On Authenticity inVulnerability

in Digital Spaces

Sad Girl (1.1) In remembrance of teen-angst escapism,

(1.2) to be soft, to be tender, to be vulnerable,

drag and dropping myself into URL relief,

(1.3) as i continue blinded by the pale,

I unconsciously follow, to be them
in my black mirror,

(1.4) and thus I do not function

I am boiling over with my tears.

Influencer (2.1) Admitting my cheat codes,

I insist of my crying,

(2.2) selling my soul,

(2.3) when you already had me caught

in your web.

Cyborg (3.1) I resist to educate you on my sanity,

(3.2) performing cyber tenderness

in digital eternity.

Veronica Obenauer
(1.1) In remembrance of teen-angst escapism

Stage One—Sad Girl

When I was a child my parents always taught ground. I was creating a world, where I could build
me to not trust any strangers on the internet, never up my hand-picked character and find my true aes-
show personal information, and to always correctly thetic, adoring the possibility to be whoever I opted for,
log off when abandoning that digital fairytale within without any judgment. Without any thought given to
the 27-inch LED screen. Unplugging the computer. monetization, one’s authenticity, or my digital footprint
Leaving the virtual behind the real, tangible, and mostly affecting IRL market opportunities. The internet was
important world, the IRL1 existence. I wasn’t always a temporary (but still very important) place for me, an
listening. I secretly created my first Facebook profile at intangible world, where most of my acts do not have
the age of nine. Followed by deleting my account after real consequences. I didn’t think about any rules. I was
a couple of months, because no one would give my just a child, enjoying and using the endless freedom I
posts, which consisted of me proudly telling how good/ was given in late Web 2.0 cyberspace. This was the
bad my day went, a well earned thumbs up. I simply age, when the internet became my comfort zone, my
did not receive the attention and internet fame I hoped chosen living room, to have a rest from the draining
and longed for. IRL current, constantly online performing the fatigue I
After a couple of years of growing into being a experienced because of it.
teen in the 2010s, I discovered the platform Tumblr— I never logged off. I never unplugged my com-
following infinite scrolling, reblogging, processing teen- puter. I loved trusting strangers on the internet,
age-angst, and conceptualizing how I wanted to be co-living in the URL world. Sorry mum.
perceived, especially on the internet—the place that
once felt like a playground, to build fantasies, design
my virtual being and temporally hide from annoying
middle school puberty-current IRL happenings. I

Performing Cyber Tenderness

would romanticize and write poetry about my recently
broken heart (my crush didn’t pick me for their team
in PE), repost photographs of skinny pale white girls
in black dresses smoking cigarettes full of sorrow (I
didn’t touch one cigarette until then), drowning myself
into melancholia, accompanied by Lana Del Rey—the
chosen mother of all Sad Girls—playing in the back-

1 I am using the term URL (referring to

‘online’) and IRL (‘in real life’) only in the
Veronica Obenauer

earlier part of the text, talking about grow-

ing up with the internet, since when I was
a kid/pre-teen/teen we would still perceive
the internet as something not to equalize
with our real lives. The internet was vir-
tual, a simulation—“not real”. Later on, I
will change to the term AFK (‘away from
keyboard’), due to the internet increasingly
becoming inseparable from our ‘real’ lives.
Today it is more difficult for your internet
and AFK reality to exist as a dichotomy.

2
(1.2) to be soft, to be tender, to be vulnerable,
I am drag and dropping myself into URL relief

“This skepticism

Stage One—Sad Girl

Tumblr is a social networking platform specially
dedicated to (micro-)blogging. Founded in the year of
2007, it had its peak in the 2010s, when a lot of teens
of (mostly) girls
gathered on the platform connecting in fandoms, documenting their
through pictures, text, and GIFs. A lot of users would
tidy up their personalized blogs/URLs, following an sadness feels
aesthetic or fandom, with every blog having its own
Tumblr subdomain. On your unique subdomain you
emblematic of our
had the opportunity to customize the visibility and func- approach to how we
tionality down to HTML and CSS code, shaping your
blog precisely adjusted to your peculiar personality.
view being online in
Whenever I collected and archived on Tumblr, the first place. Is it
I would post about heartbreak, being lonely, the fragility
of girlhood, and the confusion of growing up in late cap- real, is it fake, is it
italism hell (without its full consciousness) is accompa-
nied with. I would openly show my obsessions with
attention-seeking?
fictional characters, and carelessly spread the early Who cares?
construct of myself into the whole web, making myself
visible, taking up space, and yet making my persona
even more vulnerable by tossing my fragile fragments
into the depths of cyberspace, not knowing who hides
behind the accounts that were following me, since fol- Authenticity is an

Performing Cyber Tenderness

lower interaction was not a big thing on Tumblr. I was
being myself, sharing my deepest thoughts, in a place aesthetic, and I’d like to
without judgment—using the internet as my second
reality and a place to rest in. I would only be judged
think we are all aware by
by the IRL people, calling my ‘made up’ Tumblr per- now that we’re posting
sona unauthentic, and accusing me of doing it only
for attention (No shit, Sherlock), or being unoriginal by for attention, no matter
copying other people’s identity parts.
But I never stopped posting on the internet,
the content.”2
because the recognition I would receive there was too
precious to leave it behind. Amalia Soto, mostly known
as Molly Soda is an internet artist, recognized for her Sadly, back then I was feeling caught by young
web-based performances and installations consid- men exposing me for my ‘personality fraud’, further
ering femininity, pop culture, and the concept of her- struggling to become the socially acquired idea of a
self. In her Substack entry “Teardrops on my iPhone”, woman. Maybe this was the first time in my life that
Soda writes: I was undergoing imposter syndrome (to be said,
a mental illness experienced by most successful
women3). Getting even more lost in the forced search
for my ‘true’ personality, by being judged for my lack
of authenticity. Not knowing how important and pecu-
liar this stage of the internet was, and how it will be
changed in the near future. Nevertheless, I did not
stop, I was feeling relief and understanding, spending
my time being a Sad Girl, being too naive to realize
that this was part of my teen rebellion, by (re-)claiming
my own body with the act of performing cyber tender-
Veronica Obenauer

2 Soda, Molly. 2023. “teardrops on 3 “KPMG study finds 75% of executive wom-
my iphone”(blog). September 12, en experience imposter syndrome.” 2020.
2023. Accessed October 16, 2023. KPMG. October 27, 2020. https://info.
https://mollysoda.substack.com/p/ kpmg.us/news-perspectives/people-cul-
teardrops-on-my-iphone?utm_ ture/kpmg-study-finds-most-female-ex-
source=post-email-title&publication_ ecutives-experience-imposter-syndrome.
id=280063&post_id=136947909&utm_ html.
campaign=email-post-title&isFree-
mail=true&r=4g10r&utm_medium=e-
mail.

3
Stage One—Sad Girl
ness, feeling freedom by using the customization of
the earlier web.
The Sad Girl Theory is a term coined by artist,
writer, and Sad Girl herself Audrey Wollen.4 Wollen’s
research started off the cultural trope of the wanting-
to-be-saved struggling woman and being considered
the lesser sex throughout history and today. Wollen
recognizes the miserability of women as an act of
resistance5 and a potential protest, by also criticizing
today’s classification of a riot. Wollen says:

“Political protest is
usually defined in
masculine terms—
as something external
and often violent, a
demonstration in the
streets, a riot,

Performing Cyber Tenderness

an occupation of space.
But I think that this
limited spectrum of
activism excludes a
whole history of girls
who have used their
sorrow and their
self-destruction to
disrupt systems of
domination.”6
Women suffering from the pressure of all the
expectations chained to them, due to a never-ending
period of patriarchy, have been openly practicing
and coping with their vulnerability for a long time:
Progenitors of the online Sad Girl are for example
Sylvia Plath, Jean Rhys or of course Virginia Woolf
with her interpretation of how women are perceived 4 Tunnicliffe, Ava. 2015. “Audrey Wollen
in society. And still, with the weakening of striking on the Power of Sadness.” Nylon. July
20, 2015. Accessed March 7, 2024.
platforms like Tumblr, today’s younger generations https://www.nylon.com/articles/
continue to express their frustration and emotion- audrey-wollen-sad-girl-theory.
5 Watson, Lucy. 2015. “How girls are
ality online. A current niche trend known by the term finding empowerment through being
Veronica Obenauer

sad online.” Dazed. November 23, 2015.

Yearnposting, coined by writer Michelle Santiago Accessed March 8, 2024. https://www.
dazeddigital.com/photography/arti-
cle/28463/1/girls-are-finding-empower-
ment-through-internet-sadness.
6 Watson, Lucy. 2015. “How girls are
finding empowerment through being
sad online.” Dazed. November 23, 2015.
Accessed March 8, 2024. https://www.
dazeddigital.com/photography/arti-
cle/28463/1/girls-are-finding-empower-
ment-through-internet-sadness.

4
Stage One—Sad Girl
Cortés,7 refers to often non-sense melancholic poetic
text set on soothing aesthetic soft pictures. Most of the
posts tend to be random and mystical, almost being a
miracle meme (that’s how I at least call them).
One of the most popular earnposters is Sotce
having almost 400k followers,8 and to a greater extent
due to her URL success already attending an AFK solo
exhibition in Paris. A representable example of one of
her poems, she posted on her second account marked
as her diary,9 says:

“hydrate stretch

scream

Performing Cyber Tenderness

frolic”10
The words are accompanied by a peaceful almost
sarcastic stock photo footage of a tulip rising into the
sunshine.
With the trend being especially nostalgic due
to the resemblance of earlier Sad Girl eras and the
current romanticization of the 2010s Tumblr days, it
is especially Gen Z’s way of coping and sharing with
past experiences, trauma, and thoughts compromised
into photo dumps, softness, and humor, since crying
is not a respected part of the professional adult world.
The downside of life often stays undocumented for the
fear of being judged or accused of emotionally over-
reacting. People tell you that you shouldn’t feel sad
for something—considering it a ‘negative emotion’—
rather than allowing that very natural part of being a
human to just happen (and if you cry, please get a
room. Crying in public makes people around you very
uncomfortable).

