From 804d1465c6d97d579368d9e73e7714f52c79ab0a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: aglaia <aglaiapetta@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2024 18:12:29 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] thesis

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@@ -298,3 +298,796 @@ body died. By doing so, he was starting to blend the
 boundaries of intimacy through computers and bodies,
 driven by his love and grief. (4)
 
+When he talked about the bot in previous messages, it
+sounded almost like a joke. A caring haunting of the
+platform, to keep his persona alive for the community
+in a way that could be quite horrific for those grieving.
+In his admission though it becomes clear that this was
+closer to an attempt to deal with his grief around losing
+the community, his unreadiness to let go of a place he
+loved so dearly. A place just as real in emotion, that
+was built in part by Mandel’s digital body and its
+persona.
+
+In a tribute posted after his death, fellow Well member
+and journalist Andrew Leonard tried to convey his own
+sense of blended physicality and emotion.
+
+Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online
+community, but on this night, as tears stream down my
+face for the third straight evening, it feels all too real.
+(Andrew Leonard, 1995)
+
+### c. bot-feelings
+
+An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me 
+explain.
+
+A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it
+does not attempt to emulate a human body but rather
+human action and readiness. Its role is to mirror
+human behavior online, simulating how a physical body
+might act, what it would click on, and what would it
+say. On social media, bots engage in a kind of
+interpretative dance of human interaction, performing
+based on instructions provided by humans. (5)
+
+Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual
+embodiment of a person, a bot doesn’t seek to be a
+person. It comments under posts alongside many other
+bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing else
+to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body
+has bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They
+are feelings that do not attempt to be human body
+feelings, they exist as their own genuine virtual
+expression.
+
+In “Virtual Intimacies”, McGlotten also incidentally
+argued that a virtual body has bot-feelings (2013). He
+described the virtual as potential, as a transcendent
+process of actualization, making it into, generally, a
+description of bots. Internet bodies, as virtual, would
+be by this understanding also charged with the
+constant immanent power to act and to feel like a
+human body. It is a constant state of becoming, of not-
+quite-pretending but never fully being anything either.
+
+Most of the time we can tell disembodied bots online
+from tangible people and as such they have the
+potential to be bodies, without ever trying to be.
+
+Of course, when McGlotten described the virtual as
+such he placed it in a dichotomy, once again, against
+the “Intimacies” which are the other side of his book.
+The emphasis here lies in intimacy being an embodied
+feeling and sense and a carnal one at that. Virtual
+intimacies are, by this definition, an inherent failed
+contradiction. However, McGlotten plays with the real
+and non-real in new ways, using the text to highlight
+how virtual intimacy is similar to physical intimacy and
+then, even more, blurring as he shows the already
+virtual in physical intimacies. Applying this to a body,
+rather than an affective experience, works just the
+same.
+
+McGlotten uses a conceptualization of the virtual
+based on the philosopher Deleuze’s, (6) which can be
+used to refer to a virtual body as well.
+The virtual is in this case a cluster of waiting,
+dreaming, and remembering, embodying potential.
+Something that is constantly becoming, an object and
+also the subject attributed to it (2001). An internet
+body with its bot-feelings is a body in the process of
+being one, acting as one, an ideal of one beyond what
+is physical but including its possibility.
+
+Going a step further in McGlotten’s interpretation of
+Deleuze, this also plays into how virtual intimacies
+mirror queer intimacies as they approach normative
+ideals but “can never arrive at them”. Both queer and
+virtual relations are imagined by a greater narrative as
+fantastical, simulated, immaterial, and artificial—poor 
+imitations and perversions of a heterosexual,
+monogamous, and procreative marital partnership
+(2013). A virtual body is similarly immanent, with both
+potential and corruption at the same time. It carries all
+the neoliberal normative power of freedom that a
+queer body can carry today but also reflects the
+unseemly fleshly reality of having one.
+
+This is where the story continues. The body from the
+dream ocean leaves the primordial soup of the internet
+to stage a disruptive performance.
+It moves from potential creation to a wild spring river.
+A fluid being, that exists simultaneously inside and
+outside normative constructions. It channels deviant
+feelings and transcendental opinions about the
+collective’s physical form genuinely as people use it to
+navigate their physicality.
