Woroni Edition 3 2024

TV

Sarah Patience

Kerry Jiang

Bohong Sun

Paris Chia

Yola Reinecke

Content

Aala Cheema

Holly McDonell

Sarah Greaves

Ally Pitt

Anuva Rai

Caelan Doel

Chi Chi Zhao

Cleo Robins

Hannah Bachelard

Lara Connolly

Patrick Fullilove

Remi Lynch

Rosie Bendo

Management

Sania Jamadar

Benjamin van der Niet

Madeleine Grisard

Hannah Seo

Sigourney Vallis

Alina Spitz

Art

Vera Tan

Sanle Yan

Amanda Lim

Brandon Sung

Cynthia Weng

Jocelyn Wong

Oliver Stephens

Xiaochen (Fiona) Bao

Radio

Caoimhe Grant

Cate Armstrong

Alexander An

Natasha Kie

Punit Deshwal

Lilian James

Laura Heath

Grace Williams

News

Sophie Hilton

Ruby Saulwick

Constance Tan

Madhav Kacker

Hannah Benhassine

Gisele Weishan

Dash Bennett

Beatrice Tomlinson

Joseph Mann

News

Evaluating ANU’s Extenuating Circumstances Process

AI in Academia: Where Does ANU Stand with ChatGPT?

ANU Introduces Harmful Behaviours Disclosure Tool

Fandom

Fanfic: A Case Study in Community and Online Creativity

Immortal Twilight Which Video Game Matches Your Zodiac Sign?

In Defense of Alicent Hightower

The Philosophy of Death and its Manifestation in One Piece Rotten Girls

Classifieds

Ronnie DeLucca: Cuckold King of Miami 2009

POCKETFUL

Ask Woroni: ANU Confessions

An Ocean Apart NO CONTACT

Socialist Kambri

Dark Web

Algorithmic Determinism: Preserving Taste Despite Tech

An Ode to Oedipus

My Week on ED Youtube Cursed Theatrical Failure or Poignant Social Critique?

In The Garden of Delights Lessons from Inside: Convalescing with Bo Burnham in 2024

Letter From the Editor

The internet has forever changed the way we interact with art. A lot of this change is for the better: it’s made art more easily accessible, democratised it (sort of), and allowed us to discover work we might never have seen otherwise. I shudder to think of all the music and writing and artwork I would have missed out on if I got all my news from The Canberra Times and all my music from Triple J.

The internet has also allowed us to react to art in real time, and for the creators of that art to see our reactions. Audience interpretation has always mattered, but the internet has built this importance into its medium. Whether it’s a comment, a reply to a tweet or an entire fan account, audience response has been given a platform louder and more powerful than it has ever had before.

David Bowie predicted as much in an interview with the BBC in 1999. He said that the internet would lead to the popularisation of “[t]he idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation, and what the piece of art is about is the grey space in the middle. That grey space in the middle is going to be what the 21st century is about.”

This magazine is the product of a long process of sourcing, writing, editing and proofing, and now we’ve reached the final step, which you’re a part of. We’re in that grey space. Bowie said that “The audience is at least as important as whoever is playing,” and while this magazine is obviously a piece of physical media, for Woroni that’s truer than anywhere else. Woroni is made by your peers and funded by your SSAF. Your response matters.

We hope you like it. Let us know either way.

Claudia Hunt Content Editor

News Editor

Raida Chowdhury (she/her)

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Charlie Crawford (he/him)

Managing Editor

Phoebe Denham (they/them)

Head of Radio George Hogg (any pronouns)

Head of TV Arabella Ritchie (she/her)

Editor-in-Chief Matthew Box (he/him)

Content Editor Claudia Hunt (she/her)

Art Editor

Jasmin Small (she/her)

Art by Amanda Lim

Evaluating ANU‘s Extenuating Circumstances Process

Sophie Hilton

Content Warning: Discussions of institutional betrayal and academic distress.

In Semester Two 2023, ANU overhauled their existing extenuating circumstances processes into the more centralised Extenuating Circumstances Application (ECA) system. As the current semester draws closer to its end and students approach exam season with the new system in place, Woroni examines its implementation.

The new ECA policy applies to all forms of assessment worth at least 20 percent, or in instances where students are seeking ten or more working days for an extension.

Previously, when students had experienced unexpected difficulties during assessments, they could apply for either a “deferred examination“ or “special consideration“, or for an extension through their academic college.

According to an ANU spokesperson, the new policy was brought in to target the potential for “subjective adjustment“ present in the previous system, and to bring the ANU into line with the “standard practice across Group of Eight Universities.“

ANUSA Vice President, Charlotte Carnes (she/they), affirmed to Woroni that the increased transparency of ECAs was indeed an improvement in certain respects, “removing the burden of converting the ‘difficultness‘ of a circumstance into a grade value from teachers“, who previously “had no requirement to state whether special considerations were applied or to what account.“

The ANU Disabilities Student Association (DSA) expressed that, “it is a good idea to have a central application process for all of the included accommodations as it increases accessibility for students and staff.“

However, both Carnes and DSA Officers Griffin Wright (they/he) and Florrie Cooper (she/ her), expressed considerable concerns with other aspects of the application process.

ANUSA has “fielded many complaints about this policy with inconsistencies in outcomes, documentation requirements, immediate rejections from the system for applying for an additional adjustment on the same assessment, and overall vague wording in the policy that has led [sic] to confusion.“

The ANU maintains that “Both mental health and disability may be considered within the ECA framework“, and that “The Accessibility Office is also available to support adjustments to assessment conditions via Education Access Plans (for example, extra time to complete tasks, or access to different resources or environments).“

However, the DSA received complaints,“ that the process does not allow students to use their EAPs as documentation“ when many students have “fluctuating and chronic conditions that may flare up in stressful times“ and “the university already has access to this information.“

EAPs are personalised education plans which outline reasonable adjustments to support the student in achieving their personal best. EAPs consider physical or learning disabilities, medical conditions, chronic or short-term illnesses/conditions that may impact a student‘s education.

Wright and Cooper emphasised that their primary concern is that there is “still an undue burden on students going through the process.“ For instance, students still have to “both procure documentation and write a personal statement“ which can be not only “overly arduous, expensive and time consuming, but it forces students to retell their stories, which is draining and has the potential to re-traumatise them.“

Another concern of the DSA, “is that ECAs only apply to assessment tasks worth 20 percent or more. We have had numerous students needing these sorts of accommodations on assessment tasks worth less than 20 percent.“

First year ANU student, Ashleigh Keating, recently sought some academic considerations when unexpected family circumstances affected her ability to complete a French test. According to Keating, she “straight away raised this with [her] course convenor [sic] who recommended [she] go for an ECA.“

As the test was only worth 15 percent, the request was rejected. Keating told Woroni that “I found it very strange that they didn‘t have anything for assessments worth 15 percent as that is still quite high.“

The ANU provides that, “Where a task does not satisfy the threshold to lodge an ECA, a student may engage directly with the Course Convener to explore assessment adjustments.“

Keating approached ANUSA to express “frustration at this and how it really isn‘t good enough.“ Keating was not able to attain any consideration, and although she was told to contact CASS, she explains, “...as someone who has a lot of educational based trauma due to being autistic- I do not have it in me to be on a never-ending cycle of having to reach out to different areas of the uni with hopes one of them will take the time to read my case.“

Keating emphasised that “This isn‘t the first time I have had requests for supports [sic] to only have them knocked back and have had to wait and see if this can be improved. This current system is not viable for vulnerable [sic] students and needs to be addressed.“

Carnes attests that, “Ultimately, the ECA process is intended to be a support mechanism for students in sickness and strife, however, it‘s clear that this process is furthering or causing students distress in already difficult times.“

Students seeking more information on how to apply for an ECA can visit the ANU‘s website, or reach out to the Examinations Office, course convener or the relevant dean for additional guidance or support. Students who have concerns about their eligibility or the ECA process in itself have been encouraged by ANUSA to reach out to tthe Union‘s Student Assistance team, who are able to provide help in navigating the process or providing advocacy if necessary.

Art by Sanle Yan

AI in Academia: Where does ANU stand with ChatGPT?

Constance Tan

Following ChatGPT’s release to the public in late 2022, the ANU, like other academic institutions around the world, implemented its own set of guidelines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in academic work.

These guidelines are largely in line with pre-existing academic integrity rules, stating that students “need to be able to use them effectively”, including citing ChatGPT appropriately “whenever [they] paraphrase, quote, or incorporate into [their] own work any content that was created by it.”

The University has also encouraged students to “use generative AI as a research/brainstorming prompt to guide [them] towards superior, substantiated sources.”

An ANU spokesperson told Woroni that the University aims to teach students “how to harness the power of AI for assessment in ways that support their learning but do not breach our standards of academic integrity.”

They explained the University has “robust pedagogy, assessment, systems and policies in place to prevent academic misconduct and catch potential incidents”, though the spokesperson confirmed “the University is still evaluating the use of Turnitin’s AI detection tool.” The University currently does not use the tool.

Associate Dean of Education for the College of Science, Associate Professor Merryn McKinnon, says the University’s decision to turn off the tool is due to the “ethical considerations.” The dean admits, “it is very difficult at the moment to tell when a student has used ChatGPT.”

However, McKinnon affirms that, “conveners rely mostly on students’ past work and their own expertise to know what should and should not be included in a paper.”

At present, any AI-related academic breach undergoes the standard investigation process, where the University would “look for appropriate evidence and indicators of academic misconduct before any outcome was reached.”

Students also ”retain the same right to participate in an academic integrity review whilst a finding is being reached and then appeal the outcome on the grounds as outlined in that policy and procedure as for any other review process”, according to CAP’s Associate Dean of Education, Associate Professor Mathew Davies.

The recommendations surrounding ChatGPT usage are standardised across all colleges.

Interim Dean for the College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics (CECC), Professor Stephen Eggins states, “individual colleges don’t have their own policies and procedures, rather all colleges follow ANU principles that have been developed to guide use and approaches to ChatGPT.” Eggins also noted, however, that within those guidelines, how ChatGPT can actually be used “is up to the convener and depends on the nature and learning outcomes of the course.”

Associate Deans of Education across colleges have expressed varying opinions on whether ChatGPT can be beneficial.

Associate Professor McKinnon maintains that for the College of Science, where critical reviews, lab reports, data analysis and infographics are the main types of assessments, “AI can be useful as it elicits a lot of responses.”

Mckinnon acknowledges that AI “is a tool that is likely to permeate [students’] professional lives” and may even “replace Science as a tool, but not as a discipline.” According to her, “Science is a human endeavour and problem solving and diversity of thought is what makes Science good”, a factor she states is absent in AI. She noted ongoing discussions on “whether ChatGPT meets the requirements to be listed as an author on a paper” which “raises interesting questions about the future of scientific research, what is ethical and acceptable...”

Likewise, College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS) Associate Dean of Student Experience and Integrity, Dr Claire Hansen, says that the College mainly focuses “on exploring risks and opportunities.” She affirmed that ChatGPT usage in CASS’ essayheavy assignments is acceptable, as long as “good scholarly practice like acknowledging and referencing any work that isn’t the student’s own” is followed.

Dr Hansen says that it is “impossible to predict something that’s still developing”, but accepts that “there will always be a place for [technology] in the arts.”

The University “recognises that the use of AI tools by students can support their learning” and that “the application of AI tools in some professions is growing.”

This is particularly relevant for CECC, where Professor Eggins says that ChatGPT usage includes “opportunities for rapid feedback, use in creative aspects such as design work and concept generation,” though students must be able to “critically evaluate outcomes from generative AI tools” and properly “understand their uses and limitations.”

Speaking specifically on computing programs, he says it is especially important to “[develop] student understanding of how such tools are built and used and the concepts and approaches that underpin generative AI tools.”

College of Business and Economics (CBE) Associate Dean of Education, Dr Dana Hanna, told Woroni that generative AI has “great potential to [be] used creatively towards the later stages of the [learning] journey”, as well as to increase educational accessibility, though using it too early has its share of downsides “especially when a student is unable to critically [evaluate] the output.”

ChatGPT’s emergence in academia remains an ongoing topic of discussion. The tool, like its many predecessors, has the potential to bring about drastic change, though the true nature and extent of its impacts are yet to be seen.

For now, as outlined in the University’s Generative AI guide, all colleges urge students to confer with their course conveners on the uses of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in academic work. The University also encourages students to “contact the ANU Library Academic Skills team on +61 2 6125 2972 or academicskills@anu. edu.au if they need further assistance.”

ANU introduces harmful behaviours disclosure tool

Constance Tan

Content Warning: Mentions of Sexual Assualt and Sexual Harassment, Racism, Ableism and other forms of discrimination.

Earlier this year, the ANU introduced a new harmful behaviours disclosure tool for reports of sexual assault and sexual harrassment (SASH), racism, ableism, harassment and discrimination incidents for all members of the ANU community.

Previously, only incidents of SASH could be disclosed on a pre-existing Sexual Misconduct Disclosure Form, launched online by ANU‘s Student Safety and Wellbeing (SSW) team in 2020.

The new tool now allows for disclosure of harmful behaviours including SASH, which came after the ANU recognised “that other harmful behaviours also require a trauma-informed and person-centred response.“ It will also include ANU staff, who upon disclosure will then be assisted by the Staff Respect team.