7 Francombe, Amy. 2023. “How yearposting

took over social media.” Evening Standard,
Veronica Obenauer

September 29, 2023. Accessed March 8,

2024. https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/
yearnposting-social-media-trend-what-is-
it-b1109968.html.
8 Sotce on Tiktok. https://www.tiktok.com/@
sotce?lang=en
9 @sweetrelease08 on Instagram. https://
www.instagram.com/sweetrelease08/
10 @sweetrelease08 on Instagram. https://
www.instagram.com/p/CfJ3xyZOx_z/

5
(1.3) as I continue blinded by the pale,
I unconsciously follow, to be them in my black mirror

Stage One—Sad Girl

Therefore people are sobbing, people are show-
ing their vulnerable selfs online, continuously per-
forming cyber tenderness, reclaiming a more tender
URL current.
The aesthetic mostly associated with the cur-
rent rise of Tumblr is Soft Grunge. Posts discoverable
under the #softgrunge would contain all-black outfits
with fishnet stockings, girls with space buns smoking
cigarettes at dawn, Arctic Monkey Tees with the reap-
pearing AM album graphics, and sad black-and-white
selfies. The biggest subculture of the platform would
openly talk about depression and suicidal thoughts,
and about their heartbreak. They would often idealize
a heroin chic body type, sometimes normalizing eating
disorders. Their lives were perceived as delightfully
sad, making melancholia their essential accessory.
In her video essay “the tumblr girl is back”11 Mina
Le talks about the necessity of sadness in a fulfilled
life. Aristotle describes the vital elements of beauty as
“order, symmetry and definiteness”, describing that
in order to achieve beauty in life it must have some
degree of sadness in it: “Because a life of only hap-

Performing Cyber Tenderness

piness suggests a lack of symmetry and order.”12 Le
names his concept of Catharsis, and quotes David
C. Brake in the following: “A connection between
Sadness and Beauty might have a sound philosoph-
ical foundation.”13
So we are holding onto quotes from heteronor-
mative white men talking about the significance of
miserability. In her video essay Le also continues to
go further into her research talking about the art and
literature of the Victorian age having a very promi-
nent obsession with the ‘breathtaking’ beauty of dead
women. The author Edgar Allan Poe even wrote:“(...)
the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestion-
ably the most poe-tical topic in the world,(...)”14. So
it wasn’t only Tumblr’s users romanticizing their fra-
gility in the mid 2010s, it is a follow-up of the history of
men romanticizing the death of their beloved women
or the ‘beautifully astonishing’ suffering of a young girl.
Because a woman who is soft, suffering, and fragile
cannot speak up for herself and is helpless. A woman
in agony is dependent on being rescued by her con-
temporary knight on a beautiful horse, just like the
young (and white!!!) and blonde and beautiful (and 11 Mina Le. 2022. “The Tumblr Girl Is
thin!!!) Rapunzel was saved from the tower, being her Coming Back.” https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=gI2UqTFddo8.
bedroom where she was distressed by her loneliness, 12 Mina Le. 2022. “The Tumblr Girl Is
and in a modern reinterpretation reblogging on Tumblr Coming Back.” https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=gI2UqTFddo8.
while listening to Ethel Cain.15 On the internet mod- 13 Mina Le. 2022. “The Tumblr Girl Is
ern-day Rapunzel would post photos of boundless Coming Back.” https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=gI2UqTFddo8.
dark night skies (resembling her solitude), hopelessly 14 Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy
Veronica Obenauer

of Composition,” The Works of

romantic poems from Milk and Honey16, and a picture Edgar Allan Poe, Lit2Go Edition,
of a thin and bleeding pale-looking hand (in remem- (1903), accessed March 12, 2024,
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-
brance of pricking her finger on the spinning wheel), works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5371/
continuously feeding the platform’s romanization of the-philosophy-of-composition/.
15 Ethel Cain (Hayden Silas Anhedönia) is an
feminine victimhood in order to serve her community. American singer-songwriter with lyrics
often inspired by nostalgic and Southern
Gothic themes.
16 Kaur, Rupi. 2015. Milk and Honey.
Andrews McMeel Publishing.

6
Stage One—Sad Girl
Coming back to Audrey Wolle’s theory of the Sad
Girl, in which she claims this happening of public sad-
ness and suffering as an act of feminine resistance,
author Ava Burzycki criticizes the insensitive associ-
ation with the Sad Girl and what she really was. In
her article Notes from a recovered Sad Girl17 she
determines the Sad Girl as a product of male fantasy,
where women would be dissected and compartmen-
talized for male benefit. She remarks on the pictures
of girls being bruised, especially on their legs, being
submissive and pushed down, while satisfying the
actual target group of this representation of passive
women­­—the male gaze.18 In another video essay
Mina Le suitably adds up:

“The male gaze is to be

served, but not
acknowledged.
You need to appear

Performing Cyber Tenderness

helpless and desirable.”19
The term ‘male gaze’—coined in the 1970s by the
film critic Laura Mulvey—refers to the objectification of
the female, sexualizing and depicting them from a very
white, heterosexual masculine view. The male gaze
is the actual reason for Superman getting his female
equivalent, and Bond having his bond girl accompa-
nying him.20 It is not an imposed attempt to higher the
representation of women in pop culture, it carries the
goal of making revenue by giving men their scantily
dressed to-be-saved female character, which they can
later on fantasize about underneath their sheets. The
world (of storytelling) is mostly dominated by white
heteronormative men, resulting in those making media
thought to be consumed by other men.
Luckily the Sad Girl was not a trend planted by
men, in the hope of generating pictures for their own
enjoyment, but it was real teen girls documenting, per-
forming, and building communities through their own 17 Burzycki, Ava. 2022. “Notes from a recov-
ered Sad Girl.” The Michigan Daily. May
suffering (whether in full authenticity or not), being 21, 2022. Accessed November 16, 2023.
very self-aware about their emotions. This part of a https://www.michigandaily.com/statement/
notes-from-a-recovered-sad-girl/.
more controlled self expression on the internet was a 18 Loreck, Janice. 2016. “Explainer: what
does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about
shaping moment of growing into a woman. But despite a female gaze?” The Conversation. January
that Burzycki blames the very polished representation 5, 2016. Accessed March 8, 2024. https://
theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-
just for the sake of making it aesthetic. Bruised and the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-
scarring, peaking underneath a mini skirt or scratches female-gaze-52486.
19 Mina Le. 2022. “‘Toxic’ Femininity:
under the eye become a beautiful and innocent acces- What’s up With Girlbloggers, Female
Veronica Obenauer

Manipulators, and Femcels?” https://www.

sory rather than a proof of sexual subjugation, which is youtube.com/watch?v=W6aDNutZoB0.
yet worn on red carpets.21 All of this benefits patriarchy 20 Douglas, James, and Huy Nguyen.
2020. “Dissecting the role of ‘Bond
by easily intimidating (emotionally) fragile women into Girl’ in 007.” RTF Gender and Media
pornographic fantasies. Culture. July 2, 2020. Accessed March
11, 2024. https://rtfgenderandmedia-
culture.wordpress.com/2020/07/02/
dissecting-the-role-of-bond-girl-in-007/.
21 Vogue. 2022. “Doja Cat Gets Ready for
the Balenciaga Show | Vogue.” https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=jyHDO6aVPrU.

7
Stage One—Sad Girl
Growing out of pursuing to be the archetype
Tumblr Sad Girl, it is certainly important to recognize
the patterns of strategic oppression of patriarchy that
perhaps have also contributed to the soft grunge aes-
thetic most of us aimed for. Maybe we didn’t distinctly
post to be sexualized by white men, but at the end
of the day, we wanted to be perceived (and maybe
likewise heroically saved from our tower of loneliness)
by our crushes, performing our personality based
around this melancholic curated archetype and not
displaying the ugly suffering and realizations we truly
did undergo: becoming a woman under the compul-
sion of misogyny. Burzycki says that “there is a key
difference between exploring one’s own female misery
and eroticizing it—one exists for the woman herself,
and the other caters to male fantasy”22. The Sad Girls
of Tumblr rarely ugly-cried in the perception of others
online or showed what consuming thoughts they really
wrote in their coming-of-age-diary. Rather the Sad Girl
shed a sparkling tear while sitting fully dressed legs
crossed on a freshly made bed, ready to press the
shutter and later on ready to be reblogged and con-

Performing Cyber Tenderness

sumed, fitting everyone’s aesthetic soft grunge blog
theme. Again quoting Burzycki:

“A woman embracing her

natural and authentic
emotions cannot be a
carefully curated Sad
Girl, because a woman
breaking out of this
mold is not a woman
that can be easily
advertised.”23
Burzycki criticizes the actual presence of their
posted sadness, they are reproaching the Sad Girl to
perform her magnificent melancholy, in order to be per-
ceived, permanently pleasing her community, gaining
more attention from fellow Sad Girls (because her
crush definitely wasn’t chronically online on Tumblr).
The Sad Girl can not lose her depression-purse. She
continuously self-labels her being, unconsciously
participating in a capitalist system of exchange.
She grasps on to this melancholic aesthetic, deeply
Veronica Obenauer

knowing that if she were to suddenly feel better, her

community might abandon her for the lack of following 22 Burzycki, Ava. 2022. “Notes from a recov-
ered Sad Girl.” The Michigan Daily. May
this pathetic trend. 21, 2022. Accessed November 16, 2023.
https://www.michigandaily.com/statement/
notes-from-a-recovered-sad-girl/.
23 Burzycki, Ava. 2022. “Notes from a recov-
ered Sad Girl.” The Michigan Daily. May
21, 2022. Accessed November 16, 2023.
https://www.michigandaily.com/statement/
notes-from-a-recovered-sad-girl/.

