CRASHING OUT IN AKIHABARA

Ten years ago, a young Japanese otaku guy made it his personal mission to ruin my idol performances. He’d show up at our shows in a small street gang of other Japanese otaku. Most of them had Japanese nettouyo or chigyuu physiognomy.

These smaller shows are one-coin shows, because they typically cost about 500 JPY(around $3 in today’s money, but closer to $6 then). Because the shows were so cheap and informal, any 22-year-old schmuck who had a bad day could come in and heckle girls for fun.

Akihabara, throw spitballs, and yell cruel chants while I was singing. I almost CRASHED OUT in Akihabara. I wanted to box this man so badly.

Last week, he slid into my Instagram DMs in Japanese: “Long time no see! You’re so beautiful!” We chatted a bit before he sent a photo, and I realized—it was the heckler. “When are you coming back to Japan? I’d love to catch up ^^”

I confronted him directly: “Why are you messaging me? You bullied me lol.”

His response? “Was I bullying? I was trying to get to know you.”

THE SHORTEST JOB I EVER HAD

I GOT FIRED 1 DAY AFTER WORKING AS A TOUR GUIDE IN AKIHABARA.

There’s a famous maid tour guide company in Akihabara that I fantasized about working at since I was in high school in Michigan. Although I got past the initial auditions for an actual Japanese maid cafe, at Home, it felt intimidating to me. Albeit I’d probably also be horrible at the job. As a fan of Akihabara subculture, something about sharing that passion for the district with others appealed to me.

After university, I met with the woman who owned this small maid tour guide company. She was a middle-aged, toothless battleaxe of a woman who immediately complained that my selfie game was mid. “If you work for me, you’ll need to start taking your selfies from a proper angle.” She was right. I had horrible selfies. I was also pretty shocked by her directness, which I found considerably rare with Tokyoites.

During this meeting, Satou, my hipster manager, attended as well to understand how this partnership could impact my idol work. When it was time to clink their beer glasses together and kanpai, she looked Satou sternly in the eye and held her glass up high. This was remarkable to me at the time because only a week prior, I saw another person, an idol event producer, hold his glass pretty low in deference to Satou. Japan has some weird social rules, like seating arrangements in a professional environment and holding your glass lower to defer to someone. We love a woman who doesn’t budge.

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"They're all beautiful. I want to disappear." I spoke under my breath at the beginning of my dance class, prophesying my resolution for the day's class. My butt was planted firmly on my yoga mat, but my brain was in a pit of self-deprecation. No mind to be found, my body noodled itself through the opening warm-up.

Although this warm-up was the same as always, the instructor made a point to correct my movements for this portion. She hadn't seen me much before, as this wasn't the typical class I attended. I wondered if the extra attention she gave me was due to her perception that I was newer than I actually was. Certainly, I can't be that bad?

As the class progressed and we moved on to the dance portion, I marveled at how my willowy classmates effortlessly mastered each move. Each step I took seemed to be wrong, and with each correction the instructor gave me, I managed to mess up even more. I fell, and I got up and continued again, and fell. At the end of class, the teacher put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Thanks so much for coming. You did great." But not in the way where I genuinely believed she thought I did great, more like a participation award "bless your heart" way.

Changed clothes, and one of my beautiful classmates for the day said, "Are you coming to the supplementary class tomorrow? Hope to see you there :)"

What a bitch! She's saying that I need to do more work. It's not my fault you're tall and beautiful, and I suck.

As I walked home, all sorts of injustices raced through my head.

The teacher psyched me out because she kept correcting me! They’re all naturally better than I am! I wish I were thinner, taller, and graceful-ler!

But then something shifted. The mental spiral started reorganizing itself into something more useful:

If I envied the other women's bodies? Well, I could either go more to the gym, get plastic surgery, or decide to stop being upset, come to terms with my body the way it is.

I'd like to think I'm pretty aware of my feelings and can recognize when a response to someone else is due to an insecurity. I don't tend to really covet what others have in a malicious way. I don't wish them any harm, I don't feel schadenfreude, nor do I think others should have less to make me feel better about what I have. I tend to turn that feeling inward or blame myself. With that said, other people may experience these emotions differently. It's a human experience.

A common fear about being seen is feelings of unworthiness, but an equally challenging discomfort that many face is the fear that others will feel bad about themselves. Maybe if you’re too seen and someone develops envy, they’ll punish you for it. Or what if they punish themselves? Nobody wants to make anyone feel bad about themselves, right? So you shrink away with hopes of dodging the evil eye’s scorn.

Something even deeper that I or "we" can do is ask myself: what does that envy make me feel about myself? Perhaps not excelling in a dance class is triggering feelings of being "stupid" that I thought I had resolved in my childhood. Perhaps it's my ego nagging at me to quit this new practice in an effort to save itself from perceived failures? This reflection only came about because I allowed myself to look at the envy I experienced with grace.

Envy is a great thing, and if you spark it in others, you're helping them out! If you feel it, that's great too. It may not feel like it at the moment, but all emotions (even the unpleasant ones) are hints from your higher consciousness about parts of yourself that you may be neglecting.

When that beautiful classmate invited me to the supplementary class, my insecurities allowed my immediate reaction to read malice into kindness. But what if she genuinely wanted me there? What if my envy was telling me something important about my own desires? Not just to be beautiful or graceful, but to be the kind of person who shows up consistently, who doesn't let embarrassment keep them from growing?

