An Introduction

I hate the internet. Well, I think what I really hate is this controlled by weird techno-fascist tiny man under religious psychosis narcissist playing a tyrannical god in some dystopian sci-fi novel wet dream with an (always Asian or ethnically ambiguous) massive anime titty AI servant/girlfriend (and/or catboy) on a quest to save the world from some abstract all consuming evil force where they are the misunderstood but "chosen" by divine ordinance hero that must save all of humanity kind of internet. :')

I recently started making content, which has been a very disorienting process but I suppose that is one of the conditions of our current moment. I feel like the state of the world is really psychosis inducing (or maybe it's just me =͟͟͞͞(꒪ᗜ꒪‧̣̥̇) ). Not that life has made sense at any point in time; I feel like every philosopher that has ever existed is always talking about how fucked society is. I think the only difference is that our current moment is really reaching a pinnacle of insanity (just go look at the OFFFICAL white house Instagram - THE LITERAL OFFICIAL PAGE AGHEEHFHEJISKEIJ - it's actually so fucking embarrassing to be an American like 99% of the time). At the very least, in the past, our systems and infrastructures have been able to maintain pretty illusions and images strong enough to sustain some kind of stable orientation. I think technology has progressed so much so rapidly that our images have begun to eat themselves - there is nothing left to consume outside so we have begun to gorge on our own souls.

I am getting lost in a tangent here, but I think that it is important context because I only started to make things because I really am at a breaking point. Most of my life, I have been a very private person. I prefer to keep to myself because I have learned all too well how horrifying people can be - I am sure like many people in my generation (I'm 27 for context) I have felt the terrifying effects of social media infiltrating all of social life at a totalizing scale. Trends like being "afraid of being seen" emerge precisely because all of our technological and social systems are engineered for outrage. CLICK. RAGE. ENGAGE. FEAR. SHAME. YOU ONLY EXIST SO LONG AS YOU BUY THIS NEW ITEM. MORE IDENTITY. MORE BELONGING. MORE MONEY. MORE SEX. MORE POWER. DOMINATE OR DIE. EAT OR BE EATEN. ALL HAIL OUR BILLIONARE OVERLORDS. FASHION YOUR SOUL TO THE DOMINANT ORDER AND YOU WILL FINALLY LOVE AND BE LOVED.

I think a lot of people are a breaking point and my sincere hope is that in the depth of this insanity, you come in contact with what is indomitable within your spirit. I personally refuse to let my life be controlled by some bitch ass limp dick cowards who hide behind capital and illusions. I am fully done with whatever this donkey show is.

I promise I only rage like this sometimes and while my tone is a bit casual and crass, I am deeply serious about my claim. I want to build and live in a better world and I refuse to believe that the world we have inherited is the one we must accept. I will have better - even if I have to carve it out of the fucking earth with my own hands.

Maybe now is a good time to actually introduce myself :)

I go by Eterna, which comes from The Museum of Eterna's Novel: The First Good Novel written by Macedonio Fernandez. The novel itself is experimental and incredibly disorienting. I discovered it randomly in a bookstore while in college after a childhood friend of mine had passed and I felt that it was one of the most beautiful and accurate depictions of life. Not the stories we cling onto to give us a stable narrative, but what life is when it is stripped of all the comfortable illusions we feed ourselves. Time flows in strange ways. There are moments of profound boredom and existential terror in the madness of being, but at the center there is always an eternal and infinite love (which is Eterna!).

I grew up in Atlanta but spent a considerable amount of time in a rural area in the south of Taiwan where my mother grew up. I played ice hockey (my dad is from Minnesota) which was pretty much my entire personality up until high school. There was no girls league so I played with boys which I imagine is where my propensity towards crude language comes from. I went to boarding school for high school in New England (which really set the tone for how deeply fucked our systems of power are) where I switched to women's hockey (was getting bodied by too many massive boys by the time I hit eight grade) and picked up rowing. I was really a bit of a jock at that time and went on to win a national championship in hockey and a gold medal with the junior national rowing team (I promise there is a purpose and context to this flex). I went to Yale for college where I studied art history and also was heavily involved in the entrepreneurial/tech ecosystem. When I graduated, I worked as a software tech investor briefly before doing a 180 and full sended on trying to be an art dealer (kind of failed miserably at this) and have since been working sporadically across creative industries (it's getting really scrappy these days HAHA).

I say all of this not to boast about my image, but to provide context on something far more truthful. The things I have accomplished have come at a tremendous price and my lived reality has been, in many ways, defined by swallowing the violence of systems of power that are built to consume your soul. Most of my life has been lived on the edge of a psychosis inducing pressure. I have felt what is eating the world because it was buried in me when I was young; this terrifying feeling of excel or die. I have lived much of my life with terror in my bones and, at times, excruciatingly isolated and alone. If I wasn't so stubborn, I probably would have off-ed myself on at least several occasions, but I imagine this is far more common of people than we would like to collectively admit (jokes on all my haters, trauma can't get me, my mom didn't raise no QUITTER ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ ) (not to minimize the severity and seriousness of this - I use this kind of language because I believe that humor is a powerful mechanism to combat things that are very dark so my humor is often times DARK DARK and if you don't like it idgaf).

