be about it zine

#14:
the internet



edited by alexandra naughton

¶
cover art by Vincenzo Balistreri

published july, 2017

- Alexandra Naughton
We're buffering.
It's 2017 and it seems like
the social connection is threaded on 56k.
It means everything and nothing.
Discovered Achilles
A starved center between
the engorged folds of American society.
Wanted: male ware bites for the conduit
Server corrupted.
DDos attacks on liberty, truth, and integrity.
The Nothing consumes.

- Cassandra Robinson
-

Facebook Gives Me Anxiety

I deleted Facebook a month ago

because I thought it was giving me too much anxiety.
I was worried that I looked sad, lonely, and ugly.
The solution was simple –
if you don’t have a Facebook, no one can tell if you’re sad,
lonely, and ugly.
Deleting Facebook made me feel superior
to those who feel the need to market their lives
to both no one and everyone.

Not having a Facebook is giving me too much anxiety.

If you don’t have a Facebook,

No one really thinks of you at all.

- Rachel Olson
3rd space

maybe what I want is to hold onto the fear

that I'll never be small enough in presence
and big enough for memory
so obtusely shaped
that love cannot fit into these tight cavernous holes
without pronouncing that this is not love, that you are just
horny

I am here because I have won your attention tonight

although you've never said my name out loud
despite being inside of me and outside of me with every part of
your body on
separate occasions

please,
send me mixed signals via gaze, SMS, and facebook messenger,
in your bed you show the feed of a girl you love or have loved,
she plays guitar and lives in Ohio

now I should be wary of men like you,

I've been kicked in the teeth so many times I no longer notice
how this sunken
feeling has moved from my gut and into my gums
when I kiss you I hope you taste more than all the deplorable
musings that stir inside

- Shannon Runka
My Phone Is Always on Low Battery

I am going to touch your heart

The best I can,
Meaning
I’m going to like
The last photo on your Instagram,
And/or
Spoon you with erect nostalgia
Thrust by a Facebook comment
Using reused inside-jokes for protection
Because we stopped talking in sarcasm,
Meaning
We talk less,
Meaning
I’m afraid of our phones
Losing signal
Over the ocean,
Drowning somewhere at:
Talk to you later :/

- Perry Davis
internet baby

i loved u the whole world

i lifted u into the air

i asked u to make them colder

my hands

u offered new cities

your wings which would not grow

crystal thing

expedition box

i filled u with potential

watching—

your rabbit body

could shift into monk robes

or airplane steel

the arch of triumph and the altar—

will i destroy my beautiful creation?

i will rocket boost into the sky

to do battle with u

internet baby
turn an airplane into a dog

ride it all the way to denver

im gone

- Luis Neer

alienation of labor:

I don't have time to suck up to publishers. I don't have time for

celebrity poets. I don't have time for poets who buy into the
celebrity culture because we rely on pompous exclusionary
social practices for survival. Because we are forced to survival.
Do you hear 'survive' or 'thrive' in between those
conversations? about poetry? how are you really feeling? What
are you really? going through? not the glitter ? you put on before
the party? None of my friends wanted a bitchy queer. they
wanted the SMART queer, the FUN queer, the WITTY queer, the
FASHIONABLE queer, the COMPLIMENTARY queer, the SOFT
queer, the SHINY queer,
theHARDqueer .(batteriesNOTINCLUDED)

- Anna Avery
An Advertisement for the Singularity

The singularity has begun and less intense than prophesied,

after-all, Nostradamus’ mouth formulated like an open toed
foot, but imprints from lips are less unique and often moist
compared to their phalange cousins. That’s why prophets
often drown their messages with words, enticing a loose
lipped public to lock their jaws agape and complain of sore
throats while obeying. So, to approach singularity as
Foucaltian as possible we must examine the minuscule
devices that produce stimuli-response occurrences.

Picture if thy will strolling forth down an assiduous sidewalk

populated with metropolis pomp, various homeless with
signs, wall-street aficionados compressed inside designer
labels, docile expressions sedated from smog and
advertisements, a collage of grunts, car horns and screaming
hot-dog vendors sonically advising ambiance, when a breeze
heavy as fog adjusts a cellphone inside thine pocket triggering
a counter to grasp the device and check for a text, only to
reveal a dark screen. The stimuli response of vibration
followed by notification.

We’ve mechanized symbols throughout human history to

unite firing neurons of divergent origins. Machinery claiming
its essence through convenience adapted to submit rewards
to drooling lustful stares reliable like Pavlov’s mutts. The
machines are inside us dictating submissive end goals that
rely on human spontaneity.

I commend the Luddites but let the commendations resound

from my throat and not a Facebook beam.