Envy isn't just about wanting what someone else has. It's about recognizing what you're capable of becoming. The uncomfortable truth is that we rarely envy things that are completely outside our realm of possibility. You don't envy a bird for flying because you fundamentally accept that you can't fly. But you might envy someone's confidence, their skill, their apparent ease in the world, because some part of you recognizes that these things are achievable.

Envy is good because it tells the truth about what we want and what we believe is possible for ourselves. The discomfort is just the price of admission to growth.

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This is the entrance to La Bodega Negra in London’s Soho District. Which is a…yuppie Mexican restaurant.

Take a walk through London's Soho nightlife district today. You may pass by a few of the notorious walk-ups with signs advertising "models" and perhaps a few adult entertainment shops, but this is a meager cry from the district's history as one of the world's red-light districts. Yet you'd easily be able to find bars advertising "authentic red-light atmosphere" with LED strips and cocktails named after sex workers. Journalist, friend, and former housemate of mine, Frankie Miren, wrote about this phenomenon a decade ago for VICE. London's Soho has essentially become a brothel-themed open-air adult amusement park despite the vibrant culture of sex workers in the area being rooted out due to the high costs of living and the industry becoming more transient.

An aside: I have a larger theory that by looking at trends of how sex is sold, we can understand the wider economy(sex via pornography being one of the first things sold on the internet, AI companionship as one of the first major use cases for consumer AI, the list goes on).

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Frankie's observation about Soho in the mid-2010s was apt, and additionally, a lot has changed with the ubiquity of subcultures, high cost of living, COVID, and how youth interact. Arguments about gentrification impacting artist cultures go back quite a way. Notably, Sharon Zukin's The Cultures of Cities (1995) documented the emergence of this pattern in New York.

However, I’d argue that this issue isn't purely a financial one, but also a reflection of how our socialization patterns have been fundamentally disrupted.

What is a subculture?

So let's initiate this discussion by establishing what a subculture is. A subculture's most defining piece is that it is sub, and transgresses against while coexisting within the context of the mainstream culture. Dick Hebdige's seminal Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) identified subcultures as spaces of resistance, where marginalized groups create alternative meaning systems through style, language, and spatial practice.

It’s important to remember that marginalization in the case of subcultures can be for sexual orientation, neurotype, age, socioeconomic class etc.

The shared interests that usually form subcultures are fashion, media (gaming/music/film/art) or ideology. Often these interests intersect with one another or one may be a dominant interest that gathers people but the other emerges from it.

Here are a few young people of Angola’s Goth scene - their music is influenced by 1970s British nuwave but their fashion is also influenced by this music and some of their own stylings as well.

Historically, subcultures required some physical infrastructure as IRL was the primary means of communication. Think of a grimy club that birthed niche new artists or the cheap apartment where artists can afford to experiment with one another, and so on all add value because they allow for people with novel affinities to gather and create a shared culture with one another. This physical infrastructure also typically leads to the development of a symbiosis between local economies, which either develop to cater to group members or are created by them.

To have and sustain this set-up, there must be a critical mass of people with these niche yet shared affinities to regularly keep this community alive. Hence, this is a phenomenon characteristic of urban areas.

Subculture lifecycles

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Despite members who may claim that subcultures change due to sell outs or posers, it's usually because 1) members age out of the community and don’t have as much time to dedicate to the group 2) wider societal/cultural changes (and humans like novelty!)

We can see that the traditional model of subcultural development usually follows this:

1. Group of young people gather in a shared area due to some affinity (traditionally music, but other factors work) and create culture around this physical space, which accommodates and shapes them

2. The local economy caters to this physical presence, the two become symbiotically intertwined.

3. External capital notices step 2 and begins commodification which ultimately leads to the culture becoming a tourist attraction.

For example, consider Tokyo's Harajuku fashion subcultures, one of the few that can be assigned to a specific geographic place. Harajuku became internally iconic as high school Japanese girls became an arbitrator of all things cool in the early aughts. Visit Tokyo's Harajuku today and the district has essentially become a tourist attraction for visitors foreign and domestic alike. Many subculture community members complain that Western tourists are ruining the local vibe and some even refuse to attend the space due to being harassed or having their photos taken without consent which is a huge faux pas in Japanese society.

Yet something interesting persists in Harajuku that illuminates why this subculture(or the many subcultures that call Harajuku home) will never totally dissipate:

1. Many of the small boutiques selling unique fashion and adhering to this subculture don't sell clothing online and work symbiotically with local influencers.

2. Fashion shows, fashion meetups, events and the like in the scene remain intrinsically tied to the area itself.

Therefore, although the district has become something of a tourist attraction, it still remains a place for young Japanese people who are into alternative clothing to gather, albeit in a different form.

Something similar to Harajuku happened to London's Camden Town, formerly a punk rock stronghold, now home to tourist attractions and is somewhat of a caricature of its former self. You may be able to get a bootleg Ramones T-shirt from a vendor and proudly boast that you got it from the historic Camden Town market.

This commodification makes practical sense. People who want to make money, such as real estate investors, hotel marketers, and tour guides, further make the area "uncool" because spaces no longer remain underground and cease serving as a home for the tribe in question.

Contemporary Disruption

OK, so now that we’ve established that some disruption is pretty normal for subcultures, it’s time we explore how the new model of subculture creation (and commodification) ultimately impacts this lifecycle.

