The Weirdness of Serial Experiments Lain

The best part of serial experiments lain is it “weird ontology” it’s not that lain takes place in a universe or world dissimilar from our own, or a world who’s sci-fi, “(…) torches fiction in intensity, patched-up out of cash-flux mangled techno-compressed heteroglossic jargons, and set in a future so close it connects” — F.N.

Lain is our reality, and our existence is weird. There’s a scene in which Lain’s father is telling her she’s caught the “bug” because she wants to get a new computer. This is after Lain exchanges messages with her school colleague, Chisa. On its own, the messages Lain and Chisa exchange are cryptic, but what truly got to me as “weird” or eerie was the fact that Lain’s father kept insisting on Lain making friends and connecting with others. Ironically her father is scrolling through countless feeds, a clear reflection of his alienation which mirrors our own. The worst part is that even this analysis is cliche since the whole point of cyberpunk and theory-fiction is to erode the sense of reality.

Similarly, these “weird-critiques” captured by things like “Black Mirror” point something at the heart of this and perhaps even in Fisher’s work. It’s not that we are to be reflected horrifically by our fiction and vice versa. Something like capitalism’s tentacles is already entangled, controlling us from the outside. The mere thought of capitalism coming to some end is somehow the weirdest thing that could happen compared to an actual encounter with the outside.