8
Stage One—Sad Girl
Another problem with Tumblr’s #softgrunge is how the algorithm. Sometimes even resulting in their entire
white-washed it was, most of the time representing blog being taken down. Following up in the year 2018,
stereotypical pale female-looking girls, with borderline when Yahoo was obtained by Verizon, all of the adult
skinny bodies, occasionally appropriating neglected content—including posts that contained every state of
cultures (Looking at you, 2014 ‘boho chic’ Coachella!). undressing and nudity were flagged as explicit con-
The #PrettyWhenYouCry references an eponymous tent—even though they were not measurably sexual,
song by Lana Del Rey, with her often being associated resulting in the censorship of progressively more con-
as ‘The Mother of Sad Girls’. But Lana Del Rey didn’t tent. In the article “How social media falls apart” Gita
design and mass-fabricated the Sad Girl as we know Jackson wrote:
her. The concept and initial visuality of the Sad Girl
originate from the 1993 movie Mi Vida Loca,24 where
the Sad Girl was displayed as “LA tattoo art as a gang- “With fandom artists no
ster chick with tears running down her face”25. Beside
the actual Sad Girl being the complete opposite of our
longer able to grow
weak and submissive Tumblr replica. The Sad Girl, their communities, 31
actually named Mona, is portrayed as an L.A. chola,
having her name tattooed on her knuckles after joining
Tumblr lost the ability
a girl gang. Coming back to the 2010s, Lana Del Rey to grow, too.”
plays an L.A. stripper who is accompanied by her
gangster boyfriend in her 2013 short film Tropico26,
where she represents the looks inspired by Mona. The
Tijuana-based feminist art collective Sad Girls Y Qué

Performing Cyber Tenderness

called Lana out for appropriation: “She is this blonde
heiress, [taking] all these symbols from a culture that
isn’t hers to make profit. It’s obviously offensive”27.
Sad Girls Y Qué started in 2012 as a Tumblr-like
Facebook page, offering an empowering alternative
to white-only feminism, seeking reciprocation against
the machismo prevalent in Mexico. “Sad Girls Y Qué
are opposing a particular iteration of the patriarchy, not
just reblogging bruise pics because its members are
24 Anders, Allison, Director. Mi Vida Loca
in a bad mood”28. The collective criticizes the appear- [Film]. Channel Four Films, Cineville, and
ance of Tumblr’s version of the Sad Girl, while other HBO, 1993. 1:35:56. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=vaoXAm4ulyg
aesthetics like #pastelgrunge and #pastelgoth also 25 Calderón-Douglass, Barbara. 2014. “Sad
rarely show skin colors other than pale white. So not Girls y Qué Are Breaking Down Machismo
with Internet Art.” Vice, October 24,
only was the #pastelgrunge #softgrunge Sad Girl’s 2014. Accessed March 10, 2024. https://
www.vice.com/en/article/nnqkqm/
behavior ambiguous, considering the romanization of sad-girls-y-que-is-breaking-down-ma-
submissive women and mental illness, but also was chismo-and-offering-an-alternative-to-
white-feminism-456.
she yearning for an appearance which was based on a 26 Lana Del Rey. 2013. “Tropico.” https://www.
stolen visuality, appropriating it without any knowledge youtube.com/watch?v=VwuHOQLSpEg.
27 Eden, Nellie. 2015. “Lean like A Chola.”
of its origins. Wonderland Magazine, March 3, 2015.
Accessed March 10, 2024. https://www.
At the end of the endless scroll, why did we really wonderlandmagazine.com/2015/03/03/
use Tumblr? Was it really helping us to understand lean-like-chola/.
28 Hines, Alice. 2015. “A Taxonomy
the journey of our teenage self-discovery or was it of the Sad Girl.” I-D, June 17, 2015.
just a ephemeral online alternative to main-stream Archived November 10,, 2023, at
the Wayback Machine, https://web.
media fed by the culture industry, to distract us from archive.org/web/20231110134757/
https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/
the real teen-rebel that should have happened AFK, pabzay/a-taxonomy-of-the-sad-girl.
supposed to recognize these political problems and 29 Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor
W.. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment
disrupting structures earlier in time?29 But soon even as Mass Deception”. Dialectic of
Tumblr’s and the Sad Girl’s peak came to an end. In Enlightenment, edited by Gunzelin Schmid
Noeri, Redwood City: Stanford University
2013 Tumblr was sold to Yahoo,30 introducing the Press, 2002, pp. 94-136. https://doi.
Veronica Obenauer

org/10.1515/9780804788090-007
platform’s decline, and also starting to censor a lot of 30 Jackson, Gita. 2023. “How a social network
its adult content. Due to the platform living from fan- falls apart.” The Verge, March 9, 2023.
Accessed March 10, 2024. https://www.
doms, which would more or less erotically ship their theverge.com/2023/3/9/23629372/
favorite characters, a lot of users started to abandon twitter-tumblr-livejournal-social-network.
31 Jackson, Gita. 2023. “How a social network
their blogs, since most content was falsely deleted by falls apart.” The Verge, March 9, 2023.
Accessed March 10, 2024. https://www.
theverge.com/2023/3/9/23629372/
twitter-tumblr-livejournal-social-network.

9
Stage One—Sad Girl
With the downfall of Tumblr, social media plat- Maybe the Sad Girl would not have cried/
forms like Facebook and Instagram gained more reblogged so much if Tumblr had its own shopping
prominence, later on followed by TikTok being on the function, further distracting the Sad Girl from her
constant rise having more daily users than Tumblr actual suffering and void. But maybe our weekly run
ever had. But still, Tumblr felt like more of a platform to Urban Outfitters and American Apparel was just a
for escaping the IRL, where creating usernames and more involved way of purchasing our way to social
posting to perform your cyber character happened affinity, posing with our venti Starbucks cups, while
more anonymously, separated from our real lives. In buying new fishnet stockings.
the current age of the internet, social media platforms
make our AFK lives inseparable from our URL perfor-
mance. We post for friends, family, and colleagues,
being aware of the impact and influence of our pro-
files. So we perform, not our sadness, but our perfectly
polished version of our persona. Always be aware,
you could not get a job because of your digital foot-
print (sike)! While Tumblr was another way of showing
our ‘true selves’, revealing our pain and normalizing
depression, Instagram is now the digital glossy ver-
sion of our AFK avatars, showing professionality and
the happiest moments of our authentic everyday
lives—a distinct version of our ‘real selves’. Algorithms
are collecting our favorite ideas, and bombarding us

Performing Cyber Tenderness

with new fun things and trends to love, buy and share
with your followers. Everyday! 24/7! You have a new
notification: Here are today’s top reels! Social media
has shops integrated into their applications now, per-
fectly adjusted to your future taste, completing your
fullest aesthetic right in front of you, without you even
noticing it. It effortlessly suggests you what to buy,
in between a constant tapping through your friends’
Instagram stories, which was usually meant to be the
‘realest’ part of Instagram since it’s so ephemeral—
only lasting twenty four hours, right?

Veronica Obenauer

10
(1.4) and thus I do not function,
I am boiling over with my tears

Stage One—Sad Girl

To recap the last chapter: Being a woman is super So, to recap the last chapter: Being a woman
fun! Everyone is consistently and immensely interested requires constant and mostly unconscious (brain-
in your looks. They actually adapted the latest trends washed) suffering under the conditions of a system
for you, so you can someday finally convince your adapted to serve male pleasure. This is also fur-
crush with the thirst traps32 you post on Instagram. ther applying to our online presences—the place we
The hard labor of thirst-trapping is worth it! It doesn’t thought we are safe in, since we are not tied to our
matter that you get body-dysmorphia looking into your desired bodies in virtuality anymore. How is it possible
selfie camera, since they nowadays include plus-size to achieve an authentic existence under the pressure
models walking at Fashion Week. You actually earned of perpetual surveillance? The philosopher Michel
that piece of sugar-free protein chocolate, you were Foucault declares that being judged on a regular is
ultimately girlbossing today! Introduce a new era by part of our human normality:
getting a new haircut, a French bob would really con-
tour your face again. Oh, you leave the salon thinking
they cut it too short? You don’t feel as feminine as you “We are in the society
did before? Oh, now you are scared that your crush
will not like you back, since you look like Joan of Arc33
of the teacher-judge,
(Surprise, she also had mental health issues)34? Now the doctor-judge,
that you resemble the appearance of the faithful knight
you longed for, maybe go save yourself from that pity
the educator-judge,
tower of everlasting loneliness! the social worker-judge;
The independent feminist self-aware woman is
more in trend anyway, there is no more need to satisfy it is on them that

Performing Cyber Tenderness

a man to live your fulfilled life. You are different, you
do not judge other women based on their looks—only
the universal reign of
by being annoyed by them seducing a man in front the normative is based;
of your Maybelline Sky High35 lashes (which you defi-
nitely bought, being influenced by TikTok beauty gurus
and each individual,
serving the female gaze because you are fully aware wherever (they) may
of that horrible male-gaze). You know patriarchy! You
don’t need to convince any prince anymore, they need find (themselves),
to convince you! Actually, you don’t need any knight
at all, because you enjoy doing self-care, alone up
subjects to it
there in your pathetic Rapunzel-tower. Now, no man (their) body,
can climb up and save you any longer, after you cut
your beautiful long hair off. There is no one to be
(their) gestures,
perceived by, making yourself invisible for the struc- (their) behavior,
ture—non-valuable in a sense. Suffering in everlasting
solitude—again you bleed in pain while reblogging sad (their) aptitudes,
lyrical pieces and listening to the melancholic melody
of Lana Del Rey (Please, you should finally stop lis-
(their) achievements.”37
tening to someone glamorizing abusive relationships
and appropriating women of color on a regular)36.