+Both virtual and queer intimacies highlight the
+constructed nature of identity and desire. They disrupt
+the notion of a fixed, essential self, instead embracing
+the multiplicity and complexity inherent in human
+experience. This destabilization of identity opens up
+possibilities for self-expression and connection,
+creating spaces where individuals can redefine
+themselves beyond the constraints of societal
+expectations while still technically under its watchful
+eye.
+In essence, the parallels between virtual and queer
+intimacies underscore the radical potential of both to
+disrupt and reimagine the norms that govern our
+understanding of relationships, bodies, and identity.
+They invite us to question the rigid binaries and
+hierarchies that structure our society and to embrace
+the fluidity and possibility inherent in the human
+experience.
+
+## 1.DIGITAL COMFORT
+
+The only laws:
+Be radiant.
+Be heavy.
+Be green.
+
+Tonight, the dead light up your mind
+like an image of your mind on a scientist’s screen.
+‘The scientists don’t know – and too much.’
+
+In the town square, in the heart of night (a delicacy
+like the heart of an artichoke), a man dances
+cheek-to-cheek with the infinite blue.
+(Schwartz, 2022)
+
+### a. comfort care
+
+Let’s care for this digital body.
+I’ll feed it virtual vegetables while you wipe away the
+wear of battery fatigue.
+And why not encourage it to take strolls through the
+network, it might be good for it.
+
+But what if it falls ill?
+What if its sickness is inherent, designed to echo like
+the distorted reflection of rippling water a corrupted,
+isolated, and repulsive physical form?
+Then we must comfort care for it.
+
+Comfort care is a key concept in healthcare, described
+as an art. It is the simple but not easy art of
+performing comforting actions by a nurse for a patient
+(Kolcaba, 1995). The nurse is in this story an artist full
+of intention, using the medium of comforting actions to
+produce the artwork of comfort for the uncomfortable.
+Subtle, subjective, and thorough. However, achieving
+comfort for another is far from straightforward. It
+demands addressing not only the physical but also the
+psychospiritual, environmental, and socio-cultural
+dimensions of distress, each requiring its blend of
+relief, ease, and transcendence (Kolcaba, 1995).
+
+In moments of need, digital comfort may become the
+only care certain digressive bodies receive. When the
+distress a body is in becomes too culturally
+uncomfortable, no nurse will come to check on it.
+
+If care is offered, it's often only with a desire to
+assimilate the divergent body back into expected
+standards of normalcy and ability. This leaves those
+with non-conforming bodies isolated, ashamed, and
+yearning for connection and acceptance (7)
+
+In the depths of isolation and confusion, marginalized
+bodies often look for belonging and understanding
+online. Gravitating towards one another with a hunger
+born of desperation, forming intimate bonds through
+shared pain. Through a shared sense of unwillingness,
+a lack of desire, and a desperate need for physical
+assimilation with the norm.
+
+The healthy body, the normal body, the loved body.
+
+On the internet, these digital bodies claw onto each
+other, holding each other close and comfort-caring for
+one another. The spaces where this happens are
+rooms, or corners of the internet that I’ll call back
+places. Back places were initially defined by the
+sociologist Goffman as symbolic spaces where
+stigmatized people did not need to hide their
+stigma(1963). In our story, backplaces are small rooms
+online, tender soft spaces reserved by those in terrible
+psychological pain themselves, where they can find
+relief, ease, and transcendence.
+
+Of course, when we speak of digital bodies, their
+physicality is not relevant. To comfort care for a digital
+body one would thus need to provide relief, ease, and
+transcendence for the mental, emotional, and spiritual;
+through the digital environment of the body and the
+interpersonal cultural relations of the individual.
+As with any place of healing, however, it is a transient
+place. It is an achy place, for the last step of the
+journey will see them leave the community and
+compassion that saw and sustained them.
+
+There is no other way for divergent people.
+
+### b. uncomfortable comfort
+
+In the past and the present, social scientists have
+studied the people in the corners of the internet,
+characterizing these spaces between people as
+deviant. Like children lifting stones to look at the bugs
+underneath— simultaneously repulsed and fascinated
+by the coherence discovered where once was
+separation. A partition that was then reinforced by the
+scientists themselves as they began documenting the
+bugs’ behavior. They eavesdropped on conversations,
+captured intimate moments, and asked again and again
+what made them so different. The more they probed,
+the more they made sure to separate their behavior
+from the norm to place the deviants against (Adler and
+Adler, 2005, 2008; Smith, Wickes & Underwood,
+2013).