While high costs of living in major cities can be blamed for a lot of these changes(small experimental shops can no longer take the risks to have physical stores, people can’t afford to live in cities*) An exception to this may be Tokyo which has remained to have a very low cost of living for the industrialized world!

However, given this established trend of subculture death and the overall decline in industrialized nations having "third spaces" (Ray Oldenburg's concept of community gathering places beyond home and work) combined with a total disruption of socialization patterns due to the advent of social media, I predict the new model of subculture lifecycle will look fundamentally different:

Contemporary Subculture Lifecycle:

1. Group Connects over shared affinity and forms bonds in digital spaces (Typically via online) (The internet offers an infinite critical mass of people, no urban areas needed and the subculture can form/communicate instantly over social media platforms, Discord, TikTok, etc.)

2. Instant market attention (Platform algorithms, viral trends, influencer marketing, fast fashion all quickly serve as a reaction)

3. Simulacra ??? (The aesthetic gets packaged and sold before any culture fully forms, maybe IRL, but it is almost as a “meme” of the trend or some tertiary observation of it rather than being of it.)

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Under this new model members of the group may not even meet or know each other in real life. They may not ever hear each other’s voices or see the other person’s real face. The infinite critical mass of the internet allows for more niche, specified and creative groups to form but this sort of splintering may also mean that the groups may become more sequestered away from mainstream culture. There is also more of an ephemeral nature to content on the internet, so we see subcultures as more of a consumer good, a simulacra rather than a culture.

On Tiktok, these are merely the “aesthetic” of the week. Take the “mob wife” trend - which is essentially young women cosplaying as the wives of fictional mob bosses. Essentially, some women tried it out and it got picked up by Tiktok’s algorithm and then it became the “aesthetic” being sold rather than being based on fans of the actual mafia. In this case, it’s even like a simulacra of a simulacra.

Japan’s cholo subculture is based on a “primary” subculture, which is actual Chicano people of Los Angeles. However, it still features the same typical features of “traditional” subcultures that were not usually birthed directly from the internet.

An interesting example of a subculture that didn’t begin with internet culture but has been ultimately shifted by it is Japan’s otaku culture. Consuming the materials of the subculture cannot be done without technology. Consider Tokyo's Akihabara, the “mecca” of Otaku, which began as a post-war black market for electronics, a place where tinkerers and outsiders could find rare components. Between the 1970s and the 2000s, the space became more synonymous with the "otaku" subculture. Technology peddlers found a market selling to fans of anime, video games, manga, cute girl idols and the like. As rare electronic components became easier to source online, their physical presence in Akihabara became increasingly rare. Therefore the market shifted from physical electronics to fan goods, which has also declined in recent years due to expanded online shopping. Now it's become a service-based economy centered on concept cafes, essentially young, beautiful women selling a simulacra of cosplay subculture to tourists and otaku. Because the actual subculture doesn’t produce many material goods(besides, again, some computer parts which may be sourced cheaply online or some items like figurines), the culture itself and the local economy have to shift their market to be purely a simulacra of the actual thing.

There were other random instances that contributed to Akihabara's transformation, such as a mass stabbing event in 2008 that dramatically impacted the emerging street culture there. Today, Akihabara primarily exists to service male fantasies at “concept cafes” - which says in its name, the main selling point is the “concept” of the cafe. They are usually small bars where girls in odd or niche cosplay outfits(like pirates, ninjas, shrine maidens etc) chat with patrons and stimulate anime culture because streaming has made it so you don’t really buy physical anime anymore.

Considering Baudrillard's actual concept of simulacra, we now live in an era where the copy precedes the original. Digital subcultures can be commodified before they fully develop physical infrastructure, creating what amounts to subcultures-as-aesthetic rather than subcultures-as-community.

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What do these changes to subcultures mean?

Subcultures serve crucial social functions:

Social Laboratory: Subcultures offer spaces for experimenting with various ways of living, relating, and organizing society.

Political Resistance: Authentic subcultures often challenge dominant power structures in ways that commodified versions cannot.

Community Care: Subcultural spaces often provide mutual aid, a sense of belonging, and support for individuals marginalized by mainstream society.

When these functions don’t get a chance to actually form the absolute value, the sum they add also gets diminished. You can buy aesthetics, but that isn’t forming a shared community and the values of community will likely not be felt.

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My first time visiting Sweden was for Christmas in 2017. It seemed like the perfect place to experience a white christmas and imagined it as a socialist socially progressive utopian. To my dismay, I was told that I wouldn’t be able to buy any alcohol for my AirBnB because “alcohol is only sold at state run stores and they’re closed for Christmas.”

Well, why is alcohol only run at state-run stores? Until the mid 20th century, The Swedish government did not trust it’s adult citizens’ abilities to manage their own alcohol consumption so they rationed it. These state-run stores and their monopoly on alcohol distribution gave me a peak into North Western European Protestant paternalistic longhouse adjacent protectionist policies.

Gorski’s The Disciplinary Revolution talks extensively about the protestant(specifically Calvinist) history of state intervention into private life.

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The United Kingdom’s new Online Safety Act, championed by Labour front-benchers, now forces every adult site to run hard age checks and quietly urges ISPs to throttle or block VPN traffic that helps users dodge them. In the first week of enforcement, Ofcom launched probes into 34 porn platforms, while VPN downloads in Britain spiked more than 300 percent.

