Friday 29 August 2008

TAZ - The runway?

I note the following:
Noting the squalor which has overtaken blogging the Mystery Dyke Squadron has come to the decision that an enclave from the filth, an outpost of good honest depravity, must be formed.
Excellent; for this suits my purpose so far as I have one. (So far as any of us have them? That this takes place on the internet at all would suggest otherwise, given the medium's utter proclivity towards complete banality at times. Ah, but such potential...)




And that's rather the (point.) The internet has such potential; and yet it's wasted. We have, in effect, the potential for total freedom, a new society in which tired old barriers of gender, race, age, class, religion, nationality, physicality and conventional morality could be abandoned. We have anonymity, and we have space limited only by whichever tricks of technology preserve us in our incorpereal congress.

You know the shiz.

But, yeah, that went wrong somewhere, didn't it? Everywhere we turn on the internet, we find the same hives of mental filth. We had the tools to create an anarchich utopia devoid of the tiresome trappings of physical reality. And yet; websites for old and meaningless imagined communities, dead gender paradigms (I mean boths sides, thankyouverymuch), etc, etc. The conflicts of the meatworld find their way here and ruin our space.

But that was inevitable. People are rooted in their physicality; the transcendence of that reality usually requires some extramental aid. (Perhaps, though, that can be avoided. More later.) Their minds find a home in their bodies, so the problems of those bodies are transferred into a space reserved for those minds. Fine. Whatever. Etc, etc.

We need an escape, though. I want to escape the fleshworld; the fascists, the fuckwits, the Liberal Democrats. And so we need this.

Hakim Bey suggested the best escape from a world of overwhelming control was to be elusive. Create temporary, mutable structures which evade all forms of social control; temporary autnomous zones. (For those with the patience and good taste, the actual essay is here.)

The internet is perfect for such zones. It could even be considered the largest one in existence. We may not be able to escape the fleshworld in its entirety; but we have anonymity, and we have an ever changing space. We can occupy a space, say there are no rules, and there will be none. Our only vulnerability is to the host, and the ISP - but to thus, they become immovable objects, like the seas and winds were for Pirate Utopia's. We live with them as best we can, and if they get too much, we fly elsewhere. Simple.

So, this is our (my, at least; I can't speak for the Squadron Leader or whichever other batshitters its found for us) TAZ. Here, there are no rules. Any attempt to impose them will be met with ridicule.

Happy?

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