I operate at a very strange intersection of having lived in environments where power and capital are concentrated in perverse ways. I don't think power or "excellence" is intrinsically a bad thing, though it is highly over glorified in our culture, but I absolutely believe that every system of power we are operating under holds an architecture that makes it almost impossible to not feed larger incentive structures that are optimized for domination and control. If we want to build a new world, we need new infrastructures of capital in all forms (attention, economic, social, etc.).

Here is where much of the work I have been putting out online comes in. I don't want to paint some kind of utopian aim, because that is exactly the logic that fuels fascism (fascism is always emergent from extreme black and white thinking and the aim for utopia is actually an aim towards certainty and death in a strange way). My aim is to be able to reclaim a sense of agency and power for myself in the world. So many of our systems are totalizing, not because they are all powerful, but because they make us believe they are so. Belief is an incredibly powerful thing. If someone can convince you that they have control over the future, that there is no use in imagining something different, then it becomes real. It is very easy to control someone who cannot see another path forward.

I go back and forth on what I want to put out into the world because I reallllllly don't want to come off as a pretentious asshole. I think intellect has become so deeply embedded with our systems of power that make it almost impossible for any form of social mobility and also enforcement of dominant logics of oppression, that many people have this knee jerk reaction to anything that comes out of intellectual spaces. That reaction is incredibly valid and I have certainly felt it myself, there is nothing worse that some fucker who loves to hide behind his encyclopedic knowledge of Kant or, even worse, finance, politics, religious, and economics jargon (economics feels like a fake discipline to me - someone plz fight me on this). Or people who like to lord education over people as a status symbol. That being said, the reason why our political systems are attacking education is because it is VERY hard to control someone who can see what is actually happening and make a clear narrative/perspective on it. Clarity is, in some ways, akin to absolute freedom.

I actually don't even know if I can claim to put out work for the sole purpose of helping people engage with ideas, though it is a substantial part of it. I am sure there is a part of me that feels the pressure of our contemporary social world that is defined by image. I saw this tiktok that was talking about how it is hard to feel like you exist at all if you're not online. As much as I hate it, to me it feels incredibly truthful in some capacity. The internet is simultaneously this ephemeral space of possibility and also alienation. I think I get on the internet because there is a part of me that is deeply lonely, even despite the incredible friendships and relationships I have in my life. "Community" has become a buzzword and also a selling point in many silicon valley tech infrastructures precisely because we keep reducing it to its capacity to organize and extract capital. Selling people identity and belonging is a tremendously profitable endeavor. I AM SO SICK OF IT. I JUST WANT AN ACTUAL COMMUNITY WITHOUT NEEDING TO SOMEHOW TURN IT INTO A BRAND OR A PROFIT INCENTIVE OR SOME STUPID FUCKING COMPETITION OR BADGE OF STATUS IN AN ABIRTRARY AND ENDLESS GAME OF SOCIAL HEIRARCHY AND DOMINATION.

I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely mind numbingly dumb it is that we keep playing these silly little ego games in order to avoid facing the existential reality that we are all going to die and life will be full of suffering. For sure one of the worst parts of the way software has come to eat the world is the way that it has made everything "frictionless". We live in a space where our dopamine circuits are wired for ease and comfort rather than meaning and purpose. So many people would rather live a "comfortable" and easy life that never has to face conflict or hard truths than living a life that is meaningful. MY GOD! SUFFERING IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL! So long as you do not remain in a state of despair (which I understand is increasingly difficult in the world we exist in) suffering can carve the soul like nothing else can. I am a firm believer that all of our worst pains are our greatest blessings and can be turned into our most profound strengths. What you fear is often the very thing has the capacity to set you free.

I have gone on another rant, but I feel it is authentic to an introduction of who I am (I know "authenticity" is another buzzword and I am sorry for being basic in this capacity :') I do think, fortunately or unfortunately, authenticity is also an admirable aim despite its buzzword-y nature). I am deeply unclear of what I am doing and where I am headed and even what is going on in the world, but one thing I am certain of is that I will find a way. Hopefully my writing will become more clear in the future as I continue to carve my own path, my theory work that I'll be putting on my substack will 100% be much more structured and clear, but for now I think the haphazard nature of this kind of writing feels very deeply truthful. I think this blog is going to just be a space for me to really pour who I am and what I am feeling in an unfiltered way. I am tired of performing. I am tired of editing and cleaning. I want to be a little bit of a fucking mess.

Anyways, if you have any feedback on my work (actual feedback rather than some ragebait comment saying it is "academicslop") I would really love to hear it. Or if you have suggestions of things you think I should read or check out or generally have things I should engage with please send it my way. The internet is kind of scary and also sucks, but I think it can also be kind of beautiful (plz don't be a crazy weird stalker or incel because I will be UPSET). I really love people and I think the internet and the world has made it really easy to fold into fear or shame or hate so if you made it this far into my post, I would love to hear who you are. What drives you? What are your dreams and the things that you love? If you have a blog or a personal website or passion project, I would love to see it ˚˖𓍢ִ໋❀

Love,

Eterna ✗ㄨ﹒

Please also enjoy these photos of me back in my baller days.

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