Instant Warnet is a live-action role-playing game which pokes and prods at networks of harassment on social media. In this collective performance, you are invited to assume fictional characters on the massively multiplayer arena of Instagram, with the goal of disrupting and defusing some of its more hostile practices and spaces.
Composed entirely of found tactics, scenarios and language used by the world’s most cunning trolls, buzzers and campaign operatives, Instant Warnet is an experiment which aims to flip the script on online toxicity. Instead of looking away or logging off, players are encouraged to live vicariously through their characters, using performance as a mode of talking back and reclaiming space on the platform.
Instant Warnet (2019) is published under the terms of the Peer Production License (PPL). The Peer Production License is an example of CopyFair licensing, in which only other commoners, collectives and nonprofits can share and re-use the material in question.
The text of the PPL, as well as a discussion on CopyFair can be found here.
Natasha Berting (Cirebon, 1992) is a media artist and writer. Her work often explores the ways that netizenship and citizenship inform each other, revealing intersections and facilitating encounters between art, technology and culture.