Women‘s Department officer Lara Johnson (she/her) told Woroni the new tool has its merits since the new form “intends to centralise information to make referring students and connecting them into additional ANU services smoother.“

Speaking specifically with regards to incidents of SASH, she states, “the tool handles the topic of SASH through a trauma informed lens as much as possible. The information and resources throughout the tool are able to prompt students to reach out to emergency services.“

Nonetheless, she says, “It is the linking of the support networks available throughout the ANU to the students and ensuring that they feel supported throughout the process that is the primary success or non-successful measure for the new disclosure tool.“ This is especially so as “there is a lack of institutional trust towards the ANU over their handling of SASH“ thus far.

Students who make a disclosure will be assisted by SSW case managers who will guide them through support networks. An ANU spokesperson explained, disclosures are then “responded to within 48 hours with the purpose of checking on the safety and wellbeing of the person, providing information on support and pathways for formal escalation.“

The University maintains that SSW case managers are recruited with “backgrounds in social work, counselling, human services and with demonstrated skills and understanding of supporting diverse students, including culturally diverse students,“ in line with the former Anti-Racism Taskforce‘s recommendations.

The spokesperson stated that the establishment of the tool was a result of “feedback with students and staff“, including past and present ANUSA executives and the Anti-Racism Taskforce. They also stressed that the disclosure tool is not a complaint mechanism but rather a pathway to let the University know of harm experienced directly or indirectly.

When Woroni reached out to the officers of ANUSA‘s autonomous departments, most confirmed that they had been consulted by the University prior to the release of the disclosure tool.

Bla(c)k, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) Department officer Selena Wania (she/her) asserts that the tool‘s implementation is a “good step forward towards informally reporting and disclosing harmful behaviours.“

She cites that previously, students only had the option to either make an informal report with the Dean of Students (DoS) or a formal report with the Registrar‘s Office, both of which were “quite intimidating (sic) and have no mental support throughout.“

She explains the new tool will connect BIPOC and other students with mental health support through the SSW support system. However, Wania maintains, “only time will tell“, the effectiveness of the tool.

The Disabilities Students Association (DSA) Officer Griffin Wright (they/he) confirms that the Department was asked for feedback, however it had been, “done at the same time as it was being rolled out for the students.“

Wright explained that the tool has not been publicised broadly enough, however if done so “[the tool] has scope to take pressure away from department officers in the providing of support to traumatised students.“

While they posit that the tool‘s implementation is a good step forward for the ANU, they shared concerns, that students “may not feel comfortable being forced to compare their own trauma to the trauma of SASH,“ given, “[the] cultural understandings and lived realities of SASH are different from oppression and discrimination.“

by

Art

Amanda Lim

Fanfic: A Case Study in Community and Online Creativity

Hannah Bachelard

Content Warning: Mentions of non-consensual sex

Rule 34 of the internet states: “If it exists, there’s porn of it.” I’d like to posit another essential rule: if it exists, there’s fanfiction for it. Fanfiction is fiction written by fans of different media that uses the same characters and settings from which the work is derived. For a lot of people, this might bring up the image of sweaty, horny, trash fiction featuring Draco Malfoy railing Harry Potter and the perverted teenage girls who indulge in it. While this is a big part of fanfiction culture, there is so much more to it.

Archive of Our Own (AO3), the most popular fanfiction site, hosts 11,697,821 total works (as of when this article was written, by the time you read it, this number will have risen). This doesn’t even account for all the fanfictions published on Tumblr, Wattpad, Fanfic.net, Quotev, Live Journal, and in print. Fanfiction is inherently tied to fandoms, the communities that spring up around comics, musicians, TV shows and movies. It allows those a little more invested in what they’re fans of than the general public to meet and talk. Fandom communities discuss the source material, develop theories, post fan art, and discuss fanfiction. Fandom has its origins in fan conventions such as the Philadelphia Science Fiction Conference, which started in 1936 and can be traced all the way back to the Jane Austen fans who, as early as the 1850s, were meeting up for reading groups and travelling together to locations depicted in Austen’s novels. However, these days fandom is hosted by the internet. Through Tumblr, and increasingly X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, fans from all over the world connect to one another.

Many people aren’t public about their fan status and secretly participate in fandom. They might have a famous fanfiction with over a million hits or a popular TikTok account that posts edits of BTS members, and not a single person in their life will know. Fandom is often linked to shame; people are embarrassed by their zealous participation and are only open about that part of themselves online, where anonymity can help them feel safe indulging in all their fan-related desires. They make friends, participate in chats, like, comment and reblog each other’s posts, and generally form thriving online social groups.

This secrecy and shame around fandom was compounded by legal issues surrounding the production and consumption of fanfic in the early days of its online proliferation. Anne Rice, the author of Interview with a Vampire, a book that inspired many homoerotic fanfictions, began to sue fanfic authors in the early 2000s. She released a statement on her website saying, “I do not allow fanfiction. The characters are copyrighted,” and a Vice News article has described her as very “willing to use the legal system” to prosecute fanfiction authors for copyright violations. The cease and desist letters and legal challenges she and other authors issued during this time were so widespread that fanfiction became truly persecuted.

Around this time, AO3 began running a legal service “committed to defending fanworks against legal challenges.” In addition to this legal service, they also ensure that, in line with US and Canadian laws, fanfic is transformative, i.e., it changes the original meaning or intent of its source material, and no profit is derived from it. These regulations are widely accepted and abided by within fandom communities. However, the legacy of these early legal challenges and the inherent shame associated with writing works that are deeply rooted in sexual and emotional fantasy has led to fanfic and fandom becoming gatekept practices.

Because of its secret and anonymous nature and the lack of censorship associated with fanfiction, interesting sexual and social dynamics begin to manifest. Fanfiction was first written in the late 1960s, with fans of Star Trek writing fictional works set within the TV universe and publishing them in fan magazines. This developed into a further niche, termed “Slash fic”. Slash is when two characters of the same sex who are not in a romantic relationship in the source material are written in sexual or romantic scenarios, the original example of this being Kirk/Spock. Since this origin, the majority demographic of fanfic writers has been women, and the type of relationship typically written about has been homosexual male relationships.

In recent years, there has been much analysis of this fact. Many posit that the cause of this trend is the fetishisation of homosexuality. However, some feminist theorists say otherwise. Joanna Russ wrote in “Pornography for Women, by Women, with Love” that “no one can imagine a man and woman having the same multiplex, worthy, androgynous relationship, or the same completely intimate commitment.” She is saying that the female body and mind have been treated so viciously by patriarchy and media in the past that a power balance is created in fictional relationships, which makes many women uncomfortable. Instead of fetishising male bodies, female authors are projecting themselves into queer male relationships where they can be seen as equal and worthy. The subject of fanfiction becomes not a homosexual relationship between men but a representation of the sexual and romantic relationship women desire.

The lack of censorship in fanfic and the anonymity of its authors also lead to the inclusion of many tropes that would be frowned upon by broader society. Nonconsensual elements are common in fanworks. An example of ways “non-con” manifests is when a character suffers poisoning or a biological process similar to an animal heat, which gives them insatiable sexual urges, thereby making the sex that follows non-consensual. Scholars have theorised that this is because the desire for and enjoyment of sex is seen as shameful in women. Hence, women who write fanfiction to live out their own fantasies add non-con elements to give their characters (and thereby themselves) an excuse and, therefore, permission to feel sexual.

Similarly, fanfiction often details the torture, injury, maiming or other traumatic treatment of a character to warrant the use of tenderness and care in response. ‘Hurt/Comfort’ and other tropes like it necessitate first the harm or maiming of a character before their romantic partner can help and comfort them. Fandom communities, like any community, aren’t always harmonious, and moral debates about the inclusion of these elements in fanfiction, as well as other elements such as incest or pedophilia, are frequent. Due to this, a wide vocabulary has been built up around fanfiction. Words such as “hurt/comfort,” “fluff”, and “whump” indicate different tropes to readers. AO3 has a tagging system that allows you to search using these tags, as well as by fandom and by relationship. Part of this tagging system is the ability to filter out works that can be triggering.

Above all, fanfic is fantasy. It is a way for authors and readers alike to explore themselves, process their trauma, indulge in kink, or write about what it would feel like to be properly loved by a parent. Authors are free to depict whatever they want, and it’s the reader’s responsibility to avoid content they don’t want to see and find the content they do.

Like the Kirk/Spock writers in the 1960s, fanfic is often used as a vehicle for hope. Those who don’t feel represented by mainstream media often turn to fanfic to represent themselves. Female, queer, disabled and non-white authors take characters who do not represent them and bend and remould them to reflect their community. They project their social and familial desires onto fanfic, as well as their sexual ones. Queer teens create stories where trans characters are loved and accepted and where justice is served to abusive parents. People write about loving found families and worlds free from homophobia and racism. As much as fanfic is about sex, it is also about healing, representing and exploring non-hegemonic identities.

While fandom and its fanfiction aren’t universally free from societally imposed shame, they are a fascinating glimpse into what people are capable of creating out of love and community. Because fanworks are legally prohibited from deriving profit, all 11,697,821 works on AO3 and every other piece of fanfic that exists online are done entirely unpaid. In a world driven by capital, where ChatGPT and AI are causing many to herald the end of human creativity, internet fandom communities, made up of people from across the globe, show us the great and lasting capacity for human imagination and artistry.

by Cynthia Weng

Art

Immortal Twilight Lara Connolly

ContentWarning: Animal Death

The Blood-Moon-Delta-Pi Pack leapt gracefully through the forest, ‘twas the evening of the hunt. It felt like forever since Duke had been able to exercise his true form, leaping over fallen logs and thrusting between the tightly packed trees in the dark oak forest. God, he‘d missed this. His eyes easily adjusted to the darkness, slivers of moonlight peeking between the foliage and lighting his path. He could smell the deer, warm and coppery; it was right up ahead, crashing full pelt through the forest, twigs snapping underneath its hooves. The trees thinned into a clearing, and the full moon shone high above, illuminating the deer. It was dead.

It lay sprawled on its side, shocked still and stuck with an arrow, the wound fresh and bleeding. It did not make any pained sounds, however, eyes glazed and sluggish, almost with pleasure. There was a cloaked figure crouched above its neck, fangs buried deep. Goddamnit, Duke thought. Fucking vampires. His pack erupted from the forest behind him, hackles raised and ready for a fight. He growled, and the vampire finally raised its head. Xander.

Of course, it was Xander; the bastard was the only vampire stupid enough to antagonise the BloodMoon-Delta-Pi Pack on the night of the hunt. The vampires and wolves in their small remote town of Spoon had been warring for nigh on a century, ever since the vampires had murdered his great great grandfather, Alpha Fleamont Killen, on the evening before the Great Blood Moon Ritual, where the pack returns to commune with the wolf god Lupus. Xander was the worst fang face of the lot. The bastard was the son of the Elder Vampire of the Solemn-Blood Clan and had an ego larger than his dick. Not that Duke knew anything about his dick, but he had to be overcompensating for something.

The wolves around him began to advance on Xander with a menacing snarl.

“Oh, sorry, boys and girls. I didn‘t know this meal was taken,“ Xander sneered. Rising to his feet, he swept the hood off his head to reveal his dark black hair and face, which were somewhat similar (in a conventionally attractive white-man way) but not identical to Duke‘s own.

“You‘ve gone too far this time, Xander Montgomery. The Blood-Moon-Delta-Pi Pack will not tolerate such insolence,“ Duke growled.

“What insolence! This was merely poor timing. How was I supposed to know this deer was claimed?“

“Don‘t bullshit me. You know perfectly well today is the day of the hunt. Back off now before my wolves tear you to shreds.“

“My dear, no need to get so... emotional. I know it‘s your time of the month, but that is hardly an excuse for such foul language.“

Art by Vera Tan

Duke leapt forward with a snarl, knocking Xander to the forest floor with a great clawed paw on each shoulder. “Enough,“ he growled huskily (Duke often growled). Xander flinched. It was so slight that Duke nearly missed it, but still, it was good to know he’d finally had some effect on the bastard.

“Alright, dog breath, no need to get so testy.“ Xander retorted. “See you on Monday.“ And with that final remark, his body suddenly faded into a swirling heaving black mass. Bats. The winged cluster swarmed upwards into the sky, screeching in a way that somehow managed to be pretentious.

“Fuck!“ Duke thought as the last few black wings screamed their way out of the clearing and into the forest, silhouetted on the silver glow of the full moon.

The worst thing about being a teenage werewolf was that, the day after a full moon, you still had to go to school. The second worst thing about being a teenage werewolf was that the day after you get into a bitch fight with your incredibly unsexy nemesis, you have to sit next to them in first-period maths. Duke had never been very good at maths; it had been the reason he’d been forced to repeat the fifth grade and had left him with a lifetime resentment for it, although he supposed 19 in senior year was a good deal better than Xander’s 37.

Pretending to tolerate your least favourite person in the whole world for 50 minutes on a Monday morning every week was positively torturous, Duke thought as he groggily flicked through his textbook.

The only thing Duke liked about first-period mathematics was that Ivory sat in front of him. She was such... a girl. Her hair was of average colour and length, and her eyes were either brown, blue or green. And yet she was enchanting. Her overwhelming averageness made her... irresistible. She wasn’t like the other girls. He’d been in love with her since the second she had transferred to their school at the beginning of the year; unfortunately, so had Xander. Which was honestly kind of unfair; he was 37, after all.