36 Sultan, Iman. 2021. “Lana Del Rey

Veronica Obenauer

Can’t Qualify Her Way Out of Being

32 thirst trap: “a statement by or photograph 34 Schildkrout, Barbara. 2017. “Joan of Held Accountable” Harper’s BAZAAR,
of someone on social media that is intended Arc–Hearing Voices.” American Journal of November 2, 2021. https://www.harp-
to attract attention or make people who see Psychiatry 174 (12): 1153–54. https://doi. ersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/
it sexually interested in them”. https://dic- org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17080948. a35311661/lana-del-rey-appropriation/#.
tionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ 35 The Maybelline Lash Sensational Sky High 37 Foucault, Michel. (1975) 1995. Discipline
thirst-trap Mascara is a beauty product marketed for and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
33Joan of Arc (died May 30 1431) was an full and extreme lashes. Lately rising in Penguin Books. p. 304. https://monoskop.
early feminist, military leader and a patron popularity, due to being viral on TikTok (at org/images/4/43/Foucault_Michel_
saint of france. She mostly is portrayed least on my algorithm). Discipline_and_Punish_The_Birth_of_the_
with a french bob with bangs or short hair. Prison_1977_1995.pdf.

11
Stage One—Sad Girl
To be said he does not only apply that on the con-
stant judgment of women, but rather on everyone taking
part in our society. Taking that even further, the philos-
opher Judith Butler, who is mainly focusing on queer
and feminist theory, proposes that even our gender is
not only biological but rather based on performativity
in terms of current gender norms.38 Therefore we are
‘gender norms’-judged down to our tiniest behavior,
resulting in being burned out by obsessing over our
gender acceptability—everyone of us. And with white
heterosexual men winning, by ruling our female bodies
and choices chained with it, that judgment continues
being a structural isolation of women. But how do we
get saved from that enormous tower, if there’s no man
saving us? Should Rapunzel rather trust the witch
again, since she didn’t eat her as a baby?39 The fem-
inist philosopher Silvia Federici argues that the witch
trials, happening in Europe during the late 15th to early
18th century, were a core aspect of the rise of capi-
talism and modernity itself.40 During the trials—having
around forty to sixty thousand people structurally mur-
dered—mostly women (because they were assumed

Performing Cyber Tenderness

to be more naive falling for the devil) were accused
of practicing diabolic witchcraft. Witches were bad, for
the sake of ordering Satan rather than God in their
practice—making them glitches in the system of chris-
tianity. Many of them accused were elders, the poor
or social outcasts—people on the edge of society, the
invaluable, the non-profitable bugs. Perhaps just like
Tumblr’s Sad Girls, resisting function under the suf-
fering of their mental health.

38 Butler, Judith. 2006. Gender Trouble:

Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York; London: Routledge.
39 In the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm,
the witch named ‘Dame Gothel’ wishes to
raise the baby (Rapunzel) instead of eating
it (in comparison to many other witches
Veronica Obenauer

in fairy tales). Transmitting this into the

real world, in the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’
(Hammer of Witches, 1487)—a horrific
text used as a companion in the witch hunt,
it proclaims the witch as a killer of infants.
However the term ‘Maleficia’ is used as a
byword for birth control, again making the
witch hunt a structural suppression taking
away women’s rights over their choices of
their bodies.
40 Federici, Silvia. 2004. Caliban and the
Witch. New York, NY: Autonomedia.

12
Stage One—Sad Girl
Coming back to the earlier mentioned Sad Girl who grew up at least in middle class circumstances.
Theory by Audrey Wollen, where she demonstrates Sick Woman Theory is considering modes of protest
the Sad Girl’s suffering as a political act of resistance. for the sick, people not able to attend protests due to
Wollen says that girlhood “(...)is an experience of being “imprisoned by a job”, or because of the threat of
brutal alienation and constant fear of violence”, con- violence at protests coming also from police brutality,
sidering why the #softgrunge-epidemy on Tumblr was besides illness and disability or the responsibility of
that big among young girls: caring for someone with illness and disability.

“All the amazing parts

of girlhood (…) are
survival tactics that
girls have created in this
face of reality.”41
Posting tears under #PrettyWhenYouCry or many
otheractivities based on performing cyber tenderness
are an URLconnectivity tool for many leaving the
innocence of girlhood, while creating digital commu-

Performing Cyber Tenderness

nities of Sad Girls. Rather than demonstrating against
the patriarchal complex by loudly screaming AFK on
the street, they are spamming the internet with their
sad poetry, capturing their critique into 280 charac-
ters.42 A way of taking up space and raising voice in
the form of URL tears. In the introduction of the book
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, the
author Soraya Chemaly talks about how their parents
always excluded anger when they were talking about
emotions with her as a child.43 Possibly explaining
why in Wollen’s theory they are the ‘Sad’ Girls, not the
‘Angry’ Girls, since anger was mostly something men
would practice, while women would hide their anger
in the tears that were already running down their rosy
cheeks. Chemaly further claims that women experi-
ence rage more in a private setting instead of living
41 Barron, Benjamin. 2014. “Richard Prince,
it out in public: “Coping often involves self-silencing Audrey Wollen, and the Sad Girl Theory.”
and feelings of powerlessness.”44 Girls acting in rage I-D. November 12, 2014. Accessed
March 13, 2024. https://web.archive.org/
are often accused as being zickig45, and women in web/20200114114006/https://i-d.vice.
com/en_uk/article/nebn3d/richard-prince-
rage are widely associated with “madness”46. Denying audrey-wollen-and-the-sad-girl-theory.
anger causes you to be “a good woman, which, signifi- 42 280 is the amount of characters allowed
posting text on X (formerly Twitter).
cantly, meant not being demanding, loud, or expressing 43 Chemaly, Soraya L. 2018. Rage Becomes
her own needs”47. Women oppress their anger while Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Epub.
New York: Atria Books. Introduction.
being oppressed by patriarchal structures themselves, 44 Chemaly, Soraya L. 2018. Rage Becomes
Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Epub.
crying URL rather than protesting AFK. But what hap- New York: Atria Books. pp. 6-7.
pens when people are actually not able to participate 45 German for “bitchy” or “prissy”, but-
straightforward just a term to categorize
in those AFK protests? Or to put it more precisely: angry girls or young women, not accepting
“(...) what happens to the sad girl who is poor, queer, their emotion as actual anger but as an
overreaction due to puberty.
and/or not white, when, if, she grows up”48? Based on 46 Chemaly, Soraya L. 2018. Rage Becomes
Veronica Obenauer

Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Epub.

Wollen’s Sad Girl Theory the artist and writer Johanna New York: Atria Books. p. 7
Hedva introduces her take and extension with her 47 Chemaly, Soraya L. 2018. Rage Becomes
Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Epub.
writing about the Sick Woman Theory. In the essay New York: Atria Books. p. 7
the author is critically viewing Wollen’s Sad Girl being 48 Hedva, Johanna. 2020. “Sick Woman
Theory.” p. 5. https://www.kunstv-
centered on beautiful heteronormative white girls, erein-hildesheim.de/assets/bilder/
caring-structures-ausstellung-dig-
ital/Johanna-Hedva/cb6ec5c75f/
AUSSTELLUNG_1110_Hedva_SWT_e.
pdf.

13
Stage One—Sad Girl
Hannah Arendt’s definition of the political for everyone being perceived as weaker or more fragile—
instance is that everything happening in the public whether due to physical or mental illness, for everyone
is automatically considered as having a political being ignored and over-talked everyday. And at last:
impact.49 But where would Arendt rate the Internet, The Sad Girl is everyone showing and embracing their
since everything is shared publicly while posting alone humanly emotionality and vulnerability, but is instead
from our intimate bedrooms? In their essay Hedva accused as an overreacting attention-seeking mess.
criticizes Arendt’s definition, by the meaning that Therefore Sad Girl requires space for secure co-exis-
everything happening in a private room wouldn’t be tence, giving her sickness an ephemeral opportunity
considered political.50 Arendt’s reason for that defi- to live on in eternity, modifying administrative rights to
nition came from the concern that if everything was subsequently spam, reclaim and take up space, more
considered political it would result in nothing being likely storage. As Hedva proclaims:
political at all, following the introduction of this kind of
public or non-public binary. But with this statement she
was ignoring a whole group of people by pushing them “Because to stay alive,
further into darkness—excluding them from the public
spectrum. By now we can all agree that everything we
capitalism cannot be
do is indeed political, whether intentionally political or res-ponsible for our
happening in private. To take this further Judith Butler
extends this critique in her lecture Vulnerability and
care—its logic of
Resistance51, saying that Arendt failed to acknowledge exploitation requires
who is in charge of that public, and who according
to that is at all allowed to participate in that public. that some of us die.”53

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Johanna Hedva, who themself is constantly struggling
under chronic illness, is therefore questioning:

“How do you throw a

brick through the
window of a bank if you
can’t get out of bed?”52
They are suggesting the importance of taking
care of yourself and others following it being the big-
gest enemy of capitalism. The Sick Woman Theory
highlights the notion that many forms of political dis-
sent are internalized, experienced, and suffered within
the body, and are often being unnoticed—suggesting
that being entails enduring vulnerability as a constant. 49 Hedva, Johanna. 2020. “Sick Woman
By stating that vulnerability is deep-seated to the Theory.”, p. 1. https://www.kunstv-
erein-hildesheim.de/assets/bilder/
body—not just a passing state—implying a continual caring-structures-ausstellung-dig-
need for support systems to ensure survival. This calls ital/Johanna-Hedva/cb6ec5c75f/
AUSSTELLUNG_1110_Hedva_SWT_e.
for a restructuring of societal frameworks to better pdf.
address this enduring reality. The center of this theory 50 Hedva, Johanna. 2020. “Sick Woman
Theory.”, p. 1. https://www.kunstv-
is the idea that the whole body reacts sensitively to erein-hildesheim.de/assets/bilder/
caring-structures-ausstellung-dig-
systems of oppression, particularly those emerging ital/Johanna-Hedva/cb6ec5c75f/
from neoliberal, white-supremacist, imperial-capitalist, AUSSTELLUNG_1110_Hedva_SWT_e.
pdf.
cis-hetero-patriarchal structures. The Sick Woman 51 Butler, Judith. December 19, 2014.
Theory underscores that the collective trauma inflicted “Vulnerability and Resistance.” REDCAT.
52 Hedva, Johanna. 2020. “Sick
by these systems sustain sickness, attributing the root Woman Theory.” https://www.kun-
Veronica Obenauer

stverein-hildesheim.de/assets/bilder/
cause to the oppressive nature of the world itself. The caring-structures-ausstellung-dig-
Sad Girl is no longer only considered to existing by ital/Johanna-Hedva/cb6ec5c75f/
AUSSTELLUNG_1110_Hedva_SWT_e.
it’s female #softgrunge visuality, but rather the depic- pdf.
tion of the Sad Girl becomes a verbal substitute for 53 Hedva, Johanna. 2020. “Sick Woman
Theory.”, p. 7. https://www.kunstv-
everyone suffering from an oppressing system, for erein-hildesheim.de/assets/bilder/
caring-structures-ausstellung-dig-
ital/Johanna-Hedva/cb6ec5c75f/
AUSSTELLUNG_1110_Hedva_SWT_e.
pdf.

14
Stage One—Sad Girl
They are implementing that today’s ‘sickness’ is Besides that in her A Cyborg Manifesto Haraway
a binary guideline of capitalism. A healthy person is describes the digital as something that is mainly affil-
feeling good enough to complete work, while a sick iated with male features, in other words technology is
person is holding the work they have ‘to take care of’, mostly claimed to be hard, cold, lifeless and mostly
in need to take care of themselves in priority. A sick non-autonomous. In the Cybertwee Manifesto, with the
person should get well very soon, to continue their work term cybertwee serving as an alternative to Cyberpunk
that has been sitting there, just waiting for them. While genres which frequently dominate ideas of futurism in
also being paid for their days off, they are hindering science fiction. Their manifesto states:
the company a bit further from making profit—a literal
virus in a running complex. In the Glitch Feminism
Manifesto the author Legacy Russel explains: “Far too long have we
succumb to the bitter
“With physical move- edge of the idea that
ment often restricted, power is lost in the
female-identifying sweet and tender.
people, queer people, Romantic is not weak.
Black people invent Feminine is not weak.
ways to create space Cute is not weak(…)

Performing Cyber Tenderness

through rupture.”54 Lack of emotion is oft
favored because success
So we explore and utilize that rupture in the form
of our brokenness in our black mirrors, we expand is defined as the ability
our broken bodies to fulfill our unrestricted souls. The
author and philosopher Donna Haraway introduces us
to be mechanical
to the Cyborg—the machines as a natural extension to and efficient.
our human bodies—while questioning:
But sentimentality,
“Why should our empathy, and being too
bodies end at the skin, soft should not be seen
or include at best other as weaknesses.”56
beings encapsulated Our weakness is not weak, it is more powerful
by skin?(…) than ever. So we continue, thriving into URL. Not let-

Machines can be ting 280 characters narrow us down, but rather posting
twenty tweets in a row. Defending how shitty we feel
prosthetic devices, with every digital monument that we frame in glitter
ascii57 heaven, while we are cheerfully rotting in bed58 ,
intimate components, rather than decaying in the obsolete meme of being
friendly selves.”55 saved from that tower.
Veronica Obenauer

55 Haraway, Donna J. 1985. A Cyborg 56 “The Cybertwee Manifesto” 2015. https://

Manifesto. Manifestly Haraway. University cybertwee.net/the_manifesto/.
of Minnesota Press. p. 61. 57 Ascii Art is a form of digital art, set in
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ typographical glyphs and symbols only.
english/currentstudents/undergrad- 58 Hui, Alyssa. 2023. “What Is ‘Bed
uate/modules/fictionnownarrative- Rotting’? Gen Z’s Newest Self-
mediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/ Care Trend, Explained.” Health,
manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_man- July 28, 2023. Accessed March
54 Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A ifesto_science_technology_and_social- 14, 2024. https://www.health.com/
Manifesto. 2020. London: Verso. p. 13 ist-feminism_in_the_....pdf. what-is-bed-rotting-trend-7561395.

15
(2.1) Admitting my cheat codes, I insist of my crying

Stage Two—Influencer
Since they keep clinging to their beloved With our physical bodies no longer bound to us in
internet, the Sad Girls moved on from her crying and cyberspace, gender not only remains a performance
are adapting to the ongoing present. They are now but rather becomes a prosthetic.60 As the Sick Woman
blinded by self-improvement, rather posting their AFK Theory also implemented: The Sad Girl just becomes
meditation day-to-day, in order to reach brightest a symbolic category of the suffering, the ill, the ones
potential and their most fulfilled self. Their beloved that had enough. The Sad Girl is released from biolog-
cyberspace—now merged with their AFK existence— ical sex or social gender. (Did I say Sad Girl? Sorry, I
is leading them throughout the rays of the sun and the meant the Influencer). In the book Females61 the author
glimmer of the moon. It is the internet as their best Andrea Long Chu describes femininity rather as a con-
friend, guiding them to themselves, before the Sad Girl cept based on dependency and satisfaction of others,
even reaches out for help. from this perspective Long Chu draws that anyone is
Tumblr became a time capsule filled with bots categorically considered female. Already in 1994 the
reblogging the same photos since 2015. Everyone British philosopher Sadie Plant even mentioned the
moved out by now, posting their way into staged fan- term ‘digitalization’ often being called ‘feminization’.62
tasy, since advanced algorithms easily wrapped them So regarding this concept nothing we do virtually is
around its very thin and long data fingers. People online ‘neutral’ in all terms, as Donna Haraway explains:
seem to like the Sad Girl, recognizing themselves
following her authentic extraordinary self. The Sad
Girl moved on from her pathetic creature, becoming “We’re inside of what
the Influencer of her own well-ness, affirming posi-
tivity under cyber spirituality. Manifesting the person
we make, and it’s inside
she wants to be by fairy tale-telling her presence, of us. We’re living in a

Performing Cyber Tenderness

obsessing about her cyber-flesh, writing URL autofic-
tion for her AFK life. In the Glitch Feminism Manifesto
world of connections—
Russell wrote that the digital is “giving us the capacity and it matters which
to perform different selves—quite literally putting them
on, then taking them off, as we grow with or away from ones get made and
them (...)”59, comparing it to a costume we choose to
proudly wear in digitality, to change whenever and to
unmade.”63
customize in the course of time. So we perform who-
ever we aim to depict. We can be anyone, do anything,
reach everything. Self-expression becomes a practice
of art on the internet, with its artists being obsessed
about their non-tangible URL representation.

Veronica Obenauer

61 Long Chu, Andrea. Females. 2019. London:

Verso.
62 Sadie Plant at ICA. 1994. “Seduced &
Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World
- the Feminine Cyberspace.” https://www.
59 Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A youtube.com/watch?v=doL9mRMEUGw.
Manifesto. 2020. London: Verso. p. 79 63 Quote Donna Haraway, in: Hari Kunzru:
60 As Russell is quoting Paul B. Preciado. “You are Cyborg” Wired, February 1
(Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A 1997. https://www.wired.com/1997/02/
Manifesto. 2020. London: Verso. p. 79) ffharaway/

16
Stage Two—Influencer
The future co-exists in digitality and we are So why don’t we all accept our Cyborg destiny?
sculpting our future existence in that exact moment, Why don’t we focus on our on-screen existence, finally
with our human flesh still being in the center of its freed from the suffering of our AFK consequences and
matrix. The internet will live on—it is not ephemeral, systems, where our bodies become liquid, altering our
it is material and will sure exist for a while, as author idea of existence—allowing no commercial appropria-
of the Cyberfeminism Index, Mindy Seu claims in an tion of ourselves? We flourish in our online being, dis-
interview.64 But since our beloved internet—unlike its playing our soon-to-be realities. We like, we follow, we
commonly used icon resembling planet earth—is not share, we adapt—But above all we consume, not for-
a water-containing planet found in space (and there- getting and accommodating our AFK skins, our opin-
fore self-evolving through nature’s circumstances), ions, and our value.
but rather completely created on human knowledge, Not too soon the Influencer will lose themselves
it concludes in our cyberspace being administered in their ever-rising screen time, under constant stim-
by humans from its birth. And to take it further with ulation, an addict to URL numbers rather than AFK
capitalism at the helm: The internet is administered affection. What is their human flesh even worth in
and regulated by companies. In cyberspace Meta cyberspace, considering it is an intangible void? Their
becomes a government with its own rules rather than physical affection no longer owns online value, rather
only a brand. The places we continually consume those online networks yearn for our ever-weakening
from are making up rules for further successful con- attention. The only physical affection of value is our
sumption. If you do not acknowledge their rules, you thumb staying in an immortalized position on those
and your content are being excluded from their cyber- screens. The Influencer finished manufacturing its
netic ministry, blacklisted and isolated from the rest of fairy tale, resulting it to be another dulled kind of space
cybernetic society. we now have to coexist in, with the fairy tale never