Be warned: if you begin to hear lawmakers scream “Won’t someone please think of the children!” a civil liberty is next on the chopping block.

Labour ministers lean on classic Protestant shame tactics. Tech Secretary Peter Kyle smeared Nigel Farage’s opposition to the bill by invoking Jimmy Savile, distorting or ignoring the fact that Savile was protected for decades by the BBC, Parliament, and even Margaret Thatcher, and was exposed only because anonymous users on the very internet Labour now wants to muzzle shared evidence outside establishment channels!

Labor party’s Jess Phillips who is a supporter of the bill also likened Farage to Savile, who was protected for decades by the British establishment and exposed due to anonymous internet users. Odd.

This recent crackdown falls squarely in the tradition of northern European protestant protectionism. The same reflex outlawed “face-sitting” and most BDSM in UK porn in 2014, and arrested British citizens for posting offensive memes on social media.

According to The Times, as of 2023, British police arrest more than 30 citizens per day for offensive social media posts.

This protectionism also birthed Sweden’s 1999 Nordic Model, which is a law that criminalizes buying sex while claiming to protect women(yet routinely sweeps migrant sex workers into police custody or deports them).

I saw the fallout of this policy firsthand at a 2019 Stockholm conference marking the model’s twentieth anniversary. One activist friend described an Eastern-European woman who learned, only after surgery, that Sweden’s health service had performed a hysterectomy on her. Such a nice, kind, ✨feminist✨ society.

Underneath the welfare-state lies the same paternalism: the state knows best, pleasure is suspect, and “protection” justifies coercion.

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Where activists messed up

A huge misstep from all of this was the culture created by activists from the past few decades or so. Although well-meaning, they often frame porn crackdowns as sex-negativity versus sexual liberation fight. Huge mistake. This was always a matter of civil liberties and when you add sex/sexuality it hijacks people’s brains beyond rationality.

Larry Flynt won Hustler’s First Amendment case by appealing not to erotic freedom but to broad speech rights an argument ordinary voters understand. Britain lacks a U.S.-style free-speech clause, yet the principle still matters: bad actors want to police the internet because free information is a stronger weapon than any army. It has been that way since the inception of the internet and decade by decade bad actors have been eroding that freedom. We must resist.

Yes, hyper-stimulating porn can harm developing brains. We should still oppose age-verification dragnets that harvest IDs and blacklist privacy tools. Sex symbolizes (and is) creation itself. Therefore, ceding control of that to the state hands it a veto over art, dissent, and ultimately over thought.

If Western democracies intend to survive, they must defend the widest possible zone of expression, including smut, while punishing only actual coercion or abuse. Anything less repeats the old Protestant cycle of moral panic and state mandated paternalism.

Supplementary content

From a film that I love called The People vs. Larry Flynt, an account of the life and trial of Hustler magazine’s founder.

In late November 2024, Dr. Ally Louks went viral for her dissertation, “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.” Her sudden fame resonated with many people’s frustration about what they see as decadence in non-STEM fields. In 2020, when I completed my undergraduate dissertation, I considered pursuing a PhD in cultural anthropology. My hesitation then, like the backlash Louks faces now, came from the sense that some academic work appears navel-gazing, juvenile, and narcissistic. In an era where universities have replaced churches as arbiters of truth, many are tired of what feels like decades of finger-wagging by scholars who seem disconnected from reality.

Some observers claim this criticism is misogyny. The “softer” social sciences and humanities, where women predominate, tend to receive less respect. Perhaps there is a tinge of truth in that, and I have thoughts about politicization and replication crises in these fields that I will save for another post.

Still, the backlash cannot be attributed solely to sexism. Whenever NASA* spends a fortune to smash an asteroid just cuz, people shout, “That money should have fed hungry kids instead.”

*spent? Does NASA even exist anymore? lulz

As of last week, Fields Medalist Terence Tao posts that the U.S. government has suspended virtually every NSF and NIH grant at UCLA, including his own pure-math funding, over claims the campus “failed to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias.” This funding pull was primarily due to UCLA allowing pro-Palestine protesters, but the sentiment that many have in response to this is the same: information and the pursuit of it based on sheer curiosity is not worthy enough, on its own, to triumph over other values that we hold.

To the vast majority, the only “worthy incentives " for pursuing information are curing an awful disease we are afraid may kill us(or our loved ones) or making lots of $$$.

Smell studies and mathematics could not be more different from one another, yet both incidents poked the same raw nerve: people are tired of what feels like decades of finger-wagging and bottomless funding for work that seems disconnected from ordinary life and is unclear about its purpose.

There is a general distrust of research for its own sake and information for the sake of merely gathering and synthesizing knowledge.

In this post, I’ll explore:

• What is the value of information for information’s sake?

• When does this become diminishing returns?

• What are some long-term use cases for having a ton of information archived?

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How much is too much?

When I say “information for information’s sake,” I mean knowledge gathered with no immediate promise of profit or lifesaving utility. Pure curiosity, in other words. Some worry that we humans lack the storage capacity for endless data, yet modern cloud infrastructure can warehouse exabytes at trivial cost. So what is really too much?

Perhaps, the real bottleneck is cognitive, not physical. Claude Shannon demonstrated that adding bits increases entropy, but it does not necessarily mean that. Empirical work bears this out: a 2023 meta-review of 180 information-overload studies reported that comprehension and decision accuracy fall twenty to forty percent once data volume crosses a cognitive saturation threshold, and a 2024 study in Information & Management found that dashboard-flooded employees grew less trustful of expert advice, defaulting to gut heuristics instead.

