Digital Physiognomy

Can you feel the sunshine?

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Genesis 1:2

There hasn’t yet been any serious articulation of the true conceptual character of a “digital tradition,” or “virtual DNA,” despite the fact that nearly all of online activity currently derives from it. In fact, the most fundamental way one relates to the Internet is directly downstream of the succession of websites they emerged from - and the lineage and modes of understanding that informed those websites in turn. One does not simply use the Internet neutrally but is instead to a large extent constrained by the websites they were “brought up in-” for Zoomers this is literally true. Generation Z grew with the Internet, forming a relationship whereby the Internet, and the culture consumed on it at young ages, becomes a fundamental part of identity, beyond merely cultural association - but in fact a crafting of a subjecthood. The difference between Zoomers who primarily used 4chan, who primarily used Tumblr, who primarily used Vine, etc. could not be greater. Generation Z’s psychology is rooted in the Internet - not merely influenced by it - but fundamentally inseparable from it. Unlike Millennials - who grew up in a time distinct from the Internet - Generation Z’s most essential relation to mass culture, media, politics, mannerism - all of it - is directly a product of their digital environment. The neural networks in Generation Z were constructed by and for a specific Internet haplogroup. This creates a unique condition whereby Zoomers take on a “cyborg'“ like quality, the world of flesh entirely and forever linked with the world of the virtual. Zoomers are in this sense dynamic, able to - and indeed, forced to - exist in a sort of limbic state between worlds, their self-realization permanently anchored not just to their physical place of birth, but their digital place of birth.

Every action online is the reflection of another. Linguistics online are fundamentally not exercises in speech but in images (or imaging (or imagination)). To speak online is to imagine, to consciously produce a certain quality of image, to call forth a particular notion in the mind of the audience. A cyber-tradition, then, can be defined as the ongoing expression of a particular understanding and orientation towards the usage of the Internet and its expression of imaging. A cyber-tradition is why one says “based,” or instead opts to use a sassy reaction GIF. All acts on the Internet form a great chain down from their origin, and exist in constant relation to one another, always reinventing and moving forward towards an unclear horizon. This then extends outside the Internet, shaping social dynamics offline, before returning to the sphere of the digital- as such, understanding the digital lineage from which you arose is of extreme importance, as this shapes on the most essential level your relation to not just the digital but the physical as well. Zoomers are dynamic cyborgs beyond the veil of material/digital duality, with offline interactions directly being informed - and in many cases, even firstly understood by - the relation to the Internet and the image(s) such associations conjure.

The sum total of every lineage’s adherents form a composite image of their unique tradition and culture, and act not as individual units but as component parts of a whole, a truly and really living sub-culture that expresses itself through the actions of its participants. Subculture didn’t die, it metastasized - an outgrowth of mere cultural signification towards a more essential ontological reconstitution. The Internet turned the subculture to the lifestyle, in a real sense. Your vibe attracts your tribe, and the subculture you grew from denotes a fundamental way of relating to technology. Beyond merely an interplay of signs and signifiers, subculture in the age of the Internet becomes an autonomous artwork in itself, an ever-expanding arrangement and ornamentation of an ever-more elaborate theater stage. The stage is the most essential way that the composite whole of an Internet lineage’s “image” relates to the non-virtual world - the image of the whole is taken before the individual components- internet subcultures are aesthetic manifestations of egregores, the ongoing imagining and imaging of a particular collective consciousness. Individual Internet users, knowingly or not, are placed as “actors” within the stage of their lineage. #STANTWITTER singularity bro.

The Internet is, simply put, the stage in which information acts. Information acts in groups and networks, not atomized units. The action information takes forms a whole which is then understood by the viewer. Because of this individual action online is largely constrained by the collective “image” it projects - an individual’s output is understood most often by what it communicates symbolically, e.g., what collective signifier the content represents - rather than as a localized and contained unit of data.

The Internet’s nature is such that calcification is almost impossible, leading to a relationship with its users wherein output acts upon the “stage” of the entire Internet. This action is then sorted, both via the algorithmic machinations of the Internet itself as well as the international audience of the digital, into a grouping, a network, a clade. This clade overtime creates a character, one that eventually replicates a system of in-group significations - before long, a dialect has emerged- and after that, a literal physiognomic (read: profile pictures, emojis, etc.) quality. This physiognomy is the invisible made visible, a making-real of the imaginary. There isn’t a distinction between the intangible and the tangible. The world of the virtual is a portal- a portal directly accessing the world’s thoughts and visions. The Internet’s information, and its categorization through its various tribes, traditions, and clades, is comprised of a enormous sum of “command signals” which when received order the formation of a projection of an image within the mind of the viewer - the immediate sensation of viewership online is that of structuring a mental image - it is only after that a fuller and more meaningful reading of the content occurs.