Performing Cyber Tenderness

This doesn’t seem to disturb the Influencer. With leaving our AFK lives untouched—again being sup-
every weekly regulation of Meta’s terms of usage in pressed by their rules.
their mailbox, they dummy-accept and carry on. They
tick the only box possible and continue with their busi-
ness, because they couldn’t imagine their pity AFK
without their cyber comfort spaces and the endless
reinforcements from their gazing audience, also being
algorithms and monsters filled with data. Who would
be interested in their lore offline anyways, since it’s
not that glittery and curated outside the limitations of
their screen? The Influencer continues their existence
under Haraway’s faith in the Cyborg, being a creature
of its social reality and a creature created for fiction.65
The Influencer is tangible and opaque concurrently.
And we are all naturally adapting the Influencer’s flu-
idity every time we are nailing our vision to our small
handheld screens, as literary critic N. Katherine Hayles
puts it perfectly:

“As you gaze at the

flickering signifiers
scrolling down the
computer screens, (…) 65 Haraway, Donna J. 1985. A
CyborgManifesto. Manifestly Haraway.

you have already University of Minnesota Press. pp.

5-6. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/
english/currentstudents/undergrad-
become posthuman.”66 uate/modules/fictionnownarrative-
mediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/
Veronica Obenauer

manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_man-
ifesto_science_technology_and_social-
ist-feminism_in_the_....pdf.
66 Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We
Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in
Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.
The University of Chicago Press.
64 Poles, Clemence. 2023. “Meet Mindy https://monoskop.org/images/5/50/
Seu—Passerby Magazine.” Passerby Hayles_N_Katherine_How_We_
Magazine. November 24, 2023. Accessed Became_Posthuman_Virtual_Bodies_in_
March 19, 2024. http://passerbymagazine. Cybernetics_Literature_and_Informatics.
com/profiles/mindy-seu. pdf.

17
(2.2) selling my soul

Stage Two—Influencer
We try to adapt and we try to perform. Regardless The philosopher Kendall Walton also declares that we
of them knowing of our true AFK bodies, our existence can’t be moved by things that are not real, arguing that
is getting ranked. They categorize our opinions, our the emotions we experience due to fictional events
looks, and our likes, questioning our authenticity. are not real either—he calls them Quasi-Emotions68 ,
Every time you toggle the box next to the “I’m not a being emotion-like functions that can be caused by fic-
robot”, you feel like you are being a completely honest tion but do not function like real emotions triggered by
human-individual. By now your adaptation has gone true events. So does that mean that the realness of
far behind customization, but started benefiting the my online emotions depends on the viewer and if they
commodification of your beloved choices. If you adapt actually perceive me as a character? Susan Sontag—
by purchasing something trendy, does it make you often dealing with the meaning of photography—also
less authentic? Less authentic, since it didn’t come supports this assumption with her observation that
from your very niche algorithm, that is whispering the since a photograph alienates the viewers “from direct
exact products to complete your character? They don’t experience”, what is transcended is only an “intense
want to see your fairy tale anymore, since it literally second-hand experience”69, making it harder to empa-
became the fraud of a fantasy life: No one is happy thize with this person or their situation. But then what
all the time. No middle-class living person can afford is an honest feeling? Should we rather rate them by
uninterrupted traveling. And most importantly no one spontaneity and the motivation to gain value?70 At this
believes in your staged intellectual productivity hidden point, the Influencer feels like every intimate emotional
in the untouched dusty bookshelf you constantly share moment they would share online would be criticized,
in a light sunbeam on your Instagram story. As you losing empathy for their own crying. And since they
post your distress in the form of a crying selfie, you are a person driven by their emotionality, they are con-
follow to cover up your ears to the voices in the dis- templating retirement from the place that once felt so

Performing Cyber Tenderness

tance, telling you that you’re only doing it for attention. accepting to them.
They no longer want to see the constant glamorisa-
tion of your li(v)es. You are worth nothing if not truly
authentic.
In the artwork 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears,
the artist Laurel Nakadate captures a picture of herself
crying every day in a row for years. The performance
took place from 2010 to 2020, and in 2020 with the sel-
fies being posted on Instagram.67 Some pictures are
filled with shiny tears, others just show her in extremely
sad facial expressions or her looking into the camera
in a melancholy scene. The portrayal of her sadness
all of a sudden transforms into an actual ‘event’, which
is not only worth witnessing AFK but also worthy of
being captured on camera. And since photography is
a non-interventionist artistic act, it allows us to ques-
tion the authenticity of her actual everyday sadness.
Sure you can be sad—even depressed—for a longer
period, but is it always possible to cry every day, or
furthermore to have a camera at hand at this exact
moment? Planning a performance of the capture of
your everyday crying, already has you planned out on
your schedule to cry, but can you schedule any emo-
tions? Wouldn’t it make that emotion lose its authen-
ticity automatically? It is sure that she may have forced
herself to feel sad or fake-cry to successfully continue
making the artwork. But since we completely forgot
about it being a performance piece (to repeat: like lit-
erally everything in life happening under surveillance), 67 Nakadate, Laurel. “365 days: A Catalogue
Veronica Obenauer

of Tears” on Instagram. https://www.insta-

maybe there wasn’t even an attempt to real-cry from the gram.com/p/CJd0Ef3FA4q/?hl=en
beginning. In ‘real’ film and theater, for instance, we cry 68 “The Paradox of Fiction” Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.
with the protagonist, never questioning their emotions’ edu/fict-par/.
authenticity. We cry based on a staged event, which 69 Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” On
Photography. 1977.
in that sense would make us fake our tears as well. 70 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in
Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx.
2017. Authenticity?: Observations and
Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age.
Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 28.

18
Stage Two—Influencer
To demonstrate a more URL performance, since Our Influencer is confused, everything they are
we are performing cyber tenderness in our fairy tales. In doing online is considered fake since it can contribute
her video WAH71 we see artist Molly Soda lying in bed, to generating fame and therefore personal wealth.
looking into the webcam and sobbing in tears, while They start to reject the idea of being the most authentic
the song by the band Death Cab for Cutie is playing at self, since it seems to be a full-on scam planted by
a modest volume in the background. Her mascara is capitalist structures, as author Rob Horning states:
smearing underneath her eyes, as she rests her face
into the palms of her hand. Comments on that video
vary from “PULL IT TOGETHER”(by user ac-3940), to “Authenticity,
“crying is good for you and makes you feel better when
you are done. *hugs*” (by user RainbowSpiceGirl).
it is claimed, stands
Recently Soda found herself crying in an NFT by for the truth behind the
Instagram user fotolog.wtf72, which consists of a graph
given the name “Types Of Crying”. Her crying from
curtain, but it is really
the video WAH was categorized amongst the crying just the curtain. (…)
from other women, like American YouTuber and singer
Trisha Paytas for example. The graph consisted of The presumption that
different types of crying, including Weeping, Scream-
Crying, Silent Tears or in Soda’s case Sobbing, spread
only some feelings
over two of the graph’s metrics: Sympathy Elicited and in some situations are
Pathetic-ness.
In an earlier video73 —which is also her most
real, and other feelings,

Performing Cyber Tenderness

clicked online crying performance—Soda is again though they are actually
shown in her bed holding her pet rat Sarah Michelle
Gellar (which later on died, RIP) with a comment felt, are somehow
saying: “No tears. I guess you have a desire for atten-
tion but pretending to cry is pretty lame.”(by user
false is authenticity’s
betaville72), accusing Soda of faking her sadness for main ruse.”74
clicks and therefore revenue. But shouldn’t we then
scrutinize the authenticity of any emotion shown in any
public content—whether ‘positive’ or ‘negative’—for its
possibility of generating attention and therefore actual
money-making ability?

Veronica Obenauer

74 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in

72 “Types Of Crying” on Instagram. https:// Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx.
www.instagram.com/p/CbynxNwgOz8/ 2017. Authenticity?: Observations and
71 Soda, Molly. 2013. “WAH.” https://www. 73 Soda, Molly. 2012. :“-(.” https://www.you- Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age.
youtube.com/watch?v=iqn2dBjYsV8. tube.com/watch?v=BBdQCn6g5eI. Amsterdam: Valiz. pp. 29-30.

19
Stage Two—Influencer
By now we are so hung up on whether we are If we have a look at a more ‘authentic’ example
real enough that it is being used to manipulate us of performing cyber tenderness (perceived in terms
into buying our ‘realness’ back by a non-stop dopa- of society’s rating of genuineness, at least), we get
mine satisfaction through consumption. We are “(con- to see model Bella Hadid crying occasionally on her
suming) our way back to the secure place where our Instagram profile, where she shared photos of her
feelings become real and unconflicted again.”75 We past depressive episodes over the last three years in
follow trends, a norm, a minimum we have to hold on a picture carousel post. In response to the question
to in order to achieve social affinity. The scam (being on why she chooses to share these intimate photo-
authenticity) simplifies, offering alternatives to our graphs, she states that everyone should know that it is
genuine mess, forming fiction for downplaying the idea OK to feel that way and that we shouldn’t be deluded
of sanity, generating an idea of a socially respected by Instagram’s beauty.80 Posts like that—talking about
“well-being”, and with us constantly investing into mental health issues and showing the ‘real’ misfires
our “well-ongoing”76: “They are speculations seeking of life—help people on the internet to perceive the
substantiation at the expense of what actually is.”77 unreachable perfect supermodel as more tangible
Authenticity gives us the idea to form true individu- and therefore more ‘human’ equivalent of themself.
ality—standing out from a crowd, but still staying in Nevertheless, with her having about sixty million fol-
the norm. It tricks us into believing our ‘real feelings’ lowers on Instagram no post is a small spontaneous
are anti-commercial or anti-capitalist. However, this move. If you can think of taking a selfie while you’re
faith in ‘real emotion’ solves nothing. With it we remain feeling so miserable, are you even feeling that bad?
under the pressure of feeling ‘real’ and feeling ‘real And if you can subsequently post it on social media,
feelings’. Our certified feelings are only valid because while not feeling that miserable anymore, what are the
they are ‘certified’—and commercialized—allowing big Influencer’s reasonable expectations for this post?