Cultural “overfitting”?

I recently remembered intricate Black-American hand-clap games from my girlhood. As American schools have become more ethnically integrated and children spend less time with off-screen play, many of the rhymes and hand games are being forgotten over time. Surely someone has a dissertation on that, I thought. Half flippantly but also wondering, does it matter if this tradition is lost in time or saved for some purpose we can’t really conceive of yet?

Cataloguing every custom is noble until we drown future scholars in trivia. Entire civilizations flourished for millennia, yet we don’t even know what they called themselves because their records vanished. Would rediscovering every lost inscription change modern life? Perhaps, or perhaps it would sit in a digital attic that no one opens.

What are such diminishing returns of funding, producing, and investing in wide-scale information gathering efforts that may have little to no impact on life? Will these factoids just be more noise to academics who could use their intellect on worthier causes?

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Information ≠ insight

History has also shown that when technology increases information transmission, it often comes with social upheaval due to the new information that it facilitates.

See: the Protestant Reformation/Enlightenment’s printing press, radios, and the early 20th century, the modern internet, and global social destabilization.

It is possible that the production of more information leads to less overall cohesion. Some researchers have dubbed our current period as one of "cyber balkanization”. Although mass media was somewhat an anomaly that didn’t exist prior to the 19th/20th century, neither did nation-states in their current forms. A society without mass media, a shared culture, and a clear vision in an environment with an endless amount of information may pose trouble for maintaining such nation-states' peace.

Potential Value of “make-work” scholarship

This isn’t directly related to the information itself, but rather to the potential social benefits of funding such research. Even if the information itself may never have much of an “impact”, pragmatically, shepherding academics off into corners where they can play may be a good thing.

Doctoral study acts as a social capacitor, keeping restless minds occupied, building cultural capital, and preventing an overeducated yet underemployed class from festering into backlash politics. Many brilliant people are simply not suited for corporate life.

Also, in applied fields such as Human-Computer Interaction, industry doesn’t have the luxury of chasing every weird idea; academics do. Xerox PARC and Stanford Research Institute midwifed the mouse, the GUI, and early NLP. Tao’s own Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics (IPAM) runs summer programs whose alumni now lead teams at Google, NVIDIA, and NASA.

Takeaway

Too little information starves culture; too much drowns it. A true measure of a society’s prosperity may be the ability to study underwater basket weaving to one’s heart’s content.

Tangentially Related Supplementary Content

Here’s an hour-long YouTube documentary about Marion Stokes, a woman who obsessively recorded television news broadcasts 24 hours a day for over three decades, creating what is believed to be the world’s most comprehensive collection of American TV news.

The information metabolism required to operate with agency in our current age has fundamentally altered how we experience time. I’m not a physicist, so I don’t understand much about time dilation. However, the acceleration of information flow and our limited capacity to process it consciously fundamentally alter our shared perception of time.

Our bodies’ constant attempts at processing collapse the boundaries between discrete moments, creating what I've come to experience as a “disorientating nowness” in which past, present, and future blur. At first glance, this may resemble what New Thought writers like Eckhart Tolle call “The Power of Now.” But on closer inspection, it feels more like we’re sleepwalking into a passivity that fractures the body from the mind. A continuous stream of data floods our consciousness, while our bodies (and nervous systems) remain suspended in a paralyzing state of anticipation for the next hit.

Our attention is trained toward inaction, and our agency is outsourced to this external flow.

McLuhan understood media as extensions of our senses, but couldn’t have anticipated how cognitive architecture would shift when bombarded by multiple sensory channels. This restructuring of consciousness privileges rapid context-switching over sustained attention.

What Postman feared about television’s erosion of discourse now feels quaint. We’ve moved beyond mere entertainment into something more insidious: a perpetual state of partial attention that fragments our focus and sense of self. We know more than ever, but understand less.

Reality itself has become elastic. We inhabit personalized ecosystems that construct divergent realities despite physical proximity. We can see the water we're swimming in, even as the current pulls us further from shore. Why don’t we try to swim out?

“Holistic nowness” demands reintegration. Mind and body, perception and action, must begin to move together.

Youth and adolescence can be a traumatic experience. Unless you're blessed with exceptional genetics, chances are you might have felt less than your best during your teenage years. My mom often refers to this stage as the "ugly phase”. You’re lanky, a face plagued with zits, and emotional rollarcoasters become an every day routine.

Not only is it perfectly acceptable to idolize celebrities but you are being targeted by major companies shilling you packaged perfection.

Understandably - many people lament about “going back in time” because it’s the only time they felt like they were free or because they’d like a do over of some sort. While I usually scoff at that sentiment — let’s be honest, being an adult is pretty awesome — even I wasn’t strong enough to resist the EPIK AI Photo Editor App.

If you follow K-pop idols, beauty influencers or have a bunch of weeaboo friends you’d notice that everyone is uploading adorkably perfect 90s Highschool “Yearbook” photos. You can re-imagine your youth as a cheerleader, a musician or a fashionista. All while touching up your face to machine made perfection.

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When I opened EPIK, I was greeted by the app's front page, which featured a section titled "Yearbook photos." What I initially thought would be a straightforward and enjoyable process turned out to be an ordeal that consumed over an hour of my time.