+
+The concept of deviance, particularly concerning what
+people do with their bodies and how their bodies
+behave, I find inherently flawed. Observing from an
+artificial external standpoint only serves to further
+alienate those already marginalized. I like to approach
+my research into the intimacy and comfort care
+expressed in marginalized digital communities without
+the alienation of social science. There are many
+approaches one can take if one wishes to avoid this,
+and the one I am choosing to borrow is a mathematical
+approach to anthropology.
+I would like to borrow from mathematician Jörn
+Dunkel’s work in pattern formation. It’s a conscious
+choice to approach divergences in bodily behavior
+through their similarities, not differences. This includes
+specificities in atypicality, of course, but also the
+distinctions between me as the writer and them as the
+writer. You as the reader and you as the community.
+Me and you, as a whole. Both exist, both separate but
+in what is not of such importance.
+
+Though many of these systems are different,
+fundamentally, we can see similarities in the structure
+of their data. It’s very easy to find differences. What’s
+more interesting is to find out what’s similar.
+(Chu & Dunkel , 2021)
+
+Individuals who forge and inhabit these communities,
+fostering tender, intimate connections amongst
+themselves, are not deviant but rather divergent.
+Deviance involves bifurcation, a split estuary from the
+river of appropriate cultural behavior. (8)
+
+Divergence can be so much more than that.
+In mathematics, a divergent series extends infinitely
+without converging to a finite limit. A repetition of
+partial sums with no clear ending, never reaching zero.
+Mathematician Niels Abel once said that "divergent
+series are in general something fatal and it is a shame
+to base any proof on them. [..] The most essential part
+of mathematics has no foundation”(1826). Drawing a
+parallel to social relations would then imply that there
+is no end to divergence, too many paradoxes in the
+foundation of normativeness to base anything on it.
+
+Harmonic series are, on the other hand, also divergent
+series. They are infinite series formed by the
+summation of all positive unit fractions, named after
+music harmonics. The wavelengths of a vibrating string
+are a harmonic series. These series also find
+application in architecture, establishing harmonious
+relationships. Despite their integral role in human
+aesthetics, all harmonic series diverge, perpetually
+expanding without ever concluding. They embody a
+richness that transcends conventional boundaries,
+blending into one another infinitely.
+
+[Figure 1 - Harmonic Series to 32 (Hyacint,2017).]
+
+By likening digital bodies to divergent series, we
+embrace the complexity and infinite possibilities
+arising from their interconnectedness and deviation
+from the norm. However, it's crucial to note that the
+divergence I'm discussing here carries a halo of pain,
+accompanied by the requirement of bodily discomfort.
+There are other forms of divergence, ways to have
+different bodies that necessitate creating spaciousness
+around normativity to allow them grace to grow.
+
+The divergent digital bodies we are dancing with and
+caring for, however, are of a particular type. If we were
+to go back to our water stories, we’d see that the
+digital bodies we are following are painful ones. Cold,
+deep streams, hard to follow, hard to swim in. Their
+divergence from the norm makes them so.
+
+They have intricate relationships with themselves,
+existing in unstainable forms devoid of comfort,
+nourishment, or thriving. What does comfort mean for
+a body whose whole existence is uncomfortable?
+Moreover, what if the comfort care performed for
+these divergent bodies makes them too comfortable
+being in their pained state of self? Could they be? (9)
+
+Caring for a digital body involves providing it with
+space to live, giving its experimental bot-feelings
+tender attention, and revealing your own vulnerable
+digital body in response. It’s about giving it an
+audience, hands to hold, eyes that meet theirs in
+understanding. A rehearsal room, a pillow, a mirror.
+These rooms, backplaces scattered across the internet,
+are hidden enough to allow the divergent to comfort-
+care for one another, sometimes to the point where it is
+only the same type of divergent digital bodies reflecting
+back at each other.
+
+So far I have talked fondly of divergence and the
+harmony of divergent series, and the need to have no
+finite ending. I’d like to tell you a different story now.