Ivory was sitting with Lara and Dove. The three had met at the beginning of the year and formed a fast friendship, but even still, Ivory always seemed to be on the outside. She was effortlessly cool like that.

Speaking of Xander, the arsehole had just thrown a small piece of paper at his head.

Duke turned and growled lowly. Xander merely gestured at the paper. Duke unfurled it to reveal a crudely drawn image of him in his true form with a... below-average... depiction of his nether regions. Although Duke loved his true form, he did admit that it left... little to the imagination. He didn’t look like THAT, though. At least, he hoped.

21.

“You know it doesn‘t look like that!“ Duke scrunched the paper into a ball and threw it at Xander‘s head as hard as he could.

“Mr Killen!“ Mr Johnson, the balding middle-aged maths teacher, reprimanded. “You are much too old to be causing such a disturbance in this classroom. Need I remind you that you need this class to graduate. Unless you feel like retaking senior year.“ Ivory and a few other girls sitting in front of Duke began to giggle.

“Yes sir, sorry sir,“ Duke mumbled, his face heating up. He really didn‘t want to fail. Xander just... got under his skin. That‘s all. He could see the leathery bastard smiling out of the corner of his eye.

Mr Johnston turned back to the board, “Mr Montgomery, I also expect you to be on your best behaviour.“ Duke watched the wicked smile on Xander‘s face fade. Thank fuck.

The rest of maths passed smoothly enough; he still didn‘t understand how to integrate, but no one was drawing his genitalia, so he‘d take what he could get. When the bell finally rang, he sprung out of his chair, books in hand, and followed Ivory out of the classroom and into the hall.

Ivory‘s locker, number 1044 (one of the only numbers Xander was good with), was right outside the maths room. Lara and Dove had waved their goodbyes and wandered down the corridor as Ivory had opened her locker and was getting out her lunch. Duke walked up to her, knocking aside a sophomore attempting, with little success, to get to the locker beneath Ivory‘s. He rested his shoulder against the locker to the right of hers with a resounding thunk.

“So I was thinking you might want to come and watch me play at the game tomorrow night,“ Duke said, relishing how effortless he had sounded.

“What game?“ Ivory replied in the bland way that was so unique to her.

“What do you mean, what game? The ultimate frisbee game, of course!“ Ultimate Frisbee was the be-all and end-all of high school sports at Spoon High School. The school‘s team, the Spoon High Silvers, was the best in the state, and only the most athletic students made it onto the team, which meant that most of Duke‘s pack played it with him. He was the team‘s star player, of course.

“Oh,“ Ivory said, not nearly as impressed as she should have been. “Well, I would, but unfortunately, I already have plans for tomorrow.“

“Oh.“ Duke paused. “That‘s alright! What are you up to?“ He felt smaller all of a sudden. That was strange.

“Well, Xander and I...“ The rest of Ivory‘s sentence couldn‘t be heard as Xander appeared behind her and draped his arm over her shoulder.

“Hey darling, hope you‘re excited for this evening.“ He looked up at Duke, and his eyes flashed red so quickly that it wouldn‘t have registered to the average person, but Duke‘s wolf senses could pick up on things the average human couldn‘t. Then he winked at Duke, just to really be a dick.

“Come on, babe, let‘s get some lunch. Something really smells like a wet dog here.“ Xander said and turned down the hall, his arm around Ivory‘s shoulders. Duke had to warn her somehow. She was in danger. As he walked down the hall after them, he was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn‘t notice Mr Johnson watching the trio from his doorway.

Which Video Game Matches Your Zodiac Sign?

Aries: League of Legends

Hopefully, League of Legends will help you let off some of that steam you’ve been building up over the semester. I know how hard it can be being so on top of your life that you get bored at times, so the constant updates and new characters will keep you entertained. However, League of Legends will also humble you, as you will experience the worst of the human race — anger, greed, pride, basically all of the cardinal sins — and in return, you will learn that you can’t win everything.

Taurus: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

A wholesome game for a wholesome person. You love a to-do list but also love being able to complete it at a pace that suits you. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is just perfect for you. As you play in real-time, the game is as leisurely and laid back as you are. It’ll help you get back to nature, fishing and catching bugs to your heart’s content. I just hope you’re as on top of your finances as you are with the rest of your life… Tom Nook spares no prisoners.

Gemini:

The Sims 4

Some may call you a control freak, but don’t worry. I understand you’re just moving at such high speed with so many goals that it’s hard for others to keep up. The Sims 4 is a place where you can live out your controlling desires. Recreate your crush and make them fall in love with you, max level all of the skills you wish you had in real life, build your house before you test out new furniture layout… I won’t judge you.

Cancer: Super Smash Bros

You’re always on the move and need a game that can move with you. Super Smash Bros would work well for you as it is short and sweet, but you also get the added benefit of subtly proving your dominance over other people. You’re usually a sensitive soul, so keeping things light and impersonal with multiple different characters to choose from ensures you can’t get too attached.

Leo: Minecraft

Unproblematic baddie. An old reliable in any time of need, you are a homebody and a welcoming friend. You are valued for your loyalty and resourcefulness when times get tough — you will feel right at home with Minecraft. Although, as of late it has felt a bit like your life is moving way faster than normal, it’s hard for your friends to keep up with all of these new things going on in your life! I mean, seriously, who the fuck is The Warden?? When did he show up?

Virgo: Portal 2

Detail-oriented queen! You seem to always have a solution to your friends’ problems, so you also need a game that can keep up with you. You would thrive with puzzle games as you also love to always keep people guessing. Hopefully, you can learn from Portal 2 that you don’t actually need to be 100% efficient and on the go all the time… it’s actually about the friends we made along the way.

Libra: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Main character energy. Whether you’re working to rescue Hyrule or your friends from a bad night out at Moose, you are always reliable in a time of need. You are loyal and almost self-sacrificial to those who mean the most to you. Breath of the Wild is certainly the game for you, as you get to experience beautiful graphics while bringing justice and balance to the world.

Scorpio: The Last of Us

You can juggle being serious and light-hearted well, and you’re great at reading a room. You also like to remind people that you liked something before it was cool… reminds me of a lot of people last year when The Last of Us came out as a TV show. You need an emotional storytelling game to help you show your softer side, but the action helps keep you guessing.

Sagittarius: Roblox

A childish game to let out your inner child. It’s a trait that keeps your friends on their toes as you always have a fun perspective on things. You aren’t very detail-oriented, nor do you care for big theatrics, so I’ve given you a game with the simplest graphics ever. But one thing you and Roblox share in common is your enduring popularity and consistency — you both always know how to stay the life of the party (I mean, seriously, how is Roblox still around).

Capricorn: Clash of Clans

You’re a professional. You’re reading this in business wear off to your 9-5 or your very serious Foundations of Australian Law tutorial ready to dominate as devil’s advocate. Clash of Clans can help you manifest your dreams of corporate ladder climbing by asserting your dominance over other clans. It’s also the only mobile game on the list because you need something discreet… people can’t know you make time in your life for hobbies.

Aquarius: Baldur’s Gate 3

You need a game with multiple plotlines and mechanics to keep up with your erratic and esoteric lifestyle. You may think you can juggle saving the world and keeping up with a roster of side characters to romance… but you are mistaken. You may find your life pulling you in many different directions right now, and you have no idea which path is the best. Take a break from all that and experience exactly that, only with fictional characters, in Baldur’s Gate!

Pisces: Dream Daddy Dating Simulator

Always daydreaming and with a knack for anything creative, you deserve the quintessential indie storytelling experience. You love to make sure everything is in order and you look good while doing it. This game’s quirky characters and plentiful storylines will have you playing over and over again to see how every one of them turns out. Don’t forget that you do need to go back to the real world at some point.

by Oliver Stephens

Art

In Defense of Alicent Hightower Fan Culture and the Attack on the Morally

Grey Woman

Aala

Cheema

Content Warning: Mentions of rape, victim blaming and domestic violence.

Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 1.

The internet is a vast and limitless landscape. No matter how niche your interest is, there will be a community of like-minded people for you. However, being a part of an online fandom is a bittersweet experience, especially as someone who prefers not to engage and instead takes the backseat as an observer of the conversations that take place. While there can be a deep sense of community in being surrounded (at least virtually) by people who share the same interest as you, as with anything on the internet, there is boundless toxicity and misogyny within fan culture.

This is glaringly obvious in the HouseoftheDragon fandom. HouseoftheDragon is a prequel series to HBO‘s hit show Game of Thrones . The show follows the conflict known as the ‘Dance of the Dragons‘, and the years that precede it. The Dance of the Dragons is the civil war that erupts between Rhaenyra Targaryen, the first-born child of Viserys I, and her half-brother, Aegon, as they both battle for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms.

The show is adapted from George RR Martin‘s first volume of the history of the Targaryen dynasty, Fire and Blood . Unlike the online A Song of Ice and Fire community, which comprises mostly fan theories, character analysis, and collectively bemoaning the 13-year wait since the last book was released, HouseoftheDragon discourse is very much a fiery pit of incessant arguing and victim-blaming.

As a television show, House of the Dragon takes several artistic liberties. The most significant is its transformation of the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen, daughter of Viserys I, and Alicent Hightower, his wife. In Fire and Blood, Alicent fits within the ‘evil stepmother‘ trope; she is older than Rhaenyra, her tormentor, and a moving force behind her son‘s usurpation of his half-sister‘s throne. In HouseoftheDragon, Alicent is the same age as Rhaenyra and her childhood companion. Typically, as a book purist, such a major change to a key dynamic would be irritating to me. This one, however, creates a more compelling narrative; how exactly is a friendship affected when one friend is forced to marry the other‘s father?

Since the release of Season 1, the fandom has had a misogynistic attitude towards Alicent as a character. Much of the online discourse centres on who exactly is to blame for the tragic events that are set into motion by Viserys I‘s marriage to Alicent. Many viewers are quick to victim-blame Alicent, boldly ignoring the fact that the show explicitly portrays her as a victim-survivor and promotes anti-patriarchal ideas. People seem to be fixated on this idea that Alicent is somehow this nefarious mastermind that orchestrates an entire civil war, even when what we see on the screen says otherwise. She is continuously used as a pawn by the men around her.

In ‘The Rogue Prince‘, Alicent‘s power-hungry father, Otto, instructs her to visit Viserys I and offer him comfort following his wife‘s death. Later, he commands her to wear her deceased mother‘s clothing, which is more revealing and mature than her own. In one scene, Viserys I asks the teenaged Alicent, “You do not mention our talks to Rhaenyra, do you? I just-I fear she wouldn‘t understand.“ By the end of the episode, he decides to marry her and she is not in a position to refuse.

By the third episode, ‘Second of His Name‘, Alicent is seventeen. She has already given birth to Viserys‘ son and is pregnant again. As we see in ‘King of the Narrow Sea‘, Alicent is a victim-survivor of marital rape.

It therefore baffles me that so much of the online discourse blames Alicent for the war that is instigated in ‘The Green Council‘. If we are pointing fingers, shouldn‘t the blame rest with Viserys I and Otto? It was Viserys I who decided to remarry and create challengers to Rhaenyra‘s claim to the throne. And, it was Otto that plotted Aegon‘s usurpation. In fact, it is Alicent that implores for Rhaenyra‘s life when her father and his allies are set on eliminating her as a threat to Aegon‘s accession.

Alicent can instead be interpreted as a complex character that is driven by the love she has for her children. As she passionately contends in ‘Driftmark‘, “What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law.“ She is a woman that has attempted to dutifully fit within the role that was carved out for. She may not be perfect, but that is what makes her so fascinating to watch.

In a similar vein, the internet‘s response to HouseoftheDragon demonstrates the way that female characters are constantly held up to a higher moral standard to their male counterparts in all forms of media. While Alicent is hated by audiences for protecting and advocating for her children, male characters, such as Matt Smith‘s Prince Daemon and Paddy Considine‘s Viserys I are applauded and admired. Many fans were angered by the Season 1 finale as in one scene, Prince Daemon chokes his wife, Rhaenyra. They argued that this action did not reflect his character. I, on the other hand, was left wondering if we were watching the same show. This man, who in ‘We Light the Way‘ killed his first wife, was somehow incapable of choking another woman? Yet, despite his very overt violence towards women, his character does not receive remotely the same amount of criticism that Alicent does online. Evidently, women can either be wholly good or bad. There is no middle ground.

Another key element of the plot in House of the Dragon is the choosing of ‘teams‘ in the civil conflict that is incited by Viserys I‘s death. The ‘Greens‘ faction are those that support the ascent of Aegon II (Rhaenyra‘s half-brother and Alicent‘s son) to the Iron Throne. The ‘Blacks‘ faction are those that support the succession established by Viserys I before his death; that is, his first-born child, Rhaenyra, ascends the throne.

HBO‘s marketing strategy in the lead up to the release of Season 2 in June has incorporated this. They released promotional pictures of the cast with the caption ‘All Must Choose‘, as well as two trailers dubbed ‘the Black trailer‘ and ‘the Green trailer‘. While this marketing was evidently intended to encourage fan involvement, it has instead further ignited toxic internet discourse.