First, they require you to upload 8-12 well-lit photos of yourself. I wanted a flattering yet realistic result so I uploaded a range from my less attractive moments to my more stunning ones, along with some everyday shots.

After leading me past the point of sunk-cost fallacy, they revealed that it would cost $2 to view my photos. However, if I wanted to skip the excruciating 20-hour wait list (which seemed interminable!), I could opt to pay a hefty $5 to instantly access my sixty AI-generated "yearbook photos."

The uploading process is a clever way to get user buy-in. Next, I’m not sure if the “wait list” was a marketing gimmick. I had to guess it’s probably a tech issue. Rendering 60 unique AI images must take quite some time. Yet the appearance of exclusivity made the app so much more enticing.

Within an hour, a notification from EPIK arrived, and I was about to rewrite my own history.

I received sixty photos ranging from uncanny valley to AI weirdness. Some looked horrifically realistic - the photo in the green shirt looks a lot like a picture I took in 8th grade, but far cuter. The bottom left with the grandma hair cut is pretty much identical to how I looked in 2nd grade when I thought huge rounded glasses were the best thing ever.

It’s like a Hollywood reimagining of my youth. There are no bullies, no status games and no insecurities in this AI 90s teen dream fantasy. Just vibes, and lots of them.

EPIK’s Yearbook feature uses 90s to early 2000s Y2K aesthetics because it’s trendy and to evoke emotions. A teenager might find it fun to see themselves in a retro styled yearbook, but it doesn’t provide much for them emotionally. For Millenials? They get to see themselves as both young and in the framing of the time of when they were actually teenagers.

Like all fun things - this is where I must find an issue with it. While I was fine with throwing $5 away I cannot help but shake my feelings of uneasiness.

Just a few months prior - the AI app of the month was Reface. This product allows the user to swap their own face into the scenes of favorite films.

This is psychologically powerful - in a time where many of us feel pretty weak. instead of being stressed over the insane price of living or geopolitics, you can pay a bit of cash to fantasize as a *super hero*. The emotional manipulation could not be more obvious.

I recognize that these are pretty fun. A little novel toy. A modern amusement. And I am impressed what modern technology is capable of. However it’s scary. Do we feel so hopeless that the only way we can get the validation of success, beauty and social popularity - is by generating it? And playing make believe?

As we venture further into this brave new world all I can ask for is that we don’t lose ourselves to amusement.

I generally have an aversion to chatbots. If you articulate your viewpoint on a particular subject and I can predict, line-for-line, the reasoning behind it or infer your perspectives on related topics, I perceive that as problematic. The concern isn’t whether we agree; rather, it’s the possibility that you’re echoing viewpoints accumulated from TikTok, Faux News, Twitter, or any prominent influencer of the month.

If you belong to a marginalized group, it's understandable that your viewpoints may mirror your experiences, reflecting a form of self-preservation. But what if all your beliefs align impeccably with the stereotypical expectations associated with your identity, and the rationale you provide is merely the repetition of well-known party lines we've all heard before?

A few weeks ago, I attended an event featuring an 'Ideological Turing Test', a game where participants argue both for and against a certain belief. The challenge is to present each stance so convincingly that others cannot discern your actual position.

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As a former Model United Nations-geek with a penchant for intellectual exploration, I anticipated an effortless victory. WRONG. The reality was starkly different. My arguments, both pro and con, were so predictable that they made ChatGPT look innovative.

Although the game was a casual meet-up, the realization stuck, prompting reflections on my core values and beliefs.

I’ve often identified as a contrarian, a response that seems typical among those who feel alienated by society. Collectivism becomes intimidating when you've been ostracized by the majority. Nonetheless, espousing contrarianism or echoing popular sentiments merely for the sake of appearance is not only insincere but potentially harmful. Neckbeardism.

We, as humans, are inherently flawed and irrational. If we are truthful to ourselves and others, our genuine thoughts will inevitably deviate from expectations. This is important.

Is there any virtue in being a contrarian? Perhaps. But not in aesthetic. True growth and transformation are the fruits of critical thinking, even if your fundamental beliefs remain unaltered in the process!

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It has been theorized by researchers like Simon Baron-Cohen that autism may be the result of an "extreme male brain." However, is it possible that autism could be the result of an androgynous brain? Or could it be something else altogether that has little to do with gender?

Nobody is completely certain about what causes autism. Considering that it is a spectrum of people with diverse traits, sensitivities, intelligence levels, and interests, it is difficult to attribute it to a single cause.

There’s research to suggest that it’s genetic — families with autistic parents are more likely to have children with similar traits. There’s other evidence that proposes an environmental component. It could be a mix of both.

Cohen has stated that autistic individuals have difficulties with understanding "Theory of Mind," meaning they find it challenging to comprehend the motivations, thoughts, and feelings of others. When we consider the stereotypical scenario of a person insensitively forgetting their partner's favorite food or failing to understand their emotions, it is easy to see why this lack of theory of mind would be associated with an "extreme male brain."

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Cohen is one of the world's leading experts in autism research, so I won't pretend to have any insight that he hasn't considered. However, since limited research has been done on females on the autistic spectrum, it is reasonable to assume that the expressions of interests and socializations may still lack "theory of mind" but in a gendered way. When considering whether autism is an extreme "male" brain, it is crucial to understand the relational dynamics people on the spectrum have, as well as how they/we process the world.