- Adam "A.j" Binash

Excerpted from The Black Market: Economy of the Illicit

The Internet: Material Manifestation of Humanity’s Collective

Consciousness. The Anarchistic Internet is a far more
Powerful Social Force than The Authoritarian State could ever
in fact be {like the unConscious Mind is a far more Powerful
Social Force than the Conscious Mind actually is} & so will
superseded it {in the same way many ‘Rational’ Conclusions
are actually ‘pre-Rational’ Emotional &/ Instinctual
Conclusions justifying themselves}. To survive the Anarchic
Information Technology rEvolution, The State must cultivate
The Authoritarian Ideals of Objectivity & Benevolence which
The Internet – in its Absolute Anarchistic aMoral imPartiality
– has no need to cultivate; re-affirming The State’s Social
Value in relation to Humanity in an Era of Domination by
aMoral Anarchic Information Technology. This will require a
Relinquishing of the more Tight-Fisted Xpressions of
‘Authority’ by The State which appear Absurd in Face of the
Power of Information Technology to liberate rEvolutionary
Ideas from their Individual &/ Regional Inceptions. From this
Perspective {that The Authoritarian State in the Era of The
Internet is Absurd}: the Election of inCompetent wannabe-
Demagogue Donald Trump to the Position of Greatest Global
State Authority as USA President in part by an ‘Alt Right’ {Neo-
Fascist} Online Movement appears as noThing more than an
Xpression of the Collapse of Citizen Trust in the overArching
Authority of a ‘State Government’ itself due to the Anarchic
Information Technology rEvolution masquerading as a
Superficial, Compensational call to Greater Identity-Privilege
Fascism. Absurdly, ironically Donald Trump hams up the Role
of ‘Dictator’ {to appeal to People who egregiously see Neo-
Liberalism as too Similar to Welfare State Socialism, a System
too Generous with People to be Good for them according to an
Empathy-Deficit that thinks it’s a Level-Head} while yet
appearing Woefully inAdequate for the Actual Job of Actually
Governing People Autocratically or otherwise. The ‘Donald
Trump Neo-Fascist President Character’, like the pre-
Information-Era Mobster-Statesman, can only enable &/
oppress Certain {Classes of} People according to his
Subjective Prejudices. In that Donald Trump is a Nostalgic
Entity for Techno-Libertarian Americans. Donald Trump is a
Picture of how Citizens see The American White-Supremacist
State in The Internet Era: a Blustering Backwards-looking
Silver-Spoon Crony who thinks he’s more Powerful than he
actually is. Which is accurate. I think President Donald Trump
will be followed by President Mark Zuckerberg who will
create an Internet-based Citizen Voting System vis-à-vis the
Logic of Xponential Information Technology Efficiency.
Thereafter ‘Democracy’ will be based in Algorithms generated
by Citizenry interpreted by Elected Officials.

- Andrea Coates
- Andrea Coates
gallery

phone vibrating like my body

in the grass on my phone
always touching
we both wanted to dance tomorrow
your teeth
you distract me from what makes me
feel good
slow in the morning
stretching out like i’m used to it
and cute enough for you like art

finding ways to mention you

i’m trying to be
an accessory that keeps growing
the sun inside your mouth
open see if i fit
you in a room with me
speaking in hushed tones like
we’re still on the internet

- Ctch Bsnss
When I was 14 I discovered the internet. Sort of. We never had
AOL, but there was a home screen, probably Yahoo. I didn't
know what to do, but I knew that I had seen things like "world
wide web" in the newspaper, and Al Gore was talking about an
information superhighway. I had seen the trailer for the 1995
movie, "Hackers", but my parents hadn't let me rent it from
Blockbuster yet. My curiosity was at full power, but I didn't
know what you were supposed to *do* with the internet. What
was it good for? Anything?

I clicked around on the different areas. Some things looked like

encyclopedia entries, but with less pictures. I knew that it was
possible to buy a badass computer encyclopedia on CD (we
didn't have a CD rom yet), and this wasn't it. We also had a real
encyclopedia on the shelf, so those pages didn't seem to be
what I was looking for.

Then I found the chat rooms. The text scrolled a mile a minute,
and I didn't know what anybody was talking about. I didn't
know what I wanted to talk about anyway, but this seemed
more interesting. I figured out how to find a directory of chat
rooms. It showed how many people were in each one. Sports.
Politics. News. Music. General. Teen hangout... why yes, I did
want to meet hot teens in my area.

So I clicked on it, waited a while for it to load, and there I was

with maybe a dozen people. I said hi to everyone, someone said
hi back to me. A/S/L? What does that mean? I told them. She
was from my area too, and my same age! I asked if she went to
my school. She did.

This was really really exciting. I was somehow chatting with a

girl from my school, and she was apparently learning this
internet thing at the exact same time I was, and she wanted to
talk to me. I really wanted to know who she was. I actually
wanted her to be someone specific... and I asked her if that's
who she was. Bingo! I was chatting with my crush! I furiously
hunted and pecked with my two index fingers for the better
part of three hours, talking about everything that the keyboard
made me brave enough to say. How I was too scared to go up to
her between classes, she said she was noticing me. I didn't
know what else to do, so I moved on to small talk. I told her
about Boy Scout camping trips. She told me that her mom was
recently and unexpectedly pregnant, and that she was for some
reason allowed to help name the coming baby, a girl. They
were going to name her Sahara Samurai Jane. What a name.