Production online is the working of the subconscious in preparation for its manifestation as consciousness offline. Being online is to be within the collective dreaming of a million souls constrained by the limitations of the machine from which they emerge - thoughts online are just that - thoughts - ideas - images. The sum total of anyone’s experience online is a hypnagogic state between the world of waking and the world of the imaginary, an infinitely expanding cinematic production, containing the images of the world’s brain. The information age has evaporated into the imagination age, one constructed via an endless surreality from which there is no exterior. The role individual cyber-traditions, and the digital physiognomy they establish play is the construction of varying pathways within a sum total of the global collective consciousness existing online. With the ubiquity of iPhones this becomes even more so true, as the need to “log on” evaporates, leaving no distinction between the real (conscious/waking) and the digital (unconscious/dreaming). Telepathy is born anew as thoughts are communicated via images, speech becoming secondary to symbolizing, being born with an understanding of oneself as working within a lineage stretching backwards into the past rather than a merely momentary existence. The Internet’s archival nature (currently being deconstructed by the Powers That Be) is also of note here - it wouldn’t be possible to situate the space from which you emerged without the omnipresent web-crawl of documentation. And it is this documentation that also serves to reproduce a certain set of relations - Internet users are always aware of the past, and, by virtue of the linearity of (most) websites, working from it. This means the clade you were born into is known intuitively via repeated tribal inscriptions of it on the space of the Internet - action online is a repeated shaping of consciousness towards a certain direction - not just of the world, but of the user via the interfacing of offline and online. This is why band kids would reference memes IRL btw. That’s a dialect shaped by a fundamental way of relating to the whole of the Internet, a organization of the subconscious (online) in such a way that conscious manifestations arrive in the shape of quoting Reddit memes to your classmates. The band kid quoting memes in real life understands themselves, without consciously knowing it, as living out the norms of their “clade,” marking territory offline with the scent gathered from online. To act in such a way is to signal your belonging to a subconscious, invisible world within the realm of the physical. A bit like some form of esoteric hermeticism, but for the less adapt. You’re pointing at ghosts, acting in a state of waking dreaming, dancing behind the sun- the role you play online directly informs the role you play offline, creating a circular relationship whereby behavior and belonging can be established.

Relation to the digital in the age of the cellular phone becomes behavior shaped by and serving a symbolic function - “how will the Internet see this?” Identity, and the actions brought forth by it take on the weight of belonging to an image - one that continuously evolves with each passing moment, that dissolves the unit into the regiment, the part into the whole, and brings the participant in between states in a contemporary form of something resembling guild initiation. Collective intelligence, collective belonging, collective imaging. Each digital clade is a headless body, the Acéphale made real, a psychic imagining made flesh. Images - the projection of the individual actions of cyber-lineage adherents - are stored psychically within the overarching intelligence of the lineage itself (e.g., the handing down of rhetorical style) as well as omnipresent surveillance of the world’s eye. What strategies could be devised here so that a lineage could become so self-referential as to escape containment altogether? How could one bootstrap a relation to the Internet as such that nullifies the ability for gathering into Five Eyes and DARPA?

There’s some sort of potential for a truly peer-to-peer network that exists in some sense “over” the existing Internet. A “meta-deep-web,” hyperspeed ultra-networked password-protected research forums, run off backyard orgone generation and 3D-printed solar panels. Can you see the future? Deeply wooded coves of knowledge, distribution laundered through word of mouth, a vernacular so indecipherable to the outside it could never be grasped by anyone exterior to the lineage- the future will be shaped by anonymous think tanks comprised of less than 200 users, hyper-filtered and extremely selective. The Internet to come will resemble a polluted sea interfaced through e-dharma, and marked by various digital tribes - but the understanding of one’s virtual heritage and “belonging” could come to resemble a different role, one divorced from the passivity and “sorting” assigned to it via consumption and technocratic planning patterns.

A digital community, aware of itself as a true and real network working in active opposition to the existing net, could, with a little bit of vigor, overturn the whole of the system at large - picture strategic raids on websites, drip-fed dissemination of selected memetic viruses, disguised as typical brainrot- hackers on steroids, closing down pools, and using your neighbor’s Wi-Fi password to swap warez with other Illuminated Masters. We know in our age the task of enlightenment and initiation will necessarily exist underground, hidden from the view of the overnet, and conducting endless strategic assault against it.

Hidden from the world, digital brahmin männerbunds will bombard the world’s subconscious with memetic imagery of the return of God, polar reversal, the shattering of the skies….

“‘He who makes the wheel turn,’ which is to say he who, placed at the center of all things, directs their movement without himself participating therein, or, according to Aristotle’s expression, he who is the ‘unmoved mover…’”¹

1. The King of the World, Rene Guenon