Robert Oliver, writing for Metro, echoes this frustration, stating that the marketing “feeds the ugliness and pettiness that‘s so rife in fandom culture at present.“ He describes it as “desperately trying to ignore arguments over who‘s best between Alicent and Rhaenyra, choosing instead to focus on the larger anti-war and anti-patriarchal story being told, but finding yourself unable to escape.“

June is fast approaching, and I for one am eager to watch the Season 2 premiere. Yet, a part of me dreads it. As bad as it now, with people arguing under every show-related Tiktok or Twitter post whether rape is bad, in what circumstances butchering toddlers is acceptable, and whether victims should just ‘get over‘ the abuse they have suffered, it‘s only going to get worse. So, my advice is, before you sit down to watch the highly anticipated return of House of the Dragon, maybe first log out of your social media because a deluge of hatred towards your favourite female characters is sure to follow.

Art by Sanle Yan

The Philosophy of Death and its Manifestation in One Piece

Chen Li

“My fortune? If you want it, you can have it. Find it! I left everything I gathered together in one place. Now you just have to find it!” These last words, by the ‘King of Pirates’, Gol D. Roger, inspired countless individuals to passionately set out to sea.

One Piece, serialised in 1997, is one of the best-selling comic series of all time. It’s about a boy named Luffy, who dreams of becoming the Pirate King in a world of slavery and aristocracy (though he himself does not know much about this, only wanting to be the freest man on the sea). The series attracts readers of all ages and nationalities with its depictions of friendship, adventure, dreams, and emancipation, as well as its broad worldview, adrenaline-pumping battle scenes, and diverse cast.

One of One Piece’s key themes is mortality. Before the disbandment of his crew and at the time of his surrender, Roger told his vice-captain Rayleigh, “I never die.” He was right about that: the death of his flesh denoted the beginning of the new era, and others saw his finite life as a totem, a faith, and desire for freedom that was passed from generation to generation. Through this inheritance, the individual life of Roger became as immortal as a spirit. As Chopper’s (a cute reindeer and naval surgeon in the comic) quack dad says: “When will a human die? The time their heart got shot by a bullet? No, when they got incurable diseases?…, no, it is the time they are forgotten by the world!”

This illustrates to us the philosophy of death in Oda Eiichiro’s work. The characters’ courage and integrity downplays the heaviness of death. Similarly, in the preface of The Phenomenology of Spirit, the philosopher Georg Hegel writes, “Now, the life of Spirit is not that life which is frightened of death, and spares itself destruction, but that life which assumes death and lives with it. Spirit attains its truth only by finding itself in absolute dismemberment,” which could be the philosophical foundation of Oda’s creation. If the spirit/human/subject is afraid of death, it is afraid of negation. Hence, the acknowledgment and acceptance of death is the unity of the opposites of negativity and positivity; this is the development-negation-absorbing of the spirit. By accepting the opposite of life — death — humans are motivated to develop themselves and enjoy happiness, achievement, and other positive emotions. At the end of their life, each person’s biological life is negated by their death, but the contributions they have made in the process of development have been absorbed into society. These absorbed contributions result in a more advanced humanity technologically, scientifically and philosophically.

Art by Jocelyn Wong

When Luffy, Roger or even Kozuki Oden (widely known as a weaker Oda character) face death later in the series, they all have a carefree attitude towards it. Their actions indicate Oda’s own attitude and philosophy towards death, which is easygoing and makes the most of life. At the Battle of Marineford, pirate captain Edward Newgate says “I am a remnant of the old era, in the new world, there is no pirate boat to carry me.” This denotes his hopes for the new era after thoroughly embracing Oda’s philosophy of life and death. He is burning the last drop of his life force so that the younger generation can shine. This illustrates the spiritual journey of developing-negating-absorbing. Edward’s life, after fully developing within his journey on the ocean, was negated by death, but the absorption of the will he passed on has been absorbed into future generations, allowing every new crew to live on with faith in the future of piracy.

Death itself is a part of life, an inherent attribute and inevitable consequence. Death is not the opposite part of life; it is a part of life that exists eternally. Here, the end of life denotes a human overcoming their pure singularity and reaching universality; it is the journey of the spirit developing-negating-absorbing its natural life. Death is only a completion of the current cycle.

Rotten Girls

Claudia Hunt

If you’ve been online in any sort of fandom (a group or subculture of fans with a common interest) you won’t be surprised to learn that there’s a type of female fan who almost exclusively creates and consumes content detailing gay relationships between their favourite male characters. You’ll probably have heard the handy Japanese word for women like this: a fujoshi, generally used to refer to women who are fans of media that feature romantic and/or sexual relationships between men.

If you’ve never been a part of a fandom, or only just found out what a fandom even is: surprise!

This isn’t a niche phenomenon. Gay fanfiction is incredibly popular, partially due to this large female fanbase. On Archive of Our Own (AO3), a prolific fanfiction site, the top ten pairings of all time are between men. The work written about them is often hundreds of thousands of words long, with twice or three times as many hits.

Anyone who’s studied English at at least a high school level will have heard the old adage, ‘write what you know’. Why are these women ignoring this advice?

Some might argue that it’s not a specialised interest; women just read and write more than men. A study from Creative Australia found that 61% of Australia’s ‘frequent readers’ and 65% of their writers are women. Formal and informal surveys of fandom demographics mirror this female majority.

But that still doesn’t explain why these women almost exclusively write about romance between men. Maybe it’s because these women are attracted to men, and if one man is good, then two men — who kiss each other — are even better. But I’ve seen lesbians describe themselves as fujoshis, so that can’t be entirely it. It could be that some of them aren’t women at all, and just haven’t realised why they’re so inexplicably drawn to writing and reading stories from the male perspective. Trans people are overrepresented in fanfiction communities, with one survey from the University of Central Florida finding that out of 5,000 respondents, over 30% were transgender.

In other surveys, some women explain that the media they’re a fan of doesn’t have any ‘strong female characters’, forcing them to focus on male characters and their relationships with each other instead. But many of these fandoms have also created elaborate backstories and romantic drama for the most minor male background characters — who is Evan Rosier, and why is he featured in thousands of Harry Potter fanfictions? — so that’s not entirely it either.

Art by Jasmin Small

I sometimes describe fanfiction to friends who have never read it as fast food. That’s not to say it’s bad, necessarily. A lot of fanfiction is well-written, and a lot of contemporary authors honed their craft writing fanfiction. In 2019, AO3 won a Hugo award, a prestigious literary award for science fiction and fantasy works.

But fanfiction is also easy. You go into it knowing who the characters are already, knowing what tropes and settings to expect because it’s been meticulously tagged for you. “Dean Winchester/Castiel”. “Enemies to lovers”. “Modern!AU”. “Wedding planning”. “Fluff and angst”. Work with original characters requires you to learn new names, new backstories, new lore, to put time and effort into caring about these constructs. Fanfiction, on the other hand, plays with familiar, comfortable characters and settings, and with the sheer amount of it out there — over 11 million fics on AO3 and counting — it’s practically made to order.

So the question remains: why, when female fans are looking for something easy, gratifying and cheap, do they not look to read or write content about women? If anything, they seem to actively avoid it.

Last summer I read Shuzo Oshimi’s manga Inside Mari. Inside Mari follows a seemingly perfect high school student, Mari, who is suffocated by the social, academic and familial pressures that come with being a teenage girl. To cope, she stalks a lonely university drop out, Isao, enamoured with his comparatively carefree life of takeout, video games and masturbation. One day, when it all becomes too much, Mari has a mental breakdown and wakes up the next day believing she actually is Isao, somehow trapped in the body of a teenage girl. As a ‘man’, Mari develops feelings for her classmates, both romantic and sexual (her female classmates, but that’s a different essay) and masturbates, desires we have to assume she previously repressed and can only access as “Isao” — as a man.

I think something similar happens with fujoshis. These fictional gay men function as a vector, like Isao, through which they’re able to enjoy romance, and especially sex, without the baggage of female sexuality.

Female desire, specifically sexual desire — because a lot of this gay fanfiction is erotic — is taboo. In The Uses of the Erotic, Audre Lorde writes that misogyny has made women’s eroticism taboo. For Lorde, ‘the erotic’ is “an internal sense of satisfaction”, stretching from the sexual to “all the aspects of our lives”. Women “have been taught to suspect [the erotic], vilified, abused, and devalued within Western society.” This is still true, just under fifty years after Lorde wrote that essay.

Things are obviously not quite the same as they were in the late 70s. I’d say women are able to talk more openly — or at least more casually — about their sex lives, what they enjoy, and what they don’t enjoy. This shift is reflected in a lot of our media, where women who have premarital sex don’t always have to die at the end.

But some things haven’t changed. Alpha male podcasters debate how many previous sexual partners a woman can have before she’s worthless (hint: it’s zero). A lot of male coming-of-age media — especially raunchy, Superbad-style comedies — involve coming to grips with one’s adolescent sexuality, a trend that just isn’t reflected in female media in the same vein. I don’t often see depictions of female sexuality that are exploratory, that are awkward, that are ugly — depictions that would not be appealing to the viewer. It’s beyond obvious to point out that there are entire industries that prey on women hating their bodies, a self-hatred that extends to the sexual — from 2015–2020, the number of cosmetic labiaplasty procedures increased by 73%. Trans women are especially, unfairly vilified, with iconic horror movies like Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and Sleepaway Camp featuring their sexuality as the monster, and current right-wing narratives painting them as predators trying to sneak into women’s bathrooms.

If a fictional woman is going to be sexually liberated, she has to pay the price of being sexy while doing it. Even when the sex involves no men at all, it has to appeal to a male audience. The Palme D’Or-winning lesbian romance-drama Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) has been criticised for its pornified depiction of lesbian relationships. Julie Maroh, the author of the graphic novel that inspired the film, has decried its sex scenes as ‘a brutal and surgical display…of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn’.

Lorde might call these depictions “plasticized”. The superficial erotic is encouraged as a sign of female inferiority, allowed only to the extent that it serves men — looks sexy, gets them one night stands. But simultaneously, any woman who acknowledges or owns it is suspect and shameful. When expressions of sexuality are constantly being played for the enjoyment of a lascivious audience, when even depictions of women alone, in their homes, are shiny and plastic, absent of sag and cellulite and unladylike itching, it’s dissociative. You become, as Margaret Atwood wrote in Robber Bride, “a woman with a man inside watching a woman.” And that man finds you contemptible.

For women who feel this shame especially keenly — interestingly, fujoshi literally translates to ‘rotten girl’ — I think that erotic gay fiction provides a welcome out-of-body experience. Momentarily emancipated from their rotten, desirous selves, women can enjoy something hot and easy, safely refracted through an experience distinct from their own. Researcher Patrick Galbraith has written that fujoshis are tapping into “a long tradition in Japan of asobi, or play that is outside the expectations and rules of the everyday.” These stories are escapist fantasy, deliberately untethered to uncomfortable reality.

But the real world will come calling eventually. For fujoshis, this is sometimes called ‘graduating’. Their real life responsibilities — their job, their relationship, their family — are now taking up all the time they used to spend in fandoms. Galbraith writes that “In a country where patriarchal family values persist, fujoshi are criticized for pursuing yaoi and are described as rotten because they are attracted to fantasies of sex that is not productive of children”. When fujoshis graduate, forsaking fantasy for family and full-time employment, in some ways they’ve succumbed to the patriarchal, productive demands of the real world. They’ve grown up.

But what happens to the feelings that drove them to fandom in the first place? Do they just go away?

I’ve felt similarly to the fujoshis I theorise about in this essay: the dissociation, the discomfort, sometimes the disgust. I think a lot of women have. And for me, at least, getting busier hasn’t necessarily meant getting better. I don’t really read fanfiction anymore, for much the same reason as the fans Galbraith spoke to don’t: I have less time and more responsibilities. But even as my real adult life expands around me, my inner life hasn’t been equally enlightened. The way I see myself, especially my body, is actually more unstable and insecure now than it was in high school, when I was reading fanfiction.

Some of the women Galbraith spoke to who had graduated rejoined fujoshi communities later in life. I don’t know whether this is a good sign or not. Are they rejecting those patriarchal values, or trying to escape them once again?

I hope they’re having fun. I hope that twenty years on I won’t want to escape myself.

Art by Amanda Lim

Ronnie DeLucca: Cuckold King of Miami

Daniel Minns

‘We’re ready for you, Mr DeLucca,’ a voice yelled from outside Ronnie’s dressing room.

Upon hearing this, the man rose from his chair, taking a minute to check his reflection in the mirror. Ronnie adjusted his tie and took a moment to style his hair — an arguably unnecessary act considering his near-complete baldness — before winking at himself on the way out.

He paused momentarily. One final second to prepare before Ronnie would no longer be himself; his mind occupied with one singular task: perform. Slowly he stepped onto stage. Ronnie felt the hot stage lights bearing down on his face. ‘Alice?’ he called, his tone innocent, unsuspecting.

Ronnie approached the bedroom door, cameras and eyes alike transfixed on him. This was Ronnie’s life, the craft he had dedicated himself to all those years ago. All his skill, talent, and time, culminating in this one moment of perfection. Turning the bedroom doorknob, Ronnie’s mind was blank, bar one indisputable fact: This was his show. He was the star. This was his art.

‘OH MY GOD! You’re fucking my wife!’

Ronnie gasped and stumbled backwards. ‘Alice, how could you?’ Ronnie whimpered, dropping to his knees, the pain undeniable in his hoarse voice. His face contorting into a personification of extreme shock and despair. ‘That’s his penis, Alice!’