I think about a former classmate who once said how he and his sister bonded over the Mobile Suit Gundam Series. "She watches for the space opera stuff, I watch it because I want to know how the parts on the Gundam work." A conventional deduction would suggest that the man's inclination to understand fictional mecha parts is a clear sign of autism, while his sister's interest in intensely analyzing social dynamics is not. The common thread between both of these interests is the focus on the systematic side of the world rather than the intuitive side of it.

Here's a more interesting example: consider a girl who is passionate about horses and a nerdy guy deeply into pop culture. While it may not conform to a clear gender binary, with the boy being obsessed with trains and the girl into pop star facts, it is not unusual by conventional gender standards.

On the surface, both the horse-loving girl and the Star Trek-loving guy have interests that align with their genders. However, if you delve deeper, it becomes apparent that there are differences. Women are not traditionally associated with an interest in science (biology, horses), and individuals who possess random pop culture knowledge about on-set drama between Shatner and Nimoy would be assumed to be women unless the Star Trek distinction was made. The inclination to study facts and details of whole systems is what sets autism apart from neurotypical thinking.

What are your thoughts? Do you resonate with the autism "male" brain theory?

Video is of Michigan woman, Michele Ivey who is definitely probably on the spectrum and this video I’ve loved since I’ve saw it.

Hyperreality, coined by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, describes a state in which the boundary between reality and simulation has become blurred or even indistinguishable. Physics and the self is fluid. 

Akihabara 電気街(Denkigai or Electric Town) is a district in Tokyo, Japan that is famous for its electronic shops, anime, and gaming culture. In the post-war era, it was known for cheap computer parts. Now Akihabara is home to hundreds of niche hobby shops and niche concept cafes catering to hobbyists.

Tokyo’s Electric Town is more of a mecca to pop culture and media than it is to technology. From 2015 onward, each time I visit Akihabara I see more foreign visitors than the last.

Akiba, the culture that has sprung out of it in the past two decades or so is pretty amazing. In just a few blocks of land thousands of businesses are able to sustain themselves on catering to adults who like, what many could consider, adolescent hobbies.

A beacon of post-modern austerity.

Maid Cafes

A maid cafe is a type of themed restaurant that originated in Japan and is characterized by its hyperreal atmosphere. The concept began as a marketing event for a dating simulation game, Pia Carrot, in the late 1990s. What started as a promotional weekend became a cultural phenomenon. Maid cafes, hyperrealistic concept spaces were inspired by a 2D fictional game. The cafes of the game Pia Carrot was inspired by pie-chain Anna Miller, where the waitresses wear dirndls. This has created a feedback loop of telephone where experimental concepts inspire media and this media in turn giving birth to more experimentation. Thus, maid cafes occupy the realm of 2.5D where fantasy and reality blur.

Midori, and I met at Akihabara station earlier this week. It was four years since I last step foot in Akiba. Six since I last performed as a pop idol there. And many since I first became enamored with Akihabara culture. My interest in pop idols and anime itself has wax and waned through the years. Yet my intrigue about 2.5D spaces has stayed consistent.

Midori and I made our way to @Home Maid Cafe’s main location which is in a multiple story building with a giant bow outside. This isn’t Akihabara’s first maid cafe but it is certainly it’s most popular.

Although it was a weekday morning, there was a long wait to get in. We queued in line for nearly thirty minutes behind half a dozen of other adults eager to get in on the experience.

Our maid greets us and creates point cards for each of us, a parody of American Express cards. The cards feature a moe anime girl on the cover which adds to the hyper-realistic element of the experience.

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In its essence, hyper-reality of maid cafes is created through a combination of elaborate costumes, scripted interactions, and highly stylized decor. The goal is to create an immersive experience that feels more real than reality itself, in which customers are transported into a world that is more like a dream or a fantasy. There is no sex here. There is nothing intentionally erotic about this experience. This fact is the most unsettling about this experience to Western visitors. The idea that people could consume cuteness or even safety is so bizarre culturally to us.

Maids cafe have three primary purposes:

• The experience of being the Master or Princess of an anime style cutesy fantasy land.

• Embrace a carefully curated experience of saccharine hyperreality.

• Social connection in a safe environment.

We see a guy here on stage with a maid getting a (paid) polaroid photo. Cheki. It’s his birthday and he’s at least thirty five years old. Alone. The crowd at the maid cafe is roughly 25% young women with friends, 25% young men with friends and 50% men older than thirty by themselves.

There’s a conversation to be had about the commodification of femininity or social connection but in its essence, I don’t see anything wrong with this set up. Life is brutal and socializing as a young person can be traumatizing for people.

Maid cafes offer a safe and fun alternative to a bleak reality.

The cast are all college aged women or slightly older. Many work at maid cafes because they, too, enjoy participating in this immersive experience. LAARP-ing as a part time job seems pretty lucrative. I’ve worked as a maid at a cosplay cafe when I was younger and they are pretty much adult versions of Rainforrest cafe or Mars 2112.

The hyperreality of maid cafes is a testament to the power of media and simulation to shape our understanding of reality and to create immersive experiences that go beyond what is possible in the physical world. An experience better than the living world.

Hyper-Reality & The Third Space.

As I wrote in previous posts like escapism as a form of harm reduction, I predict that immersive experiences like Maid Cafes or Bridgerton Experience will gain significant popularity in the next decade going forward. Despite metaverses and virtual reality, humans will still seek some form of in person connections.