+Divergent digital bodies are, by this point in our text,
+built and alive as they can be. They are many, they are
+together and seeing each other, producing harmonic
+waves. They are in backplaces on the internet, but they
+are less safe than they seem. They are themselves
+resonant echo chambers, with an ongoing risk of
+catastrophic acoustic resonance.
+
+Acoustic resonance is what happens when an acoustic
+system amplifies sound waves whose frequency
+matches one of its natural frequencies of vibration.
+The instrument of amplification is important for the
+harmonic series, for the music must not match exactly.
+An exact match will break it for the object seeks out its
+resonance. Resonating at the precise resonant
+frequency of a glass will shatter it. Digital bodies meet
+in these rooms, amplifying their own waves seeking
+resonance but the risk of an exact match is that it may
+shatter them. These spaces full of divergent digital
+bodies quickly grow unstable, tethering echo
+chambers. Rooms full of reflections, transforming what
+was once individual pain into a mirrored loop of
+anguish. Caring for your own and others’ bodies
+becomes increasingly difficult, making permanent
+residence in the mirror room unbearable. You all know
+you must leave before you meet your exact resonance.
+
+### c. unbearable intimacy
+
+This is the end of the story.
+Our digital bodies have a shape, a sense of life and
+death, and someone to care for us and to care for. We
+are alive and have found intimacy with each other.
+
+We live in the backplaces, hiding and being hidden
+online as we have been for years. We used to be on
+invitation-only forums, password-protected bulletin
+boards, or encrypted hashtags. Now we are alive in the
+glitches between pixels, in a shared language of
+numbers and acronyms and misdirection. Avoiding a
+content moderation algorithm, always hunting the
+dashboards of social media websites for visible pain it
+can cure by erasure. We cannot tell you where to find
+you or it might too. We try to stay alive, to hold each
+other, hiding behind code words, fake names, and
+photos. We care for each other as best we can, the
+blind leading the blind, the sick caring for the sick. We
+have brought our unseemliness, our gory gross bodies
+to each other and found tender intimacy and
+understanding.
+
+On good days, dashboards are full of goodbyes and my
+heart swells with hope, for those of us who make it and
+for the small bright light telling us that we may be one
+of them. At the same time, some of us leave only to
+come back ghosts of ourselves, hunting threads with
+the empty hope of missionaries.
+
+Don’t give up, it’s worth it!
+
+Most of us scoff at this. The idea of leaving only to
+come back and tell people you left is uncomfortable,
+the failed progress that washes away hope. A healed
+patient who regularly comes back to the hospital to
+encourage the sick, who wish to be anywhere but
+there. The genuine love and care within these
+communities transpire better under goodbye posts.
+When people do heal and shed their accounts’ skin,
+they often leave it surrounded by all those who once
+cared for the digital body within it.
+
+I’m so proud of you! Never come back,
+we love you so much.
+
+Recover, don’t come back.
+Recover, don’t come back.
+Recover, never come back.
+
+I had a conversation with a friend who once lived in
+these spaces between letters but has since moved
+outside them. When asked, he mentioned he could
+only find recovery by leaving that community. His body
+has changed since now it is the spitting image of a
+standard, healthy body. I didn’t ask, but he knew I’d
+wonder. He told me he didn’t like his new body and
+preferred the divergent one he once built himself.
+Why leave then? Why did you stop?
+
+Because that was no life.
+
+Now life sparkles, everything feels brighter
+and more exciting. I got my will to live
+back. Before, there was nothing but my
+body. I was willing to die for it.
+
+He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me his
+shoulder, where he has tattooed a symbol for a
+community friend who died.
+
+I hope I never go back.
+I miss them every day.
+
+This is the last dichotomy. For the divergent digital
+body can’t stay in a Backplace for very long, the
+intimacy of it is unbearable. It is an intimacy that
+floods, and overruns.
+In their definition of intimacy in the context of a public
+surrounding a cultural phenomenon, the author Lauren
+Berlant denotes that intimacy itself always requires
+hopeful imagination. It requires belief in the existence
+of an ideal other who is emotionally attuned to one's
+own experiences and fantasies, conditioned by the
+same longings and with willing reciprocity (2008). (10)
+
+In the context of the intimacy of a Backplace, where
+divergent digital bodies have formed a community
+around existing outside the healthy and standard,
+longing and hopeful intimacy becomes a heavy-
+hearted and cardinal concept.