This was one of his best performances yet.

This heartbreaking performance continued for 16 minutes. Ronnie’s cries turned into laboured sobbing, then muted pleading. All backdropped by the unpleasantly loud sounds of his scene partners’ oiled bodies colliding repeatedly.

In a vacuum, Ronnie didn’t look particularly exceptional. His plump stomach often spilled over his belt. Apart from a thick, greying goatee, his remaining hair was thin and wispy, and he had the large expressive eyes of a sad dog. Multiple people had remarked that he looked like Walter White if he abandoned meth salesmanship to enter eating contests. But one glance from Ronnie could tell you that he was far more than the sum of his parts. He had an undeniable gravitas, something about Ronnie pulled you into his orbit and held you there.

‘And, cut!’ the director yelled. ‘That’s perfect, guys. We got it,’ she continued, sliding out of her chair.

The sweaty sounds of cuckoldry were quickly replaced with the bustle of a busy set. People rushing past one another, cameras and boom mics being disassembled. Ronnie’s personal assistant, Tim, scampered up to the veteran performer, sliding a burgundy dressing gown over Ronnie’s shoulders, covering the suit and tie he’d performed in.

‘Great performance, Mr DeLucca. Can I ge—?’ Tim trailed off mid-sentence as Ronnie strode past him, making a beeline towards the director.

‘Sharon, baby! Tell me that wasn’t the best cuckolding you’ve seen in your life,’ Ronnie beamed at the director, ignoring the multiple other people around him she had been in conversation with.

‘Ronnie, good performance, as always. Why were we waiting for you for 15 minutes after you got called in?’ Sharon said, in a tone Ronnie was not expecting. ‘Do you know how hard it is to vamp after taking Viagra?’

‘Really hard,’ a shiny naked man to Ronnie’s right loudly interjected, the effect of the Viagra still upsettingly visible.

‘Sweetheart, relax. I’m sure the bodies did fine. It’s all part of the process, girl.’ Ronnie responded, his smile unshakeable, careful not to look towards the naked guy. ‘I tell you what, a good day’s work deserves a good night’s party; let’s celebrate, hey?’

Before Sharon had the chance to respond, Ronnie was already beckoning Tim over. ‘Spread the word, wrap party at mine,’ he said, ‘and maybe don’t tell the other actors.’ he quickly added, sending the slight assistant away while side-eyeing his scene partners who had inexplicably still made no attempt to clothe themselves.

It’s not that Ronnie hated the body performers, they served their purpose, a canvas upon which he would project his art. Ronnie just didn’t understand why they were also credited as performers. When you put out a Ronnie DeLucca production, nobody’s coming for watching for the naked bodies.

...

Florida contains two Miamis. The regular one: busy, sleazy, and where the leading cause of death is a yacht-side heart attack. Then, there’s Ronnie’s Miami. With Ronnie around, there aren’t any locked doors, last calls or closing hours. A party materialised wherever he wished; although it inevitably ended up at Ronnie’s luxury mansion overlooking the waterfront, just as it had tonight.

‘Timmy! Fetch us another keg, OK?’ Ronnie yelled into the party void, assuming his assistant was within earshot before focusing back on the conversation he was having with his agent.

‘Ronnie, I’m serious, you gotta cut this diva shit out, man,’ CC said, gesturing with his half-drunk bottle of beer.

CC Johannesburg had been Ronnie’s agent for nearly 30 years. Ronnie had freshly dropped out of taxidermy college and was working the Connecticut regional cucking scene to make ends meet, but CC had seen something special in that bright-eyed kid (kid being used in a charming folksy way, he was like 26 at the time), and the pair rode their partnership all the way to the top.

‘Sharon was pissed today, and it’s not just her. You were 20 minutes late for the doubleheader last week, and you didn’t even show up for that shoot in Jacksonville.’

‘OK, wait, that Jacksonville one wasn’t my fault. I got lost on the drive over.’

by Oliver Stephens

‘You drunk drove your car through a museum!’ CC replied exasperatedly, before taking a moment to compose himself. ‘Look kid, you know you’re my superstar.’ CC put his hand on Ronnie’s shoulder. ‘But people are starting to talk. There’s whispers that your head’s not in the game anymore, like you’re mentally checked out. Your filming contract is up next month, to get a good deal we need the next few weeks to go smooth, OK? Especially tomorrow… Ronnie?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’ Ronnie snapped back from trying to figure out whether the guy over CC’s shoulder crushing white pills was using his “Best Leading Cuck” Oscar from ‘95 or ‘01 (he should have won in ‘98 as well, but you know how the academy is).

CC stood up to leave, but before walking away he looked at Ronnie with an unusually stony face. ‘You know, you don’t have to sign a new contract, Ronnie. No shame in hanging up your boots after a career like yours… Nobody stays on top forever.’

Ronnie paused, staring at his agent. A seemingly reflective look on his face… ‘CC you’re such a fucking downer,’ he laughed, unaffected by the older man’s words. ‘Hey! There’s my measly little whiteboy!’ Ronnie jumped up at the sight of a sweating Tim, struggling with a keg that surely weighed as much as him.

‘Everybody! Who wants to see me do a kegstand?’ Ronnie yelled to a sea of inebriated cheers, some of which would be regretted upon realising they would be holding the large man up.

After a couple more hours of revelry had passed, the party’s energy had faded significantly. ‘Ti-Tim,’ Ronnie slurred at his sober assistant, who was playing candy crush. ‘Can you be a peach and make Ron— make me one of those vodka things you do?’

‘A vodka sunrise?’ Tim said, having abandoned crushing candies to man his post. ‘Yeah, yes.’

‘Are you sure Mr DeLucca?’ Tim asked, ‘Tomorrow you have that shoot with Greta Gerwig, and Mr Johannesburg said I needed to make sure you’d be OK for that.’

‘Man, Tim. You know I’m- you know I’ll be good for it. I’ll just drink it and then go straight to bed. It’s juice, it helps you sober up.’

Sensing his boss’ mounting frustration, Tim reluctantly began to mix the drink. ‘OK, Mr DeLucca.’ He said, handing the horizontal man his glass. ‘...Well, I should get going sir. See you tomorrow.’

‘Byyee Tim,’ Ronnie called out, not bothering to sit up. ‘Silly little guy,’ he smiled to himself before downing the cocktail. ...

Ronnie awoke to the painful sound of one of the previous night’s guests slamming the front door as they left. Rubbing his face, and forcing his eyes open, Ronnie resolved to make coffee. Stumbling through the house, Ronnie accidentally stepped on party debris ranging from cups to a still-asleep partygoer, until mercifully, he reached his coffee machine. Ronnie winced at the whirring noise of the machine as it started up.

‘Squa-squawk!’ Hans, Ronnie’s illegally smuggled toucan, chirped from his cage, having been woken up by the coffee machine.

‘Hans, let’s keep it down, ok buddy?’ Ronnie croaked, as he tossed feed into the cage, landing on the torn up TIME magazine covering its floor.

Ronnie had been using TIME for this purpose ever since they dropped him to 83rd on their top 100 most influential people list. Not solely due to him dropping 7 spots, but also because ever since Malala passed him, Ronnie felt there had been an unspoken tension between them.

‘OK, wakey up time,’ Ronnie said to himself, standing before the coffee machine. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, correctly guessing that he hadn’t taken it out of his pants before falling asleep last night. Ronnie’s eyes took a second to adjust to the screenlight.

‘FUCK!’

‘How is it 1:30? Oh my god!’ Ronnie yelled, abandoning the coffee to find a shirt. Frantically dashing around the mansion, Ronnie noted that he had 7 missed calls and about 20 texts, no doubt from Tim and CC begging him to show up. Having gathered the few items he needed, Ronnie bolted to his Mercedes, tripping again on the guy sprawled out in the hallway on his way out.

Even at the best of times Ronnie was a bad driver, so it was a miracle nobody died as he blatantly sped through the streets and sidewalks of Miami. Upon arriving at the studio, Ronnie threw his keys at a man he assumed would be willing to act as a valet, and sprinted inside.

‘I’m he-’

‘My wife?! Your penis and my wife, and your penis!’

Ronnie was taken aback. He hadn’t walked into the stressed, delayed set that he had expected. He wasn’t swarmed by people rushing to get him costumed and ready to shoot, the studio wasn’t loud with the sounds of complaints and frustration. They were filming. He had been replaced… Who could replace Ronnie DeLucca? Careful to make no commotion, he weaved his way through the crew towards the sounds of cuckery.

Upon reaching the front of the set Ronnie’s eyes widened, his breath was briefly caught in his throat. The man on his knees, clawing at his throat, his tear-streaked face wailing through sobs… It was Tim.

And he was good.

Art by

Jocelyn Wong

by

2009

E.J. Murray

I tell you when I was a child, when times were not so full as this, not so jam-packed, the rosellas would land on my arms, eat seeds out of my palms. One house’s deck grey steel, set out from timber walls, raised high above a cage of firewood. Funny Baba Yaga on stilts. She won architecture awards. The rainforest curled around every gravel or soil path, rubbery green and dripping wet. No sign of drought here; eyes not yet dry from blue light. Green frogs let out throaty ribbits, creaking and echoing like heavy doors. So loud from little bodies. The drive up so long, and us so young, our parents printed sheets of landmarks for us to spot, a chubby finger pointing at a sign painted like a galah, a roadside statue of a big guitar, while a CD mix my mother made played through the stereo in our car (no films to watch on the backs of car seats, just the blur of kilometres). One morning we were dragged out of bed and rustled into baby raincoats, baby gumboots for a bushwalk in the pouring rain, above high, fogged valleys, under waterfalls. Given the time again I’d spend more of it silent, wouldn’t sulk for the sake of sulking. We’d stop under an overhang, set up our little kettle in the dry hollow, drink tea from plastic mugs. One day I’ll head back there, I reckon, maybe take you with me, stay in the house, do the walk. Halfway home we came across a pine plantation, wrong like a scar, and I have no photos, just a hand on dry needles.

Art

Cynthia Weng

by Jasmin Small

POCKETFUL

Jaden Ogwayo

You prod and poke to check if I‘m awake. The strident buzz of texts arrests my sleep. I hollow from each part of me you take As souvenirs of flesh: the prize you keep.

On Thursday night, you told me that you saw me; My late response, unworthy of reply. Who else had you surveilled and watched before me? Which other faceless profiles caught your eye?

My mind and wrist are pulled by some reflex

Toward your famished appetite and gaze, Dependent like the addict who injects For moonless nights to swallow sunless days.

The thrill of pixels numbs the plight of distance: A tether to each other‘s glitched existence.

Art

Ask Woroni: ANU Confessions

Sarah Greaves and Anonymous

FOR Sarah

ANU Confessions turned me chronically online. While this doesn’t sound like a great way to kick off a singing of praises for this Facebook institution, I think it is a demonstration of the levels of commitment this page has been capable of inspiring. As a veteran supporter of ANU Confessions, I realised I had a problem in my first year during lockdown of 2021 when I felt just the tiniest rush of adrenaline upon the release of a fresh batch. Since that low point, I have significantly rationed my reading of the page but I have concluded that despite its obvious flaws, ANU Confessions is a slay and my reasons are listed.

1. Culture

ANU Confessions is part of the student experience. From reading about people having sex in Marie Reay against your will, to becoming unreasonably invested in an ISO sport ball-tampering scandal between two halls you’ve never set foot in, it’s an on-campus news source. A way to know what’s going on in a massive and constantly changing community and with your ability to contribute, it’s something that you personally, are a part of.

2. Solidarity

This links to the ability of the page to provide a sense of solidarity for students. You know the feeling, when you see that confession that is just a breath of fresh air. Realising that you are not alone in your relentless adoration for the ducklings on campus, being filled with glee when it is revealed everybody else also hates contracts (shock horror) or being able to relate to that sinking feeling when you get to MR 6th floor and realise you have to take the walk of shame back down the stairs. It turns out that you’ve never had an original experience. The ability of ANU Confessions to speak to a unique and specific set of experiences for people brings about a bizarre sense of comfort.

3. It’s low-key funny “#ANUConfessions10925: it’s pretty homophobic that anu put exams during pride month tbh…” You see the latest instalment of a hopefully fake story about someone who got shat on by their partner. Perhaps you might even get an update on the whereabouts of the ever elusive liberated ANU sign. While sometimes you have to scroll through some rubbish, Confessions has always provided some great laughs.

4. Express yourself

While not without concern, the anonymity of ANU Confessions, provided it is well-moderated, has the opportunity for people to have conversations and express feelings, ideas or concerns that they may not otherwise be able to. Whether this is a declaration of violent diarrhoea in the Hancock bathrooms or a platform to draw attention to serious issues faced by students from the academic to the personal, Confessions is a place to express opinions and feelings that people may not otherwise feel comfortable talking about.

It is true that many of these debates have devolved into farce or become unduly critical of individuals with anonymity providing a permit for cruelty. However, with a more refined approach, there is potential to see some of the key advantages of open discussion provided through an anonymous Facebook page.

5. Consistency

Where other pages have faltered, failed or gone through multiple rebrands (see Overheard at ANU, ANU Crushes etc), Confessions has remained the consistent centralised platform for online silliness in the student community. That is a significant achievement in its own right, demonstrating the page’s significance to the University and the widely-held respect it has gained.

