Help! I'm In a Secret Relationship, where all the weirdos have gone on the Internet, if those chamoy pickles were worth it, and his relationship with Lauren. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...

This week, Gio and I are joined by Benjamin Studebaker, a writer, political theorist, leftist, and former co-host of the infamous podcast “What’s Left?” to discuss the Millennial Left. One question I wish we had asked, and I invite our audience to leave their thoughts about, is whether there is/was a meaningful difference between the Millennial Left and the Tumblr Left. Was the latter a subset of...

What exactly was the alt-right? A digital subculture? A political movement? An umbrella term encompassing several contradictory movements? What did the press get wrong? Katherine and Gio sit down with Scott Greer and attempt to demystify What Happened eight years ago… BTW, if you’re reading this, and you know who you are, YOU WILL come on this show and talk to us about the #GamerGate/imageboard co...

Katherine sat down with cyberethnographer and artist Ruby Justice Thelot and discussed the role of imagination in computer-mediated communication, paracosms, building durable relationships with AI, and more.  * Ruby's book, A Cyberarcheology of Checkpoints * Ruby's Twitter * Ruby's blog * A really cool video Ruby made, Why Aliens Love America This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this...

I spoke to 23-year-old reality shifter Maddie about her experiences traveling to other timelines. You may have heard of reality shifting before—probably through the lens of the now-familiar genre of ”this dangerous TikTok trend is endangering your kids” clickbait . ‘Reality shifting’ is, simply put, when people shift their consciousness to another timeline—an alternate reality—including ones with...

Katherine and Gio discuss the Cut's Andrew Huberman profile, what does and doesn't count as "being political," emo kids, and which up-and-coming public intellectuals they want to model themselves after. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

Ross Jeffries, the author of How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed, The Secrets of Speed Seduction Mastery and webmaster of seduction.com and speedseduction.ai, is considered the Godfather of the Red Pill. In his own words, he "doesn’t know s**t about relationships, but he can teach you how to get laid." Gio and Katherine sit down and talk to him about the first PUA newsgroup, alt.seduction.fas...

Katherine and Gio review the wonderfully weird film Rukus (2018) , which is one part of coming of age story and one part mockumentary about furries. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

Katherine sat down with Tal from the Tally Mark System to discuss the much-misunderstood Dissociative Identity Disorder and its complementary TikTok community. You can find Tal here . "Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system," Turkle writes. "The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times....

In our first episode of 2024 (naturally recorded in September), we interview pretty intense early Japanese language YouTuber applemilk1988 about Stickam, Encyclopedia Dramatica, proto-e-girls, and living in Japan. * That McDonald’s ad from forever ago * applemilk1988's YouTube channel * applemilk1988's Twitch This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acc...

Gio and Kat discuss Agamben's book The Open: Man and Animal and what it has to do with otherkins. They read some of it out loud and may or may have not butchered some of the pronunciations. If you need to fast-forward through those parts, peep the PDF of the book here . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blo...

Fictophilia. Today, I spoke to fictophile/fictosexual Cait Calder about what it’s like to have a fictional crush. When I first talked about fictosexuality over at UnHerd , I got a lot of pushback: Why does this need to be labeled? Don’t all women do this? To some extent, sure. The success of Twilight and Fifty Shades is illustrative. Before that, Stephen King wrote an entire book about women's ten...

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed nabby ( @inviteonlycomic on Instagram), a former fiction-kin. You can listen to it here or on The Computer Room main feed . Before I explain what a fictionkin is, we first need to understand what an otherkin is. Otherkin refers to an identity category where one’s soul does not match one’s body. There are human otherkin, like is often the case with fictionkin, m...