everyone is a girl
welcome 2 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝒶 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁. a new forum for jagged and iridescent reflection on the “girl online”, or rather, the necessity of being a girl online.
what is it to be a girl? drawing our project’s name from alex quicho’s article << everyone is a girl online >>, we follow quicho in theorizing the girl as one who ‘tactically’ submits to the wills of the digital algorithm, “vying for both privacy and visibility” through a delicately ‘real’ performance of identity. to participate online is to be a feminine subject, because it subjects one to a self-surveillance from the perspective of the masses. girls embrace the ‘dark forest’ (after bogna konior) of the internet in hopes to manipulate, collectivize, and forge the future. they can engage in 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁𝒷𝓁𝑜𝑔𝑔𝒾𝓃𝑔 (@stargir1z) in which the hypertextual leakages of online spaces become a watering ground for performances that perverse time/space.
in addition to girls online, we focus on Ester Freider’s conception of 𝓌𝑒𝓉𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 or the “informational sublime”: a quality created through the hyperconnected nodes of today’s platforms. wetness opens endless opportunities for identity rebirth for girls online, while also necessitating the de-nuanced flattening of content and the capitalistic fetish of gnawing endlessness. through wetness’s infective kiss, girls online birth a new landscape: the 𝒸𝓎𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑜𝓆𝓊𝑒.
just as the baroque (coming from the Portuguese word for an odd, misshapen pearl) introduced entrails of illusion, drama, and subjectivity into early 18th century spaces, the girl, existing in the wet space that is the internet, adopts fluidity and illusion in her online performance. just as baroque ceilings were painted to replicate baby-blue, fluffy-cloud skies, the online girl fashions herself a character both real and saturated.
in this project, we aim to record and weave the thought done by 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁𝓈 𝑜𝓃𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑒 as well as their predecessors in cyberfeminism. we discard the priority/possibility of authenticity online, if at all. instead we yield to the pearly cavern of artifice, play, and swarm that might reveal that there was no true self in the first place.
-Ester Freider