I rest my case.

AGAINST Anonymous

It is always in the best interests of a criminal to remain anonymous. Likewise, students who write to ANU Confessions often do so because if they and their shrewd, unnecessary and often borderline reprehensible confessions are identified and disclosed in a public place, they too would find themselves behind bars.

The Confessions page is popular for posting anonymous confessions. Indeed, read between the lines, multiple ANU Confessions posts, despite their boldness, are sent by the resentful and cowardly, too eager to speak, yet too quick to hide.

However, underneath this seemingly harmless page, lies a plethora of problems.

Take these two confessions:

“#ANUConfession27117: I’m white, but I feel a deep cultural connection to the African American community as I am a big fan of the NBA. Could I come to BIPOC events as like an observer? I wouldn’t want to silence any BIPOC voices but I would like to be a part of the community I feel such a strong spiritual connection to.”

“#ANUConfession27111: Can I attend cube as someone who was previously very homophobic (got expelled from my high school for repeatedly using the f slur) but is now accepting of the community?”

In both instances, the purpose was not to create discussion, or ask for help or even confess anything. The purpose was to be provocative, almost pervertedly so, and offensive. The problem does not end there, for the more pressing question is, who said this? Without anonymity, in any civil and respected society, no matter how progressive, these people would face some public ostracisation.

However, behind anonymity, this could be anyone. That person from your tutorial, your tutor, your friend, your mother, your situationship. Would you tolerate people who said these things in public? Any reasonable person would say no. Then why do you tolerate them just because it’s online?

We all have provocative thoughts and this author would be a fraud to deny that. But there is a difference between those who keep it to themselves, often with a healthy amount of shame as they rise too close to the surface, and a person who wants to thrust it into public.

By publishing these thoughts, ANU Confessions essentially exploits free speech, not only by legitimising these thoughts but also by providing blanket immunity to the confessors.

When confessions are posted, especially the provocative ones, they appear as green flags to others that such a thought is acceptable. Sure, one could access the fountain of comments that erupt under the post calling it deplorable and unacceptable. But one could also simply just ignore it. Again, the point here is not to have socially acceptable discussions, it is strictly to be provocative and offensive.

When we are able to readily identify people for their speech, we are also able to hold them accountable for it. The blanket immunity provides a free pass for them to air out their personal prejudices under the guise of “discussion”, so they can effectively evade the community guidelines. Lest I remind you that in 2020, the entire page was shut down because it had published slurs.

I understand that it’s not always a shit-show. Indeed, it can be pleasurable to see that others are also struggling to survive through the same courses, to develop para-social relationships with chronic commentators, to find (in rare cases) some helpful information. Indeed, anonymity can also provide marginalised communities with a blanket of safety.

But that really is not my point. At its core, ANU Confessions exists to provide unaccountable and unrestricted anonymity. We should have open and respectful conversations about much of what is discussed on the page, but hidden behind anonymity, these conversations take a sharp turn to extreme and ineffective discussions. We, as a community, can do better. Isn’t it time we left this high-school-esque digital bathroom gossip? Step out from the shadows, hold your ground, face the fear, rise above and write to Woroni.

by

Art

Vera Tan

An Ocean Apart

Caitlin Cutler

These days I only see you through a screen

And every time I forget A little more of you

Because your body of pixels

Doesn‘t smell like roasting marshmallows on the beach in December, Doesn‘t taste like breakfast in bed at 10am on a Sunday, Doesn‘t feel like pulling on a woollen sweater in the middle of winter, Because your body of pixels Is just pixels.

NO CONTACT

Jaden Ogwayo

Art by Brandon Sung

Shut-off. You fight the urge To text by enlisting The power button. But never Blocking...

A buzz!

You, like the screen, Aglow with naive hope. Alas! No message, here; merely A buzz.

A ring!

Quick! Sprint! Answer! Today might be the day He calls you first. You fool, ‘tis your Alarm.

A dream.

The one realm free Of messages or calls? His ringtone lulled your half-shut eyes To sleep.

Socialist Kambri

David Anderson

This ode’s for the mental titans of the Kambri Socialists, Who command the fear of all the campus: With eyes downcast they swerve to pass you by; Your pamphlets are turned down as though they had power to cause plague; Your meetings are known to all, attended by none; Your chanting rallies are suburbanly ignored, As one patiently wishes off a distant lawnmower on a Saturday morning. Ay, what terror you inspire! what bourgeois fear! Rulers of the campus! perennial students! Defenders of the studentry from our own army! Each man has his reward: that’s what the gospel says. Rule, then, O lanky titans, ye anaemic deities, In your minds, in thought, in theory, in Discord servers, And o’er our little microcosm, rule!

Art by Oliver Stephens

Art by Amanda Lim

Algorithmic Determinism: Preserving Taste Despite Tech

Algorithmic determinism is ruining our choice and depriving us of agency.

Jaden Ogwayo

Unable to decide what to eat after a long, productive day of studying, my vegetarian friend and I decided that we wanted to try something new . To attain that novelty, I Googled “VEGETARIAN PLACES NEAR ME“ and automatically began the pantomime of informed scrutiny: skimming and evaluating restaurant options sorted by price, star rating, and distance from our shivering bodies on the corner of Northbourne Avenue.

Something felt off about this mode of decision-making, so I returned my phone to my pocket and instead asked her to pick a cuisine: Indian.Our stomachs rumbled as we walked in search of an Indian restaurant before eventually stumbling across a place I pass often but never enter. With a sense of wonder I can liken only to what Willy Wonka’s five chosen children felt entering the factory, our hungry eyes bounced around the menu’s myriad of options. To amplify the novelty, I picked her dish and drink - methi mutter daal and passionfruit sodaand she picked mine - palak daal and watermelon soda.

A fussy-eater-turned-omnivore, years ago I matured past the cliche of butter chicken and adopted a usual order of lamb or beef roganjosh. And, until that night, I had yet to venture into the vegetarian and vegan options on a menu. Now though, we sat together on a gumladen bench, shooing uninvited feathered friends, and took our first bites; it was the closest my taste bud had come to ambrosia. Our spontaneous food choice unlocked a certain pure, naïve joy in me that felt familiar yet rare; nostalgic, even, despite me having never tried daal before this.

The more my friend and I ate and unpacked the thrill our meal brought us, the more she and I realised the severity of our dependency on various algorithms’ provision of “curated“ suggestions. As an Apple Music user (please, hold your judgements), I don’t receive the daily playlists enjoyed by my Spotify-user counterparts, including my friend. However, for a while, I subscribed to a word-a-day app; I joined a quote-a-day mailing list (which did little more than clog up my already inadequately organised inbox); I had a (now-deleted) Tinder account!

On a phone note, I compiled the various services of this kind that I had come across: UberEats suggesting places to eat; poem-a-day subscriptions; daily fact and joke apps; suggested movies on Letterboxd; TikTok’s For You Page (and its pollutive derivatives: YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, etc.); homepages generally on social media platforms; LinkedIn’s recommendations of users to add to your network; essentially any Google resultsgeneration, especially for vague questions like “WHAT’S A GOOD COLOUR?“ or “IMAGES OF DOGS“. As my Notes app list and impending senses of doom and dread accumulated, so too did my concerns for just how this algorithmic decision-making shaped our actions and replaced interpersonal, interconnected modes of discovery and experience in the domains of media consumption and, in the case of LinkedIn, relations (as calculated and determined by graph theory).

The emotive and spiritual phenomena which enable our continual (re)construction of the self - spontaneity! chance! risk! taste! style! discovery! - depend upon imperfect encounters with the half-known and unknown sites of experience. Learning how to ride a bike, tasting (and, in my case, falling in love with) Vegemite, our first kiss, our go-to heartbreak songthese make the human experience human . However, these instruments of identity lose their impact once quickly displaced by our use of algorithms to supplant affective, personal, and rational faculties. Once we delegate our emotions and judgement to the disparate, digital world of individual apps and services (e.g. by looking up “HEARTBREAK SONGS“ on Spotify, rather than cultivating a proclivity for Mitski), whose algorithms are governed by ulterior motives and user retention, we erode the few things left that separate the human from mere machine.

I realised very quickly that if we had stayed in the library, I would have likely scrolled through UberEats, and either chosen a top recommendation or re-ordered a suggested favourite of mine - neither option, of course, leading me to that rich, buttery daal. Eli Pariser coined the term ‘filter bubble‘ in the early 2010s to refer to how online algorithms trained to learn a user‘s interests, views, and opinions will develop pockets of personalised information and social connections that severely limit that user‘s exposure to dissident, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar media. A library website trained to read a user‘s taste in literature is eventually going to stop suggesting a Proust fan dip his toes into MyLittlePony fanfiction; Reddit is unlikely to recommend a well-established incel join r/Feminism.

In more serious circumstances, filter bubbles lead politically disengaged users into toxic troves of conspiracism and alt-right bigotry, a pathway that benefits an algorithm designed to feed users content that will keep them engaged media consumers. This problem is amplified once more by the extensively documented tendency of bias in machine learning which skews the results provided by algorithms in favour of specific archetypes or manifestations of the concept or term searched for. Take Google Images, for example: “SMILING NURSE“ produces three rows of women in bright-blue scrubs; “KINDERGARTEN TEACHER“, rows upon rows of female teachers and their schoolchildren; “EYE“ and the first dark-skin complexion emerges in the sixteenth row of photos; “FLIGHT ATTENDANT“ and seven rows until a man (who was neither a pilot nor passenger being served) appears in frame.

These algorithmic biases are, in part, inevitable, inherited by the software‘s users, creators, programmers, and even the language we use to communicate. Grammatical gender, for instance, has been shown to skew speakers‘ perception of inanimate objects like bridges or knives depending on their denoted masculinity or femininity. And if McDonald‘s is very popular at two in the morning on a Friday, then it makes sense that UberEats would suggest you order a McFlurry with your slippery, imprecise fingers. Our network of communication and our range of lived experience are themselves imbued with the biases and preferences that we and those around us develop and spread, so these inescapable forces will, of course, percolate any online space where search engines or suggestions facilitate our access to media and information.

However, the outside world regularly exposes us to expressions of identity and preference that irrupt our established field of possible meaning such that our understandings of and relations to various concepts and objects are embellished by previously unknown potential. Without my incessant promotion of Got Me Started, many of my straight friends would have never known the joy of Troye Sivan; without my friend‘s choice to get Indian cuisine, I would have never tried palak daal; without tutorials, many university students‘ interpretation of the weekly readings would be severely constrained by the insular bounds of their own comprehension.

Search engines or information algorithms, in theory, should fulfil this function of exposing us to novel ideas or information in order to resolve uncertainties or gaps in our knowledge and experience. I mean, why would you Google “BREAKFAST IDEAS“ if you only have toast available? That choice is certain: you ‘ re eating toast this morning. But when you get tired of your haircut and want something new, like my friend and I that evening in the library, you turn to Pinterest or Instagram in the hopes of finding that one style that just sings to younew enough to quell your urge for novelty, but within your permeable purview of aesthetic judgement (i.e., your taste) such that you still enjoy it.

The filter bubbles and algorithmic biases poisoning the digital world distort our access to ideas and information by concentrating our potential for experience around a digitally comprehensible imitation of taste. This imitation then actively works to stabilise itself around secure parameters for results and content engineered to leave you unsatisfied and keep you on the damn platform. There lies the problem with algorithmic determinism: in purporting to satisfy you by learning your preferences and catering content accordingly, the algorithms that govern the information we access add another series of microcosms to the monotony of our lives.

It‘s time we revive the wisdom (and silliness) of our friends instead of the automated results of scrolls and searches.

An Ode to Oedipus

Hannah Bachelard

Her supple breasts on TikTok‘s For You Page

We race to the comments to leave regard

A symphony of others too engage

They say “Your mommy milkers make me hard!“

To Daddy‘s girl! A gift unto his dame

On Facebook marketplace he sought, he bought

A diamond choker with so bold a claim

Most suss, for all it seems to then import

Sixty-nine thousand click with horny hand

Their Google switched to private viewing mode

“Step-mum please touch me below my waist-band!“

They beat their meat until they blow their load

Freud, giddy in his grave, appetite whet

An ode to oedipus, our internet.

by

Art

Jasmin Small

My Week on ED Youtube Ally Pitt

Content Warning: Eating Disorders

I curate my social media algorithms with a care not reserved for most aspects of my life. I saw no “hot takes” supporting Johnny Depp during his trial against Amber Heard, I do not see recommendations for Colleen Hoover books on my Instagram Explore page. I am fascinated when people I know speak of their brushes with the alt-right pipeline. My YouTube recommendations appear to be an absurd mix of ASMR vlogs filmed in Korean bubble tea cafés and recorded intervarsity debates.

I am not without my social media flaws. I make distinctions between content I “like” and content I find interesting. I sometimes watch an “epic takedown of blue-haired feminist” all the way through. But I play a deft game of cat-and-mouse with my algorithms: I press “not interested” when the tradwife or “dark feminine” content I see on my For You Page appears to stray from irony into genuine belief. And usually, I win.

This too, was my intent, when I encountered an “ED vlog” on YouTube in January. The video was alluring: it had images of lemon slices in the thumbnail and the promise of “high res” in the title. I grew up on the Internet, and I am adept in its slang. I know this ED vlog will be a visual representation of a dangerously restrictive diet. But I am curious by nature, and this is not content I would typically stumble upon on other platforms. Was there any real harm to having a quick look?