I was so excited, but I knew I had been on the computer for too
long and I signed off. I spent the rest of the night on cloud nine.
I was finally talking to my crush! Thanks, internet!

I couldn't wait for more. The next day at school I confidently

walked up to her and congratulated her on her new sister, and
I was about to ask the due date and other details when it
dawned on me. She had no idea what the fuck I was talking
about. None.

And that's when I really learned about the internet.

- Joe Carrow
- Colin Kelly Sumption
SOCIAL MEDIA DISORDER ENTRY

Upon hearing about my loss—

I got turned up/bruised

by a knuckled-up mountain

of my own making,

raising threats to open sky

batting w/ that tender psychosis

of nowhere melodies:

earworms.

Upon composing my one-sided arguments:

from overreaction sleeplessness

I mine “Yesterday” & wind up my ear

to a drum hiss—

It’s a trans- cranial

passenger routine

clutching at the blunder

of my army of masochists seeking

broken,

unbuilt cities.

Upon my focus falling to pieces:

 There is some, no never understanding—

some, no never truths daunting in the hello

& absent-minded okays.

- Adam Stutz
Cum Sessions

October in Montreal is an inebriated clash of numb bones. The

crispness of air is skinless in its nobility, the white morsels of
dried flesh are always your own, camping out on your own lips
without giving any fucks. It’s a tongue kiss lingering on your
lips. Tasting your own breath in the rustiness of it all is a
fucking cliche that runs deep through cardboard chai lattes.
Last October my hands were attracted to an opposite gravity
and were growing attached to the faded mount of saturn on
your left hand. I had drawn it earlier on your hand when you
were asleep. I could smell the cum on your palm. The cheap
ball point ink had melted like butter and was a gooey mess of
blue ink and dried cum.

You had a habit of jerking off when I was in the shower every
morning. You would hide your cum filled Fruit of the Loom
boxers under the bed thinking I wouldn’t notice the stench of
your penis that lingered in the bedroom long after you had
gone. It was also October when you had a craving for vegan
crab cakes and left your IBM laptop open on your desk. I was
brushing my teeth and could hear the oil splattering in the
kitchen. After looking through your history of the past 3 days
on your IBM laptop, I concluded that xvideos.com was your go-
to porn hub for your cum sessions. Your preferences were as
hye whiteboy as you: Anal and Creampie.

In October, your parents had decided to help us move to our

new apartment. I had never met your parents and the first time
I met them, your mother screamed and pulled at my purple
tights at the same time, giggling in high pitch and pulling the
skin on my thighs with her manicured fingernails. You told me
she liked me. Your mother would never physically hurt anyone
she didn’t like. I felt included and part of the family.

After we moved in the new apartment, we both got really busy.

Me with my various babysitting jobs and you with failing
school and cumming on our bed 5 times a day without any help
from me. I knew I was no match for the xvideos.com creampies
and anal filled cum mouths. We both silently acknowledged
this reality by routinely taking couple walks in cemeteries and
not speaking in Starbucks.

By the end of October, you had progressed to Reverse Cowgirl

Anal and Double Anal Penetration. There was too much cum in
your closet and we went to Walmart to get you a new pack of
Fruit of the Loom boxers. I held up a pack of Calvin Klein
underwear and you said, “That’s for small dicks.” You ended up
ordering 2 packs of Fruit of the Loom Men’s Exposed
Waistband Boxers on amazon.com with free 2 day shipping.

It wasn’t until I went on songfacts.com that I learned the true

meaning of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep.

Adele drank bottles of wine and chain smoked while penning

down 21. She said “A drunk tongue is an honest one.”

---
- Nooks Krannie
Bios:
1. Alexandra Naughton / Richmond, CA / "Holdin On" - Flume
2. Adam “A.j.” Binash / LaCrosse, WI / John Lennon-Well Well Well
3. Andrea Coates / Gibsons BC Canada / Life of Canada by Andrea
Coates on Youtube.
4. anna avery escaped Texas to participate in east bay poetry
Berkeley, CA. Kimya Dawson "The Beer"
5. catch business / denver / born secular by jenny lewis with the
watson twins
6. Cassandra / SF / Be My Baby - The Ronettes
7. Colin Kelly Sumption aka EmoDad666 / Denver, CO / Cat Tatt -
"lower case l"
8. Luis Neer / Morgantown WV & Denver CO / Sufjan Stevens and
friends, "Mars" <3
9. Joe Carrow / Oakland / "Small Talk, by Faded Paper Figures"
10. Nooks Krannie is a Palestinian/Persian female writer from
Montreal, Canada. The last song she listened to was 'Untitled, 2014'
by G-Dragon.
11. Perry Davis / South Korea / "Hey Thanks" - The Wonder Years
12. Rachel Olson / Oakland, CA. / Diamond Look by TOPS
13. Shannon Runka / Chicago, IL / Cindy Lee-- Holding the Devil's
Hand
14. Vincenzo Balistreri - San Francisco, CA - The Neighborhood is
Bleeding by Manchester Orchestra

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<3 can you believe i used to write intros for these things lol, like a "letter
from the editor" haha vintage be about it circa 2010