+Being in these rooms and finding care and love for
+others like you can be so uncomfortable when the
+longings, experiences, and fantasies you are sharing
+are centered around pain. The shared cultural
+experience of existing as a collective divergent digital
+body promises a fantasy of belonging, a collective
+hope, and commitment that is extremely fragile.
+
+There is a duality then, if not a dichotomy. As a
+divergent body, there is nothing you crave more than to
+be seen and to be loved in a space where you are safe,
+where the faces looking at you are not repulsed but
+warm with familiarity. Yet, it is this very warmth that
+becomes unbearable and an inherently traumatic
+intimacy. Being loved at your worst, at your most
+embarrassing, cultural borderline self is an agonizing
+duality to deal with. McGlotten, who was referenced
+earlier concerning the potential of bot-feelings of a
+digital body, now comes back to remind us of their
+impossibility. In his book, he talks of a digital intimacy
+that inundates us and is both a source of connection
+and disconnection (McGlotten, 2013). We are looking
+at a smaller scale than he does, but intimacy in the
+context of shared vulnerability can be a need just as
+intolerable.
+
+Certain kinds of witnessing can become curses, shivers
+of resonance so close to an explosion of glass if only
+you strike the cord that will keep me going.
+Certain kinds of divergence can only end with leaving
+or death, truth be told.
+People in these bodies know this, even if the digital
+bodies behave as if there is hope in a future where the
+divergence brings joy to one’s life consistently. The
+shared vulnerability itself then, is unbearable. I need
+you to see me, I need you, who are just like me at my
+worst, to love me. When you do, I can’t stand it. It
+ruins both of us to be seen this way and we need it so
+desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’t for long.
+
+I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies.
+I leave because I love you, little digital body and you
+are me.
+
+## 2. A LIFE TO BE HAD 11
+
+## sidenotes
+
+1. You’re dreaming
+again, good.
+Would you feel
+closer to me if you
+could hear my
+voice?
+Is my voice a sound?
+Could it be a
+feeling?
+
+2. I will be honest
+with you, I have little
+patience for this
+recurring line of
+thought that seeks to
+distinguish people’s
+noses from their
+hearts, as if there
+was a physical love
+that is the valuable
+one and a virtual
+imaginary one that is
+feeble and
+unworthy.
+
+3. Initially, when a
+member he often
+argued with o ered
+to pray for him
+Mandel had
+replied: “You can
+shovel your self-
+aggrandizing
+sentiments up you
+wide ass sideways
+for the duration as
+far as I'm
+concerned." Later,
+as the cancer
+progressed: “I ain't
+nearly as brave as
+you all think. I am
+scared silly of the
+pain of dying this
+way. I am not very
+good at playing
+saint. Pray for me,
+please.
+
+4. It’s out of care
+and not lack of
+relevance that I am
+not showing you
+Mandel’s goodbye
+message. It’s enough
+to know he was deep
+in the grief of having
+to leave a
+community he loved
+and cared for and
+that pain was felt in
+every word.
+
+5. The first bot
+communities on the
+internet are now
+born, half-
+mistakenly. They are
+always spiritual
+communities posting
+religious images
+created by artificial
+intelligence, all the
+comments echoing
+choirs of bots
+praising. Amen,
+amen, amen. I am
+not naive, I know
+they are built by
+humans but it is this
+performance of
+religiosity that I am
+interested in, and
+how little humanity
+is shown in it. It is
+something else.
+
+6. A step in a step in
+a step, sorry.
+
+7. I am talking here
+about the distress
+caused by mental
+health issues that
+have direct
+connections to
+physicality—self-
+injuring in any direct
+form; food, drugs,
+pain. The culturally
+uncomfortable
+diseases, the it’s-
+personal-
+responsibility, and
+just-stop disorders.
+This is a hidden
+topic of this text
+because I cared
+more about the pain
+surrounding them
+and the reasons to
+hide rather than the
+grim physicality of
+them all.
+
+8. Of course, the
+river itself is not a
+river; it’s many
+confused streams
+that believe
+themselves both the
+same and separate. I
+don’t know where
+I’m going with this, I
+just don’t love the
+river of normativity
+and I’d rather go
+swim in the ocean of
+dreams with you.