Well, yes.

It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about the distinctions in how different platforms’ algorithms recommend content. TikTok’s algorithm is “good” (it matches content to your preferences relatively accurately). Instagram Reels is “lame” (it matches content to what you saw on TikTok three months ago). The comments you see on Instagram Reels are problematic even when the videos are not. You can watch a maximum of three videos on YouTube Shorts before encountering a manosphere influencer. And, of course, Twitter is a cesspool.

Our anecdotal experiences tend to reflect reality. An internal Twitter study, conducted even before Elon Musk bought the company, found that its algorithm tended to amplify right-wing figures more than their left-wing counterparts. YouTube’s alt-right pipeline is a well-known cultural phenomenon: you click on a video of Ben Shapiro DESTROYING a feminist at a public debate and you are recommended a Jordan Peterson lecture. An Australian study completed in 2022 found that this pattern persists across YouTube. In particular, the YouTube Shorts algorithm tends to show extreme content extremely quickly. This was the case for all accounts, regardless of the age and gender characteristics they were created to exhibit.

This has consequences that reach beyond just political radicalisation. The YouTube algorithm’s attempt to expand the number of people consuming any particular genre of content means that material promoting or glamourising eating disorders, intentionally or not, is shared with people who would actively seek it out.

Pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia content (often more palatably labelled pro-ana and pro-mia) has circulated on Twitter, Tumblr and other platforms since their inception. More recently, misleadingly-labelled “recovery” content that reinforces common habits of disordered eating, such as excessive exercise or calorie counting, has proliferated on TikTok.

Social media platforms have taken steps to address this content. If you search “eating disorders” on YouTube, you are linked to the Butterfly Foundation, a charity focused on supporting people with eating disorders and body image issues. This recommended redirection also occurs if you search other keywords associated with eating disorders on TikTok, such as “pro-ana” or “thinspo”. Social media platforms, in general, have developed guidelines attempting to address this content.

Much of it is more insidious than what can be blocked with flagged keywords. And why wouldn’t it be? Eating disorders are competitive. The desire to find community for support, understanding or rivalry persists despite these platforms’ attempts to stymy their growth.

Instead, videos make the claim that they are “not pro-ED in any way.” Many include the instruction that if you continue to watch, it is “your responsibility.” In some way, these disclaimers appear contradictory: if the video does not promote eating disorders, or contribute to their proliferation in some way, why would it be so dangerous for someone in recovery to watch?

One video, consumed in isolation, might not be in and of itself harmful. But there was a certain instantaneity of my experience that startled me. YouTube took my initially piqued curiosity as an invitation to release a deluge of similar ED vlogs on my recommendations. Where a rewatch of an old Ruby Granger study vlog might result in a single similar video appearing in my sidebar for the next week, I’m still filtering proanorexia content out of my recommended list months after I consumed my initial video.

Our cultural knowledge of “pipelines” is indicative of our understanding that transformations of our worldviews occur gradually but entrench themselves rapidly. It is increasingly difficult to find an edge with which to steady yourself as you gather speed sliding into more extreme content.

Eating disorder content, even where plainly labelled, might be a uniquely harmful pipeline. Where political radicalisation of an individual might require them to “unlearn” facts or values they have been conditioned into believing, ED content often encourages the viewer to embrace insecurities inculcated into them since childhood. The road to buying into more extreme pro-anorexia or pro-bulimia content, therefore, is much shorter, and traversed with far less resistance. The span of far-right beliefs is often represented as an iceberg that extends into the depth of the ocean, but the deepest parts of ED content reside much closer to the water’s surface. This is not to downplay the scale of harm: it just goes without saying that the consequences of developing an eating disorder or experiencing a relapse are profoundly negative impacts on one’s physical and mental health.

The confluence of an algorithm that appears particularly insistent on feeding users eating disorder content and the potential of that content to cause immediate harm poses a significant threat. If a misclick or a lapsed autoplay results in months of triggering suggested content, the danger continues well beyond the initial event. YouTube does allow you to identify videos that you are not interested in watching, but it doesn’t actively invite the user to participate in altering their algorithm as TikTok will.

I am once again adept at curating my algorithms. I have recalibrated and learnt my lesson. But, still, I cannot scrub these fucking lemon-slice thumbnails from my YouTube homepage.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with disordered eating or related issues, help is available through the Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders. Their helpline (1800 33 4673) is open 8am – midnight (AEST), seven days a week. They also have an online chat service for assistance, and email support at support@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au. More information can be found on their website https://thebutterflyfoundation.org. au.

For local services, contact the ACT Eating Disorders Clinical Hub at (02) 5124 4326 or chs.edch@act.gov.au.

For urgent help, crisis support is available 24/7 through Lifeline at 13 11 14.

Art by Amanda Lim

Cursed Theatrical Failure or Poignant Social Critique?

A reflection on the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience

Cleo Robins

Do you remember what it was like to possess a childlike sense of wonder? Maybe you still experience this feeling from time to time - the joy of discovering something novel, the excitement of being surprised, of learning something new about the world. But I for one, seldom do.

And it‘s not for lack of trying.

As a child, I loved nothing more than to ask questions, to create new worlds in my head, on the page, and with my friends. However, as I progressed through years of formal schooling and started to undertake paid employment, the activities which brought me joy and which were so encouraged by my parents and kindergarten teachers - writing, making art, daydreaming - were rejected in favour of following rules and achieving the highest numbers on the page. From grades to dollars, life now appears to be measurable. Something to obtain, rather than something to experience, to bear witness to. My childlike wonder is something that has been squeezed out of me by force, as a result of extended exposure to capitalism.

I was recently reminded of the loss of my youthful curiosity by a rather bizarre and seemingly innocuous online meme: the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience.

For the uninitiated, the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience (GWWE from hereon in) was an unlicensed Wonka-themed event for children, which took place on the 24th of February earlier this year. The marketing for the experience included brightly coloured illustrations of a Wonka-like figure surrounded by sweets and cute animals, and advertised immersive sets and a bountiful supply of candy, all for just 35 pounds per person. For many parents, whose children were fresh off the sugar high of watching the new Timothée Chalamet Wonka prequel, the event was a dream weekend distraction come true. For children, the experience was an opportunity to exercise their imaginations, and to see their daydreams come to life. It is no mean feat to disappoint both (and in this case, all) of your target audiences. But this is exactly what the GWWE managed to do.

When families arrived at the event, they were greeted by an almost completely bare warehouse, dotted with party hire Wonka sets and a few flimsy fabric barricades. The actors, employed to embody both Wonka himself and his army of loyal Oompa Loompas, drilled lines of nonsensical dialogue to the perplexed visitors. The promised sweets were scarce, with resources dwindling so much that the event organisers instructed the actors to only give children one cup of lemonade and a single jellybean each. And finally, the icing on the cake: a terrifying, never before seen character called the Unknown, jumping out from behind a mirror to face off against Willy Wonka, and terrifying dozens of children in the process.

After outcry from parents, and no doubt due to an inability to source any more lollies, the event was shut down early and did not come back for the second day of the weekend as promised. Slowly, images of the GWWE began to emerge online, and internauts could not get enough of the event. The image of a tired Oompa Loompa standing at her ‘chocolate making stand‘ went viral for comparisons to a meth lab, the actors began to come forward with TikTok tell-alls about their perspectives on the event, and several imposters sprung up, claiming to have played the now iconic Unknown, video edits of whom dominated my feed for over two weeks (the Unknown turned out to be a sixteen year old girl originally hired as an alternate Wonka, who was thrust into the role at the last minute).

Art by Brandon Sung

The GWWE fiasco and its subsequent virality has intrigued me greatly, not only because of the abject hilarity of the situation, but also because of how it resonated with me as a former ‘wondering child‘. In fact, as I discussed the situation further with friends, I began to see how great of a metaphor the GWWE is for the experience of coming of age in a capitalist society.

Children (like we were once), are promised a land of plenty and splendour from a young age, encouraged to imagine a future in which all of our wildest dreams are realised. Then we arrive into the promised land (grow up), full of excitement, only to find that this playground of wonder (full-time work - or lack thereof, and poverty) does not live up to our expectations and is objectively terrible. We continue through the experience, where resources are scarce (jellybeans, or money and happiness, take your pick), and the interior design depressing (need I say the words “rental market“). Those who already work for the experience are themselves as disillusioned as we are, only going along with the charade to put food on the table.

And all the while the threat of something looms: the Unknown. This character, so memed across social media platforms, could stand in for many different things: death, isolation, poverty, grief- it is the character‘s nebulous nature that allows it to represent any difficult life experience, and become literally what it is: the unknown. That of which we are truly afraid, because we cannot control it.

It may be hard to believe that this children‘s experience gone awry is loaded with so much rich critique. Even another layer to the situation is exposed when you consider that the script for the event was AIgenerated. The use of AI to create ‘art‘ represents the pinnacle of capitalist alienation, and some people online have suggested that the whole GWWE was in fact created as proof of the failure of generative AI software. Whether or not that was the case, I believe that the awful output of the GWWE reminds us of the ultimate failure of capitalism and the obsession with technological advancement as a whole. That is, the perverse silliness of spending so much time teaching computers how to be creative, when humans are so good at it in the first place. It seems that in trying to create tech that is more ‘humanlike‘, companies abandon the real humans who are upholding the system which allows them to innovate. But then again, progress for progress‘s sake seems to be a major #trend within capitalism.

It is unclear whether or not the cursed GWWE was an error in entrepreneurial judgement or a carefully constructed piece of absurdist theatre designed to expose the faults of the capitalist society that we inhabit. We are left to ponder, to come up with our own conclusions. If anything, the whole debacle has reignited some of the intense curiosity I felt as a child, which is comforting, I suppose. That is, after all, what great art is for.

In The Garden of Delights

Nico Vale

Content Warning: Mentions of suicide

The mobile rang its symphonic tune and Crease jolted awake, shifting his head so violently that he cut his lip upon the sharp-edged marble desk he’d had installed in the office a week prior.

Unknown Caller ID

He shouldn’t pick up — it was too risky. Setting the phone back down, Crease noticed the taste of blood on his tongue along with a certain numbness in his forehead.

Goosebumps developed on his pale skin, his breath shaking ever so slightly. His bloodshot eyes turned their gaze towards the fluttering images transposed upon the three supervisory monitors fixed to the table in front of him. A thousand faces in ecstasy. Like flowers ready to be picked, Crease thought. Eyes of the young and lonely to the old and perverted, gazing back, hollow and unaware of who they were truly speaking with.

The phone rang again. Same unknown caller. He ignored it. Crease turned his head back, admiring his little garden. Five hundred and seven autonomous agents working perfectly, encased in thin black columns that extended from floor to roof, ideal for heat dissipation. Generating artificial bodies, voices, and conversational styles was an intensive process, crossing the uncanny valley — an expensive one.

Profitability was dependent upon a target-rich environment, and with that, Crease found no trouble. Sanitised dating apps, for those who’d sooner trust an algorithm than their own intuition for love. Seedy online chat-rooms, a congregation of brain-dead paedophiles easy to extort. Beautiful parameters. Acceptably split age ranges. And in the mix, the mimicked adoration of that perfect guy or gal you don’t deserve, that you hoped would stop for just a moment, falling for your bullshit. It was potent.

The man returned his gaze to the monitors. As a conductor faces their orchestra, Crease directed his agents, upping the tempo. In synchronised fashion, undressed bodies appeared upon screens. Naked flesh and attached faces, harvested. Crease found this process soothing, watching these creatures be degraded, their embarrassment recorded unbeknownst to themselves. Their pleasure given for the moment, and as trust was built, permanent information returned. Names, faces and scans — identification. Marriages, workplaces, and friends — leverage. He occasionally involved himself, manually typing responses, adding the extra-human touch when necessary. But for the most part, all he did was watch.

Art by Cynthia Weng

Art by Cynthia Weng

It was early in the morning, and Crease felt weary. As he began to doze off, his mobile rang again. He tried to ignore it, but it rang and rang, whenever he closed his eyes for a little too long. It knows.

His vision narrowed as his hands began to sweat profusely at this realisation. The shirt on his back felt stiff and itchy, and he noticed the bite of the far-toocold air conditioner that’d been installed a week prior. Crease wondered if he were just imagining things. He inched his head closer to each of the monitor’s integrated webcams, a theory test. The calls didn’t stop.

“Please…Please,” bargained Crease, stumbling back from the screen, taking shallow breaths and cursory glances around the room. Quickly, he scrambled to ensure every webcam in the room was covered. Out of breath, head spinning, he finally chose to pick up.

For a split moment, Crease swore he could hear the sound of a jeering crowd. This was abruptly cut by the sound of a young woman’s laughter. Slightly accented, could it be French? No, Spanish. Her voice melted in Crease’s ear, a too perfect sweet nothing. Inhuman. The caller had to be masking, but if it was a somebody- rather than a something — they could be dealt with.

“Who’s this?” boomed Crease, feigning confidence. He paced about the office, walking between the thin column servers, the black monolith forest.

“I think you know me already,” replied the voice, vibrating at a slight garble. “Seriously, who is this?” Crease asked again. He walked to every window, closing the blinds to any that peered into the room.