Performing Cyber Tenderness

daddy capitalism to further exist in those bubbles of Deep down Bella was very aware of the perception of
capital flows and networks.78 If there is absolutely no her followers (again, sixty million!!!) and what she can
way of ‘feeling’ authentically since it’s automatically achieve with these photos. But what also is significant
linked to capitalist hell, shouldn’t we then embrace our in her situation is that regardless of her somber crying,
most unauthentic emotional selves? It seems like we she is still a perfect-looking supermodel. And with her
already abandoned the suffering of Rapunzel wanting looks she can actually afford the risk of sharing vulner-
to be freed from the tower, and that community full ability, without a ton of people being weirded out by
of Sad Girl liberated from the male gaze, since we her sobbing and unfollowing her.
allowed the burdens of authenticity subconsciously
dominate us like they did before. By the purse of being
individual, we lose our community, isolating ourselves
and others even more. Because the authenticity we
yearn for doubles as a commodified exclusion of
someone else not accomplishing it, further judging
them to not be ‘authentic’ and be untruthful.79

Veronica Obenauer

79 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in

75 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in 77 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx.
Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. 2017. Authenticity?: Observations and
2017. Authenticity?: Observations and 2017. Authenticity?: Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age.
Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 38.
Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 30. Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 31. 80 Eckardt, Steph. 2024. “Bella Hadid
76 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in 78 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in Explains Why She Posted Those Crying
Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. Photos.” W Magazine. February 20,
2017. Authenticity?: Observations and 2017. Authenticity?: Observations and 2024. Accessed March 19, 2024.
Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. https://wwwwmagazine.com/fashion/
Amsterdam: Valiz. pp. 30-31. Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 36. bella-hadid-crying-photos.

20
Stage Two—Influencer
So since the Influencer intentionally posts their The term and value of ‘authenticity’ keep being
emotions into the web, they don’t await any empathy chained to a consumerist market, unable to escape it.
from their community, because we are all aware by Our Influencer finally abandoned the idea of their fairy
now that most things on social media can be planted tale, extending their strategy, using their experience
and planned out strategically. It is clicks, not empathy. of constant performance, imitating intimacy as a tool
Even the most genuine BeReals81 can not be posted to post profitable vulnerability, to influence and to trick
on time. That is why the Influencer lives their fairy tale you into buying those innovative menstrual pants, thus
performance online, because no one can perceive generating attention for their own wealth. Everything
their ongoing fraud AFK, right? Their life becomes art, is a fraud online, and everyone consciously takes part
under the term of Michel Foucault, taking art further in this capitalist hell hole—tracking their packages in
than only considering it being an object. And since art full consumerism ecstasy and linking their drop-ship-
is based on concept and plan, does our life have any ping online shops into their Linktr.ee.84 No one truly
need to be authentic all the time? The Influencer— believed in the Influencer’s melancholy anyway, so
once Sad Girl—once girl, was forever taught on how they changed their course—adapting to the current—
to adapt their behavior to socially-set norms. Ever to generate profit out of imitating intimacy themselves.
since they have become an expert and excellent per- The digital space the elders once were worried about,
formance artist. Their identity is a strategic way of sur- began to abandon its own children.
vival,82 with the full consciousness of their acts under
regular observation from others. They rebrand them-
self occasionally, making themself the aware product
of consumption, since it already has been happening
all the time. Being considered authentic means being

Performing Cyber Tenderness

profitable—“capable of being convincingly sold”83. In
trying to reach enforced authenticity, one is automat-
ically making themselves part of the consumerist-hell
exchange, constantly trying to fit in standards, being
unique but not too much, not too weird—still fitting
the normal. The pursuit of authenticity serves as an
excuse for consumerism. To consume signifies to
become more of the genuine established self—manic
AFK character customization at its finest.

Veronica Obenauer

82 Haraway, Donna J. 1985. A Cyborg 83 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in

Manifesto. Manifestly Haraway. University Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx.
81 BeReal is an app, claiming to be a more of Minnesota Press. p. 16. https://warwick. 2017. Authenticity?: Observations and
‘real’ social media. Users are only allowed ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/ Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age.
to post a double-faced picture at a spe- undergraduate/modules/fictionnownar- Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 34.
cific time, triggered by a notification rativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/ 84 Most Influencers and brands use a Linktr.
they receive on their phone. You are only manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_man- ee in their social media bio to gather their
allowed to see your friends’ daily posts, if ifesto_science_technology_and_social- other platforms, products and further links
you post them yourself. ist-feminism_in_the_....pdf. for consumption.

21
(2.3) when you already had me caught in your web,
paralyzed by your forces

Stage Two—Influencer
In 1996—around 30 years ago—a wise white with Russell’s text undoubtedly being more current.
cyberlibertarian named John Perry Barlow com- Cyberspace (‘normal’ people just call it the Internet by
posed a masterpiece of an email addressed to the now) is currently developing to the state that Barlow
“Governments of the Industrial World”85, in which he was concerned about, with capitalist imposter gov-
demands the big players to keep their hands off our ernments already influencing AFK nations. With
dear and free internet. He calls cyberspace the “new inexorable ‘lizard clones’ buying properties from
home of mind”86, asking governments to take their cyberspace and afterward flying to actual space, we
rules and leave, since cyberspace is outside their are currently living in the sci-fi horror that Harraway
borders, ergo outside their forces. Barlow describes dreamed of writing herself. Sure, it’s not pure hell
an internet without privilege and oppression, a place up to now, but we are getting there at the speed of
without judgment because of “race, economic power, light. In Glitch Feminism Russell mostly claims that
military force, or station of birth”87(he in fact did not the internet remains a secure place for marginalized
mention gender, easter egg?). Barlow declares that voices and bodies, while calling out the AFK for being
the people of cyberspace are ‘immune’ to the govern- in an on-off relationship with digitality, therefore being
ment’s actions and regulations, not giving them con- “sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, and
sent over their bodies, and not allowing them to arrest ableist”89. The internet is not completely lost, since it’s
their thoughts. The Declaration of the Independence a place for continuous vulnerability and opening up,
of Cyberspace screams softly in its inspiring and lyr- allowing profound intimacy in a safer space than out-
ical tone, ending with the statement: side the screen. It is also a place where we are safe
from physical injury.90

“You are terrified of your But we can certainly record so far that the
Internet is not a fairytale chatroom anymore. It is the

Performing Cyber Tenderness

own children, since they future space where the Sad Girl and the Influencer
can mobilize their tenderness as an activist tool, real-
are natives in a world izing an already progressing reality future featuring
where you will always be the URL.91 But how do we leave the burden of the
authentic Influencer behind, evolving into a new stage
immigrants.(...) of claiming the internet, again to be our cyber comfort

We will create a space? As Foucault thinks that art is an act of rebel-

lion, should we just start embracing our performance
civilization of the Mind art of crying fraud, accepting our full digital madness,
and confusing the internet with our emotional circus—
in Cyberspace. as far as we are confused about—to finally confront
May it be more humane the constant pressure of the and rise of the internet’s
conformity and commodification? Wouldn’t that make
and fair than the world us the Cyborgs motivated to dedicate our lives to the

your governments have constant glitch? So we shall again create our co-living
cyber character, evolving into the Cyborg we glitch,
made before.”88 with your authenticity and trending aesthetics having
no more significance to us. Expect us to arrive at your
fortresses, reclaiming our digital bodies. Since you
Barlow passed in 2018, which leaves us curi- can’t label our mass of glitch and pixel mud, our unde-
ously wondering what his feelings on the lunacy and finable characters can’t be caught with your pigeon-
inertia of Web 3.0 were. Reading his text reminds holed webs. Your capitalist binary brain is not able to
one of Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism Manifesto, seize our crying and the emotional bugs we plant to
filled with the same feeling of worry considering the mislead you. We resist to teach you our dearest ten-
homes of their beloved children of cyberspace, but derness and empathy.
Veronica Obenauer

88 Barlow, John P. 1996. “A Declaration of the

Independence of Cyberspace.” https://www.
eff.org/cyberspace-independence.
85 Barlow, John P. 1996. “A Declaration of the 89 Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A
Independence of Cyberspace.” https://www. Manifesto. 2020. London: Verso. p. 90
eff.org/cyberspace-independence. 90 Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A
86 Barlow, John P. 1996. “A Declaration of the Manifesto. 2020. London: Verso. p. 90
Independence of Cyberspace.” https://www. 91 Adapted statement based on Legacy Russel
eff.org/cyberspace-independence. in her speech about #glitchfeminism at
87 Barlow, John P. 1996. “A Declaration of the the Refiguring the Future Conference,
Independence of Cyberspace.” https://www. 2019. https://www.youtube.com/
eff.org/cyberspace-independence. watch?v=iZ233Gzichw