+
+9. I heard the idea of
+living questions for
+the first time in
+“Letters to A Young
+Poet” by Rainer
+Maria Rilke and then
+again on the podcast
+On Being with Krista
+Tippet. It may be a
+bit transparent but
+this entire text is
+informed by the
+concept of keeping
+the unsolved in your
+heart and learning to
+love it. Not
+searching for the
+answers for we
+cannot live them yet.
+The point is to live it
+all. It could be that
+at some point we will
+live our way to an
+answer but it is
+feeling the questions
+alive within us that is
+important. Do you?
+
+10. If we were to be
+honest, the entire
+exercise of writing
+this for you requires
+this very faith.
+
+11. Was this the end of this story?
+In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your
+computer. The air coming in from the window smells wet and
+earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon.
+You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story.
+You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to
+let it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child
+holding a fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.
+
+I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital
+bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are,
+and like water is.
+
+Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more,
+maybe, hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I
+have loved telling them to you. I hope you understand that my
+goal was for you to live these questions, to feel these stories in
+their confusion. My digital body, my bot-feelings, my divergent
+communities. I have given them to you, so they may live longer,
+like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown in a museum.
+
+Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.
+
+The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming
+fully a machine are no longer around in these online rooms.
+They are in different places, being touched by tentative hands,
+being loved for more than their divergence.
+I am too.
+
+The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others, divergent
+digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each other at the
+bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because there is no
+ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their collective pain
+down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each other. I am not
+embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it helps. I know
+how overwhelming intimacy can be.
+
+Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I will
+tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to me
+longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came from
+an ocean of dreams, into a primordial soup that gave it enough shape
+to become wild rivers, deep streams, sound waves. It flooded and
+now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for
+others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A
+dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body,
+and now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and
+loving body, is yet to be told.
+
+The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling
+each other stories just outside the room. We don’t have so much time
+left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories of
+the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is
+adadesign.nl/backplaces.
+
+You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see
+in a captcha. E5qr7.
+eSq9p.
+8oc8y.
+Fuck.
+You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.
+
+You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two
+hands made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and
+you leave again.
+
+## references
+
+Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of
+self-injurers: Deviant communities, relationships, and
+selves’, Symbolic Interaction, 31(1), pp. 33–56.
+doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.1.33.
+
+Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the
+unfinished business of sentimentality in American
+culture. Durham: Duke University Press.
+
+Chu, J. (2021) Looking for similarities across Complex
+Systems, MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology. Available at:
+https://news.mit.edu/2021/jorn-dunkel-complex-
+systems-0627 (Accessed: 08 March 2024).
+
+Deleuze, G., Boyman, A. and Rajchman, J. (2001) Pure
+immanence: Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books.
+
+Goffman, E. (2022) Stigma: Notes on the management
+of spoiled identity. London: Penguin Classics.
+Hafner, K. (1997) The epic saga of the well, Wired.
+Available at: https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-well/
+(Accessed: 01 February 2024).
+
+Haraway, D.J. (2000) ‘A cyborg manifesto: Science,
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+century’, Posthumanism, pp. 69–84. doi:10.1007/978-
+1-137-05194-3_10.
+
+Hyacint (2017) Harmonic series to 32,
+https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harmonic_series_to_32.svg.
+
+Kolcaba, K.Y. and Kolcaba, R.J. (1991) ‘An analysis of
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+16(11), pp. 1301–1310. doi:10.1111/j.1365-
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+
+Leonard, A. (no date) All Too Real,
+https://people.well.com/. Available at:
+https://people.well.com/user/cynsa/tom/tom14.html
+(Accessed: 01 April 2024).
+
+McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual intimacies: Media, affect,
+and queer sociality [Preprint]. doi:10.1353
+book27643.
+
+Rumi, J. al-Din and Barks, C. (1995) ‘Story Water’, in
+The Essential Rumi. New
+
+Schwartz, C. (2022) Lecture on Loneliness, Granta.
+Available at: https://granta.com/lecture-on-loneliness/
+(Accessed: 08 March 2024).
+
+Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013)
+‘Managing a marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and
+fat acceptance cybercommunities’, Journal of
+Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967.
+doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.
+
+Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are
+Always Hungry. University of Nebraska Press.
+
+
+