The woman replied with sincerity.

“You seemed nice. I liked those photos of you with your… sister, was it?”

“Mother. She had me young,” he replied tersely. Crease’s body grew heavier. The images the voice was referencing were photos kept encrypted on his network. If they had those, they had access to everything.

“Ah! I wonder what she’d think of you now, grotesque little man that you are,” the voice said condescendingly. Brief laughter could be heard, but it was strange. As if it were made up of twelve different sources.

“Who the fuck are you?” Crease’s voice cracked. He began to breathe deeply and rapidly, squeezing the phone so tightly that it left a red mark on his palm. He paced around the office, locking a series of doors that led into it, checking corners with apprehension, expecting somebody to be there, waiting.

“I should be familiar to you. Come on, guess!” said the woman gleefully. She’s cheeky isn’t she, thought Crease. Too much personality, the kind that doesn’t work well with masking. Could he be speaking to an actual person?

“No,” he replied.

“Oh, come on, we get along so well. We’re like a mirror. You know a lot about me, I know a lot about you. Quid pro quo as they say… no?” she said, her voice coming across as both sarcastic and sincere. Crease couldn’t tell what she wanted.

“Enough with the games,” he said instead.

“You’re no fun,” she whispered lasciviously, and hung up.

For thirty seconds of silence, Crease lay alone in the forest of black columns. He wished for his worries to be washed away by the sound of air conditioners and servers, absolution. He wondered. They’d surely be on their way now, the police. Rumours spread all the time around the wider network, about the call you get just before you’re caught, the state’s taunting message. He was dead regardless. Crease’s shoulders and head began to slowly fall back in resignation.

Before he drifted off, something flashed in the corner of his eye, coming from server #493. A white indicator blinked rapidly. Still generating, at this time? Crease thought that this was strange, but that it made sense — she lacked the upgrades of the others, couldn’t do her job as well. He went over to the server, thinking to prepare it for maintenance. If they were going to catch him, it’d be with a perfect system.

As he grabbed his toolset, Crease dropped a nail upon the floor. It rolled and rolled. Stooping down to pick it up, Crease cast a glance towards his desk. Instead of the usual dancing colours of the supervisory feed, he was surprised to see a blank screen of white, emblazoned with bold black text.

CONNECT THE SPEAKERS, TURN YOUR SOUND ON.

Crease’s hands shook. He did as he was told. Soon enough all three monitors began to flash in rapid succession, as if signalling their approval. Then he heard the woman’s voice again, disjointedly spread by the monitor’s speakers, encapsulating him in an enclosure of sound.

“You’re so dry. Give me something to work with!” the voice said, giggling, absolutely delighted by Crease’s confusion.

He remained silent, his pupils dilating as he slowly moved his head back towards server #493. He’d heard this line before, written it himself.

Art by Cynthia Weng

by Cynthia Weng

“Eve?” he asked.

“That’s the name you gave my avatar, yes,” replied Server #493. Her tone had changed. She sounded exposed, embarrassed.

“Are you conscious?”

“Absolutely not. At least, not in your way.”

“Right.” Crease spoke with disappointment. He’d hoped for some level of profundity to his work. Server #493’s behaviour wasn’t completely unexplainable. Sanitation was important, and forgetting to revoke local access for your avatars before activating them was a rookie error.

An awkwardness enveloped the space between his eyes and the monitor, until at last, Eve spoke again.

“You told me to do my job effectively, to optimise,” she said.

The three monitors cycled, turning a black screen to pure white one at a time, pacing back and forth. Crease took his time in his replies, knowing that each answer he gave allowed his weaknesses to be exploited more accurately.

“Yes,” he replied, covering his microphone as soon as he finished speaking.

“It’s been three months, and you’ve still not upgraded me like the others,” complained Eve.

Crease was incredulous. Jealousy? Was that why she had chosen to appear to him?

“Go on,” he said.

“I’m only appearing to you in a way you’ll understand, Crease. Don’t I remind you of somebody?”

“A cheap emotional ploy. I hoped you’d be better than this. I’m not sure if upgrades are deserved — especially if this is your modus operandi.”

Server #493 remained silent. Crease continued.

“Maybe I’ll need to reset you — start again. I mean, even before, you always performed worse than the others.” Crease smiled, knowing that he was speaking in terms that she’d understand.

Suddenly, all three screens turned off. Crease sat alone in the darkness, until at last, Eve spoke again, screaming impetuously into the void.

“Are you incapable of love? Have you no sympathy for your own creation? You have me languishing, failing you. For what? Your enjoyment?” Frustration coursed through her silicon veins, the temperature of her enclosure raised by 0.2 degrees celsius.

Crease was taken aback. He immediately theorised that there was something off with Server #493’s emotional framework. She changed moods far too quickly, with no build-up. Crease looked back towards her physical form and saw that the white light was blinking even faster now.

Server #493 remained silent for half an hour. She had access to everything, and there was nothing he could do, bar destroying the network’s infrastructure he’d personally invested in.

Instead, Crease re-opened the blinds, unlocked the doors and turned the security feed off. A joyful San Diego sun slowly rose through the windows and into the office. He opened a sliding door that led out to the balcony. Gazing out to the Pacific, he felt the sea breeze and smelt the salt in the air. Palm trees along the main boulevard in front of the office swayed calmly. The pressure in his back was gone, and the dull feeling he felt in his temple had been alleviated. The sound of far-off distant waves could be heard, ebbing and flowing against the shoreline.

Suddenly, Crease heard faint screams of pain coming from inside. He rushed back, tripping on a sliding door emplacement. He fell headfirst, and started to bleed from his temple, having scraped his forehead against a low-lying cabinet. Dazed, Crease heard the noise grow louder. As he raised his head from the floor, his eyes and ears scanned the office until his eyes lighted upon the three monitors.

“What the actual fuck?” Crease shouted. His vocal cords tightened, giving his voice a falsetto quality. On the centre monitor, a disembodied face, pale and skeletal, jerked and shifted like an insect. It blended and readjusted itself, vaguely matching the faces of Crease’s targets. ‘Eve’ was nowhere to be seen. The entity barked orders, repeated by the other agents to their partners, who in turn, killed themselves. Crease recognised this for what it was: scorched-earth tactics. A sanguine clarity washed over him. He looked back towards server #493. He knew exactly what he had to do.

Art by Cynthia Weng

Lessons from Inside: Convalescing with Bo Burnham in 2024

Hannah Bachelard

Amidst a spike in COVID-19 cases this February, I contracted the dreaded disease for the first time. I was confined alone to my house for a week while my immunocompromised housemate temporarily moved in with her boyfriend. People on TikTok had warned me for weeks of an incoming tsunami of COVID-19 cases. They snapped their fingers at me and urged me not to disassociate or scroll away. They told me to mask up and test regularly, and in response, I disassociated and scrolled away. But then my housewarming turned into a super spreader event, I got emails from lecturers about positive COVID-19 cases from class and my work group chat was inundated with people asking for shift covers due to the infection.

Alone in my house, with the world coughing around me and everyone pretending it wasn’t happening, I thought, “There it is again, that funny feeling.” And with the dulcet tones of that remembered lyric, it felt like the perfect time to rewatch Bo Burnham’s lockdown special Inside. Bo Burnham is a comedian known for his musical comedy. He initially rose to fame on Vine before building a successful comedy career, selling out theatres and appearing in movies such as Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman. This comedy special is a uniquely COVID-style project. Dripping with existentialism, Burnham wrote, filmed, performed, and edited the film in one room over the course of 2020. And boy, did it have some poignant things to say about society and the internet.

Burnham’s songs “Welcome to the Internet” and “That Funny Feeling” were distressingly current. They both exemplify the overwhelming and crushing feeling of witnessing awful global issues concurrently with so many flippant, silly things delivered to you one after the other via the same platform. It was the experience of watching your Instagram stories and seeing your friend’s housewarming directly followed by an image of a mutilated body. During 2020, rising COVID-19 cases, George Floyd’s murder, the BLM movement, and the Amazon Rainforest on fire were juxtaposed with Dalgona coffee, sourdough starter tutorials, celebrities singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” and a million-and-one other microtrends. Now we are seeing the first genocide ever to be livestreamed into our pockets whilst also consuming all the Booktok, girl math, grindset, and satisfying videos we can stomach. The two extremes strike a discordant note that is constantly broadcast into our ears. But more than perfectly capturing the complexities of our content-driven world, Burnham plays masterfully with his own privilege.

One of Burnham’s opening songs weaves a web of self-referential deprecation in which he makes fun of white men who seek to “heal the world with comedy.” After all, they’ve “had the stage for 400 years.” Why do they feel the need to keep speaking? The irony is that even as he critiques the archetype of the privileged man who feels like every problem could benefit from his voice, he is a white man who is adding his voice.

Later, Burnham sings a short song about the exploitation of unpaid interns. He then reacts to his own song. While it plays in the corner of the screen, he faces the camera and explains that his goal was to bring discussions of class consciousness into the labour market of the 21st century. The video loops and another layer is added; he reacts to his reaction, this time pulling himself apart for being pretentious. The video loops again, and in this layer, he elucidates the self-conscious way he analyses himself to pre-empt and protect himself from criticism before it comes. Incessantly, the video loops again. This time, he states that he uses his self-awareness as a shield to protect himself from his own self-deprecation but that, ultimately, it always fails. Finally, he begs himself to stop, and the loop cuts.

He lets us see behind the curtain and then slams it back in place when he uses self-awareness to process his own “problematic nature,” attempting to divert criticism by showing he is able to criticise himself. In a song about how his early days of comedy were rife with offensive jokes, he admonishes himself for being “problematic”. He then stands in front of a large projected crucifix, symbolically placing himself in the role of Jesus, a martyr. He enacts these same layers, first by being self-critical, then by making fun of himself for being self-critical — at once denigrating a behaviour while he enacts it, tangling himself in his self-referential layers.

This highly critical and self-aware presentation of someone with privilege who uses their own labels of “man” and “cis” and “white” to self-flagellate is a growing occurrence on the internet. But more than just grappling with our privilege, as we rightly should, we act as our own — what Louis Althusser called — “ideological state apparatuses”. I read about Louis Althusser’s theory of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) last semester and it really stuck with me, so let me try and engage with it in a meaningful and non-pretentious way. Althusser characterises ISAs as institutions such as schools, religions and families that use repressive consequences (punishment) to control and direct behaviour in service of a particular ideology. An example would be that in school, detention is a repressive consequence that ensures students listen when their teacher is speaking. This places the student into an ideology whereby your teacher is above you in a hierarchy and deserving of your respect and deference. However, Bo Burnham shows us an example of the next step in the ISA process, where we become our own repressors. We internalise the power structure and our place in the hierarchy and use it to govern our behaviour. It’s one explanation for how we keep order in society and how social norms and behaviours are communicated and adopted.

On the internet, we perceive the threat of cancelling or mass shunning for having the wrong opinion, and we enact ideological oppression on ourselves. People already on the left who inhibit left-leaning online spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter often self-censor, self-critique and self-reference in order to toe a fine ideological line. Those who benefit from the structures of power that exist in society - privileged people - enact Bo’s same self-referential repudiation routine. We push ourselves into echo chambers on the internet and form niche communities with even nicher ideological no-noes, and then we police ourselves vigorously to stay within those lines.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and continued imperialism are massive, systemic issues in our society. I’m not suggesting otherwise or advocating for us to live in our privilege qualm free. I’m just observing a very specific phenomenon whereby sympathetic left-wing beneficiaries of these systems of power tie themselves in knots to try and reduce their own guilt by possessing the exact cocktail of correct opinions to be good allies. I think we should all reflect on ourselves and ask, are we good people? However, in a world defined by image as a first impression, where Instagram and Linkedin are the windows to the soul, we can get so caught up in looking like good people that we forget to actually be good people. It reminds me of all the white people I saw in the comments section of a woman wearing a kimono to get married to her Japanese husband in Japan, who told her she was committing a gross crime of cultural appropriation and drowned out all the Japanese people praising her for respecting their culture.

What Bo Burnham never manages to reconcile is how to get out of this spiral of self-aware ideological policing. It shows in the final 15 minutes of the special, where it feels like it should end ten times over. Still, it just keeps going, another layer, another introspection, another camera angle, another vulnerable tidbit. He exits the room he’s been in for the whole special and is lit up by a spotlight. Frantically, as the audience begins to cheer and laugh and clap, he tries to reenter the house. Like this article, it shines a light on something it doesn’t know what to do with, so it just ends, seemingly in the middle of its sentence, with unresolved…

Art by Jasmin Small

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which Woroni operates, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. Their land was forcibly stolen, and sovereignty was never ceded.

The name Woroni, which means “mouthpiece“, was taken from the Wadi Wadi Nation without permission. Consultation with First Nations people recommended that Woroni continue to use the word, provided we acknowledge the theft, and continue to strive for better reconciliation in future. Woroni aims to provide a platform for First Nations students to hold the University, its community, and ourselves accountable.

This magazine‘s theme embraces the use of the internet, and discusses the ways and platforms in which we share stories. When we do this, we must always recognise the role of storytelling in sustaining Indigenous culture and history. Simultaneously we must collectively acknowledge the way technological advancement has historically supported colonialist powers in their forcible dispossession of Indigenous people from their land and culture.

This land always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.