THE INTERNET IS A SPACE FOR THE LONELY

In the 1998 anime Serial Experiments Lain, Lain Iwakura is a socially withdrawn 14-year-old girl who becomes obsessed with "The Wired" essentially a fictional version of the internet, "The Wired" is a sea of the collective consciousness and unconscious where information pervades, desires permeate, and connections are made.

- PIE TIAUSAS

It is also where Lain finds respite from her loneliness, where the desire to connect is miraculously fulfilled, spanning great distances in space and time.

“KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN’ AND CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY

That the internet is a space for the lonely, the broken, the forgotten, the silenced, and the unheard similarly permeates in “KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN,” an anthology of internet art curated by Chia Amisola. As the curator notes, historically foundational to the project is Onel de Guzman’s creation of the ILOVEYOU Virus in the year 2000, which the anthology pays homage to in a glittery digital shrine by Mac Andre Arboleda that links news documentations of De Guzman’s globally disruptive “Love Bug” — a malicious “love letter” email attachment that steals WiFi passwords to provide internet access for those without.

In an adjacent commemorative work from the anthology, online persona Deepweb Dumaguete retells what has now become a piece of digital urban lore in Filipino internet culture: “1277-22219” is the story of Kuya Marlon, a lonesome telecommunications worker who falls in love with a beeper operator named Elise, only to one day find his affections unrequited and his calls forever unreturned.