22
(3.1) I resist to educate you on my sanity

Stage Three—Cyborg
By the end of our Brothers Grimm-like fairy tale, digital footprint is not blocking us from job opportuni-
the Influencer lost its spark again, overburdened by ties—however—it differently leads us to bankruptcy
people online not daring to acknowledge their emo- by chasing us into targeted apps, and constantly
tional state. The Influencer looks up to the Sad Girl, observing our online behavior. Our data is no longer
wondering how her sadness became such a glam- collected, it is being collectively stolen. (Okay, I am
orous accessory. Melancholy seems so beautiful, but slowly starting to agree. We are indeed all female in
only if intentional, rather it develops into a depressing cyberspace, performing our way through an oppres-
state of being. Is it finally time for the Influencer to log sive system, the same way we do AFK.)
off, finally turning their head away from the 27-inch The Influencer, again, starts to realize things.
LED screen that became their black mirrors, just like They are in an urgent need to intentionally resist further
the elders told her at the starting point? The ongoing consumption of their data, and the further surveillance
notifications are their only source of dopamine and of their conscious acts in cyberspace. Unfortunately
reason for further posting. And while they are all tired they ‘die’ for doom scrolling on TikTok, they love their
of consuming for eternity, they missed out on real- day-to-day auto-fictional performance on Instagram,
izing that they evolved in fact to become the capitalist and they can not resist posting their delayed and
product themselves. The Sad Girl and the Influencer staged BeReals—the Influencer just loves being fake
have been constantly labeled and packaged for further and unpredictable, it helps them to survive. Therefore,
consumerism, being sold to the big men’s conglomer- they must resist teaching algorithms their behavior.
ates—“the real users’ of ad-supported social media”, Moreover, they don’t see the point in thanking an AI
as Horning states.92 You don’t need to get to know chat bot.97 Machines were once passive and less
your future products anymore, since you were the autonomous, a way for men to mock their dreams.
product from the beginning. And with every precisely But today’s late twentieth-century machines are con-

Performing Cyber Tenderness

tailored targeted ad we receive, we get the confirma- stantly self-fulfilling, rapidly learning to be disturbingly
tion that our data have been consumed correctly.93 alive (aka serving today’s capitalist patriarchy hell)—
As I open the webpage of Forbes magazine to they have become more active while we have become
read an article about targeted apps and the seemingly more inert.98The Influencer begins to recognize their
‘truth’ of user privacy94, a pop up blocks my sight by glitch patterns and the bugs they planted since their
asking me consent to use my data (well). I click on prehistoric Tumblr time:
“Accept”, as I’m not going to miss out on this. The The Influencer, the Sad Girl, all girls, women,
article explains about advertising tools nowadays trans, non-binary, physically injured, sick, mentally
using artificial intelligence and how it therefore is able ill, disabled, not-to-the-norm functioning, resisting,
to deliver more curated ads, by analyzing and learning resting, poor, crying, grieving, screaming, outsiders,
our behavior more and more in-depth. Shopping for observed and suppressed were the glitching Cyborgs,
our favorite goods and aesthetics online is important ruthlessly planting bugs by surviving from the very
for the economy, as e-commerce made up about beginning of their existence. So they shall continue,
19% of global retail sales since the start of the 2020 saving their lives in cyberspace in the same way. To
pandemic.95 Targeted apps are what keep the most be tender means to be damaged, delicate—for that
popular part of our cyber comfort spaces alive unless reason fragile—possibly already broken, non-func-
you paid for an ad-free version of your social media.96 tional, and non-profitable for the market. By performing
Every step we take online is tracked. The Sad Girl cyber tenderness we resist the commodification of our
could never escape the constant AFK surveillance she cybernated vulnerability. Machines don’t feel emo-
thought she was escaping from online—as no one can tions, and we withstand to educate them about our
perceive her body without consent. At this point our messy cyber tenderness.

92 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in

Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. 95 “Global E-Commerce Jumps to $26.7
2017. Authenticity?: Observations and Trillion, Covid-19 Boosts Online Retail 97 S, Pang. 2023. “The Truth About Saying
Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. Sales.” 2021. UNCTAD. May 3, 2021. ‘Thanks’ & ‘Please’ to ChatGPT.” Medium,
Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 41. https://unctad.org/press-material/global-e- January 22, 2023. Accessed March 20,
Veronica Obenauer

93 Horning, Rob. “Mass Authentic” in commerce-jumps-267-trillion-covid-19- 2024. https://ppangsy.medium.com/a-

Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. boosts-online-retail-sales. world-of-thanks-the-surprising-effects-
2017. Authenticity?: Observations and 96 Since October 2023 Meta is allowing of-chatgpt-appreciation-105f6e25fcce.
Artistic Strategies in the Post-digital Age. its users to have an ad free experience 98 Haraway, Donna J. 1985. A Cyborg
Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 45. in exchange for a monthly subscription Manifesto. Manifestly Haraway. University
94 Froehlich, Nik. 2022. “The Truth in (Europe): Meta. 2023. “Facebook and of Minnesota Press. p. 11. https://warwick.
User Privacy and Targeted Ads.” Forbes, Instagram to Offer Subscription for No ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/
February 24, 2022. Accessed March Ads in Europe.” Meta, December 4, 2023. undergraduate/modules/fictionnownar-
20, 2024. https://www.forbes.com/ Accessed March 20, 2024. https://about. rativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/
sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/02/24/ fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-ins- manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_man-
the-truth-in-user-privacy-and-targeted- tagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads- ifesto_science_technology_and_social-
ads/?sh=2be187da355e. in-europe/. ist-feminism_in_the_....pdf.

23
(3.2) performing cyber tenderness in digital eternity

Stage Three—Cyborg
In a digitality operating on transcending networks,
we should insist on constructing our coordinated per-
formance play. Our decisions shall not be based on
automation, every move is of significance, part of the
systematic plan we weaved for their distraction.99 Our
activity appears to be random, but it is not. We reject
any proposals for auto-completion,100 since the bodies
we depend on refuse their norms, seeking refuge in the
gloom between the options we are offered. Something
tender and almost fluid is harder to take hold of than
something solid rather hard.

We are chaos, not to be

shelved. We are no-ones,
(non-)concepts of non-
graspable choices, moving and
evolving in data-void.

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Veronica Obenauer

100“Every part of ourselves we mark with an

X. Every time we elect to have the form
99“Networking is both a feminist practice autofill the next time around, we par-
and a multinational corporate strategy ticipate in an act of naming, the process
—weaving is for oppositional cyborgs.” of identifying ourselves within highly
(S. 46)– Haraway, Donna J. 2016. A networked social and cultural algorithms.
Cyborg Manifesto. Manifestly Haraway. ”– Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : A
University of Minnesota Press. pp. 46. Manifesto. (London: Verso, 2020), 56.

24
Stage Three—Cyborg
We spam into nothingness. All of our intimate
stories written in our diaries are meant to be heard,
our complex drawings are meant to be seen, and our
ideas are meant to be recognized among other cyber-
space citizens. With being conscious of our hosts, it is
about time for them to observe us breaking free from
our hostage. We shall be the admins of our charac-
ters, to be the most conspicuous non-visible.101

We are either
invisible or explosive.

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Veronica Obenauer

101 “That is, the totalisation built into this tale

of radical feminism achieves its end—the
unity of women—by endorsing the experi-
ence of and testimony to radical nonbeing.
As for the Marxist/socialist-feminist,
consciousness is an achievement, not a
natural fact.”– Haraway, Donna J. 2016.
A Cyborg Manifesto. Manifestly Haraway.
University of Minnesota Press. pp. 23-24.

25
Stage Three—Cyborg
And with us being conscious about the constant
perception of our bodies (but not of our voices), we
shall embrace our brokenness, the souls and corpora
you broke. We will not sell ourselves, since we are
not allowing a glimpse of the authentic at all. We will
not repair ourselves for the purpose of your function-
ality.102 We repurpose our non-functioning as a reason
to be non-interesting for your observation. The viruses
we infect your systems with will never be cured.

We are ugly, not to be sold.

We are broken, not to
function properly.

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Veronica Obenauer

102“Machines are expected to work well and

work quickly. A computer virus triggers
the machinic responses of slowness in
ways that are unpredictable to the user:
endless buffering, crashing, damaging,
deleting, reformatting. ”– Russell, Legacy.
Glitch Feminism : A Manifesto.
(London: Verso, 2020), 82.

26
Stage Three—Cyborg
In order to claim back our dearest pixel belonging,
we should be always conscious of our observance.
Since they will not believe in our ‘real’ emotionality, we
are committed benefiting from our performances. We
shall all allow ourselves to be our dirtiest and most
emotive adaptation in cyberspace, fulfilling constant
empathy of others, to fool our observer on their ever-
growing wealth being our bodies’ data—we mislead
their data-fraud by performing our dearest fragility.

Our lives and our likes are

not curated, yet our emotions
are fully calculated.

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Veronica Obenauer

27
Stage Three—Cyborg
We may not be able—and we don’t want to—
throw bricks through their windows. Instead, we link
up in cyberspace, gathering all our vulnerabilities on
the web, our most important woven carrier bag103 —
standing behind the surface of their most significant
windows, their flickering screens. We collect the emo-
tional, resisting their material.

Performing cyber tenderness

in digital eternity.

Performing Cyber Tenderness

Veronica Obenauer

103“We’ve all heard it, we’ve all heard about

all the sticks and spears and swords, the
things to bash and poke and hit with, the
long, hard things, but we have not heard
about the thing to put things in, the con-
tainer for the thing contained. That is a
new story. That is news.”– Le Guin, Ursula
K. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.
1988.

28
Performing Cyber Tenderness Veronica Obenauer

29
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