This is a thread for fiction written about the internet. Stories that are either set on the internet, involve the internet as a major plot point, or are significantly informed by internet culture. Being published on the internet is a bonus. Non-fiction is allowed, as long as it's creative and not just another straightforward opinion piece or technical article.
I'm interested in seeing obscure stuff - works written by genuinely "online" people that take on the weirder side of the web and that aren't aimed at the Facebook-browsing general audience. I know there are a number of popular recent novels about the internet, but as far as I can tell they're all focused on social media and how it is...le bad. Maybe that's an unfair judgment, but I really have no interest in reading about the internet from the perspective of someone who has a blue checkmark on twitter and feels the need to write about the internet out of some sense of social responsibility. I want to read internet fiction written by the kind of people that only appear as characters in these mainstream books. I want raw, realistic depictions of online life written by people who aren't afraid to get as stupid or disgusting as they need to portray the internet as it actually is. I want read stuff that you can't understand unless you spend a lot of time on the internet.
Here are a few examples of what I have in mind:
So, let me know what you think. What is "internet fiction" to you? What deserves to be added to the list? What kind of out-there, cutting-edge stuff is getting overlooked right now?
Thanks to @Remember_Summer_Days and @lain is here for their feedback in putting this together. I know I said I'd make this post a long time ago, but I didn't forget about it.
I'm interested in seeing obscure stuff - works written by genuinely "online" people that take on the weirder side of the web and that aren't aimed at the Facebook-browsing general audience. I know there are a number of popular recent novels about the internet, but as far as I can tell they're all focused on social media and how it is...le bad. Maybe that's an unfair judgment, but I really have no interest in reading about the internet from the perspective of someone who has a blue checkmark on twitter and feels the need to write about the internet out of some sense of social responsibility. I want to read internet fiction written by the kind of people that only appear as characters in these mainstream books. I want raw, realistic depictions of online life written by people who aren't afraid to get as stupid or disgusting as they need to portray the internet as it actually is. I want read stuff that you can't understand unless you spend a lot of time on the internet.
Here are a few examples of what I have in mind:
- The Gig Economy - Zero H.P. Lovecraft
- A short story about cryptocurrency, memetics, and Landian cosmic nightmare capitalism set in the very near future and written by an edgy twitter guy. It's not a perfect story, but it is a great example of what I think internet fiction should be from a stylistic and thematic perspective. Despite how esoteric the story gets its depiction of the internet and internet-based technologies feels very believable.
- False Kotatsu - Medical Dragon
- Another short story. This one is a postmodern take on the plight of the western anime fanbase, kind of like Welcome to the N.H.K. It's not very long and clearly unfinished, and I can't tell whether that was a deliberate decision by the author or if they just ran out of steam. Either way, it's very well written and worth checking out if you're an anime fan.
- The Legend of "bob's game." - Robert Pelloni (PDF available here)
- The self-published autobiography of indie game dev and lolcow Robert "Bob" Pelloni. If you're not already familiar with the story of Bob's Game, this video does a good job of summarizing it. Like most commentators, the creator of that video only references the autobiography as proof of Bob's egomania, but the book itself is actually interesting enough to be worth reading on its own (although it does degenerate into incoherence near the end.) It's a raw look into the mind of a early-2000s nerd who is trying to cover up some real psychological issues by acting crazier than he really is, the kind of personality you see everywhere on the internet.
- The Last Binge Ever, Volumes 1 and 2 - Londonfrog
- Two years' worth of repetitive and nearly identical 4chan posts about the struggles of being a "blackpilled ugly beta nofriends loser autist" written by the same anonymous poster. Individually they're not that interesting, but when collected together and read back-to-back they turn into a bizarre performance art piece. Imagine writing a long blog post about how you're a hopeless loser but will totally start turning your life around tomorrow. Now imagine posting it to a literature/finance/fitness board (never /r9k/, where you would expect this kind of thing) where it will get deleted for being off-topic almost instantly before anyone can reply. Then imagine doing the exact same thing the next day. Imagine doing this almost every day for over half a decade. I'm stretching the definition of "fiction" by including The Last Binge Ever on this list but I think it's worth sharing because, to quote Dostoevsky, "such persons as the composer of these [posts] not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, considering the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed."
- Densha Otoko - Hitori Nakano
- Densha Otoko / "Train Man" isn't as obscure as the other books on this list, and I haven't actually read it. I did see the movie, but it was really mediocre and the only thing I remember about it was the main character wearing a pretty cool Zeta Gundam t-shirt in a few scenes. Still, it's worth including because it's the only mainstream novel I know of to be based entirely on a series of posts made to an anonymous imageboard. In that sense, it's the polar opposite of The Last Binge Ever and proof that there might actually be an audience for the cyber-epistolary novel genre.
- _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9
- A long-form creepypasta that was published as a series of comments on unrelated articles linked to reddit. The coolest thing about it, and the reason I'm adding it to this list, is the format. The plot is internet-relevant too, but despite a strong start falls apart near the end.
- GPS - Alfred North Shitehead
- GPS is far and away my favorite book on this list, but it's also the hardest to recommend. It's unapologetically edgy and the plot is so dependent on /lit/ in-jokes that it's probably incomprehensible to people who didn't spend the past five years lurking 4chan. Despite that, or maybe because of that, it's the best "internet novel" I've ever read. Unlike the other books /lit/ has generated over the years (The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra, Hypersphere, etc.) GPS isn't just a shitpost. Once you get past all the stupidity there's a surprisingly intelligent examination of what it means to be counter-cultural in a hyper-connected online world lurking underneath.
So, let me know what you think. What is "internet fiction" to you? What deserves to be added to the list? What kind of out-there, cutting-edge stuff is getting overlooked right now?
Thanks to @Remember_Summer_Days and @lain is here for their feedback in putting this together. I know I said I'd make this post a long time ago, but I didn't forget about it.
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