Japan has an incredibly high standard of living and what has been birthed out of that is a care for artistic expression. I hope that America embraces this fun form of escapism.

Satoshi Kon is a legend. Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream and Christopher Nolan’s Inception are all said to be heavily inspired by his films. Inception, is pretty obviously inspired by Paprika(2006). On the surface both films are cinematic meta-analysis art making an argument for the importance of dreams.

Inception dug a bit deeper on the philosophy of hyperrealism. Paprika does this in a more superficial manner but makes a good argument of using gender roles as allegories.

What I find the most fascinating is Paprika’s exploration of the intersection between gender, technology and idealized “woman”. Also the use of gender as allegories for different states of consciousness.

This is the basic plot of the film: Paprika serves as a virtual avatar for the protagonist, psychiatrist Atsuko Chiba. Paprika is both an artificial construct and a manifestation of Atsuko's subconscious desires and fears. Atsuko and her team in the real world have worked on a special device called the DC-Mini. It allows people to enter the dreams of others. This device is still a prototype yet Atsuko believes in its potential to heal her most troubled patients. Notably, as Paprika, Atsuko enters the dreams of her male patient group.

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The premise of the film is that a terrorist steals the DC-Mini to wreak havoc on people’s dreams(lol).

It’s important to note that Atsuko uses the appearance of a youthful, lively and even western appearing avatar rather than her own appearance to enter dreams. It becomes evident that the film uses dreams as an analogy to women. Women or the idealized woman is a stand-in for fantastical creativity, inhibited dreams and life itself.

As the film progresses, we learn that Paprika is more than just a simple AI program or avatar, but a complex and evolving entity with her own desires and motivations. Sometimes your dreams are quite different than your public facing persona. At some point in the film, Atsuko even loses control over Paprika symbolizing acting on instinct instead of fear and restraint.

The relationship between Paprika and Atsuko is a complex one, reflecting the tensions between human consciousness and artificial intelligence. It also can serve as an allegory for the roles women have to play in society in order to achieve success and their idealized self. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

In reality Atsuko is studious and reserved. Perhaps she has to be this way for the sake of her career. You could say that Paprika is her “id”—unrestrained/open/free.

In the age of digital women — Online personas or avatars allow people to play with gender expression in ways they may not feel comfortable with in their daily lives.

Paprika is cinematic beauty and has amazing writing. Even if you don’t like animation, you’ll enjoy this intellectual film.

Retail therapy is heralded as an acceptable form of self care. Modern life has become an immersive advertising experience. This year, I embrace intentional consumption and I invite you to do the same.

Consumption, in all of its forms, should be done mindfully. This isn’t a blog post about consumer activism. I won’t jump you into the cult of minimalism. This is inviting you to join me on my journey in self reflection. Do it for yourself.

Reflection

In my late teen years I spent far too much time and money stalking fashion boutiques in Shibuya & Harajuku. When I first began my shopping adventures, I’d delay buying a new dress—only to be told that it was no longer in season a mere weeks later. I learned my lesson, if you have the funds: buy it.

Every other month I gifted myself a “splurge” day. This consisted of what I considered to be a Michelin-level 5,000 yen steak ($35), a glass of wine and a few new dresses. If I really needed a dopamine hit, I’d buy a gadget(typically an interesting Japanese digital camera or new computer), some form of cosmetic procedure or anime figurines. This spree would set me back an average 30,000-100,000 yen. ($240~$800). This didn’t make my me more friends. Nor did it fix my miserable romantic life or make me feel more adjusted to a foreign country. I couldn’t help but still feel awful.

Some of it was culture. Japanese society, which I lived and assimilated in. Black American culture(and American culture) from where I was raised. The sex work community, I dabbled in. They all had something in common. The worship of consumerism. Your shitty job and  unpleasant life is all worth it because you can buy a car better than your neighbor’s. Humans desire the ire of our peers. In a life without much pre-determined meaning, the trinkets we can collect can make us feel just a bit more in control.

Yet—I no longer desire the ire of my peers. I’m tired of seasonal thrift store drop offs of clothes I only wore once. A car sounds like a burden. I’m tired of consuming outrage headlines designed to make my blood boil. Digital junk food in the form of a fifteen second short has rotted my brain. I know,

I don’t think a bunch of vacations would teach me much either besides novelty seeking. Then what?

Intentional consumption

This year, I’m embracing mindful/intentional/conscious consumption. I invite you to do the same. This is about more than retail but rather a reflection on your own behaviors. Consider what you eat, who you have in your life, the media you watch, the thoughts you allow to live in your mind. Don’t beat yourself up. Give grace.

Some key steps that have helped me are:

1. Set a limit or budget for yourself based on your own lifestyle, needs and finances.

2. Allow yourself small luxuries, even if just a piece of chocolate. 🍫

3. If you consume something outside of your intentions, consider the emotional state you were in.

4. Consider your sense of self. Without handbags, clothes, hair, tasting menus, gadgets, cars—who are you? What brings you joy?

Trust me, everyone loves a new toy some time. I’ll definitely get myself a few toys in Tokyo the next month or so. It’s fine to treat yourself. Just be intentional :)

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Tokyo is drenched in sex.

Japan as a country struggles with a historically low birth rate which some sociologists attribute to cultural stigma towards sexuality. I resist this notion. Sex is everywhere and access to it has never been easier. From a utilitarian perspective, in a deflationary economy like Japan’s, having a child…

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