Metaphors of Fuck-Up

Collision-Boxing

In some 3D video games, there is an end of the rendered environment. Even in an open-world game, the implementation will not allow the character to walk endlessly, in any direction. Eventually, an invisible wall marks the end of what can be explored. The character in the game collides with the edge of what is possible. They are collision-boxed.

If the edge of the map is in an outdoor environment, the invisible wall is a 2D picture of the trees and valleys that lie beyond. This creates the illusion that the rendered world is boundless. Yet, the character rams its virtual body into the wall, learning, again and again, that the cake is a lie.

In spite of the in-game character being constrained to the rendered portion of the map, the player can still imagine a potential future in which these limitations disappear. The technology of video games can be (and has been) stretched beyond its initial programmed experience through modding, exploitations of in-game mechanics (clipping through objects), or altering the compiled code directly.

When tinkering with the video game technology itself isn't an option, we may still craft a story of what the characters could have done beyond the edges of the rendered map, in our imagination. Where digital technology fails, the technology of fanfic offers a way out.

One technology that has married us to the edges of the map has been the blockchain, and its implementation, cryptocurrencies. The promise of decentralization, as applied to currencies, seemed to create endless possibilities for reconfiguring power in society. However, not only did cryptocurrencies fail to provide the infallible web of trust, but we've also been collision-boxed into the very limit of what blockchain can express.

Integer Overflow

Building a better future through technology runs into an integer overflow problem.

A computer has a limited number of bits it can use to represent a number. For an 8-bit representation of an integer, signed number, this means it can represent the numbers from -128 to 127 (or 0 to 255, for unsigned numbers). Trying to represent the (signed) number 129 will cause an overflow. Instead of getting a representation of 129, we get -127.

The number 129 exists outside of possibility of representation, when it comes to the 8-bit signed integer technology.

In a similar way, trying to imagine, discuss or shape a better future using certain technologies may overflow. We start out with a set of practices, chosen for their potential to keep us safe, to help us grow closer to each other, or simply to elevate the quality of our life. If these practices work well for their initial purpose, we might push them further, attempt to use them in contexts they weren't initially designed for. We may not notice when we exceed the limits of what these practices can offer us.

The integer overflow of technology isn't a singular, loud fuck-up. It creeps up on us. We persist in using a set of practices even when the results are counter to what we intend. We may not notice that what we wished to represent and what we got are different things.

Consider collective practices of building "safe spaces" or enforcing a certain language in groups. When the technology is only evaluating how something is said, the attempt to build a better future may overflow into authoritarian practices.

Building "safer spaces" starts out by by identifying and calling out verbal violence. Then, it might enforce the use of certain expressions in lieu of others. It might judge one's character solely by their choice of words. Eventually, one step further may take us to the opposite end of the spectrum: policing each other. The practice of "safe spaces" or language curation isn't inherently authoritarian. However, it can overflow into a chilling effect on expression if we are not aware of the extend to which we can rely on it to keep us safe.

Integer overflow and collision-boxing are two metaphors, dug out of technical jargon, which I will continue to use to describe some of the ways in which technology fails us.

As David Lynch would say, "Okay, let's try that again, but this time good": I'm tired of reading critiques of the present and I want to spend my energy and my capacity trying to find a way out, a way into something good. I crave a future in line with a set of principles. I call these principles relationship anarchy or livable anarchy. This exercise of imagination, of building a better future, is always already mediated through technology. One such mediation is language. I've overflowed several times already trying to convey to you, dear reader, what the point of all of this is. I will overflow several more times before the end of this piece. If I had switched out the technology of language for something entirely different, perhaps you'd have been more compelled by my explanation. We crave a better future. Which technologies can get us there?

Minimum Viable Relationship Anarchy

Relationship Anarchy is honoring alterity while making yourself subject to others.

This definition is meant to capture the essential traits of relationship anarchy, as a practice. If we take one of these elements away, I argue we are left with a practice that isn't relationship anarchy. If we add more constraints, more guiding principles on top of the existing definition, we get a particular type of practice (which is still a form of relationship anarchy).

I don't maintain that this definition is complete or correct. However, if I am to go on with the current analysis of how technologies allow us to formulate a future in accordance with livable anarchy, I need a set of criteria to work with. If anyone engaging with this material feels compelled to further refine the minimum viable relationship anarchy, it will, by my own definition, be a welcome and interesting difference I'm happy to engage with.

Honoring Alterity

Everything that is unlike us. Everything that we wouldn't do, think or say. Everything, inside another person, that is beyond our understanding. Alterity, or otherness, is a sum of parts that grows as we interact with people, and creatures, outside of what is familiar to us.

In order to honor alterity, we walk a tight-rope. Certain things that are foreign to us can be wrong, condemnable, unethical or plain repulsive, according to our principles. We must not fall into the trap of glossing over these conflicts of principles by awarding immunity to the acts of others. We must not, under the guise of tolerance or acceptance, refuse to engage directly with all the different ways in which other people act. We must react in earnest to otherness, while, at the same time, resisting the temptation to look away or to erase what we don't understand, or agree with.

The principle of honoring alterity can be difficult to apply. In some cases, we may feel compelled to stop others from acting in a way that we consider to be reprehensible. The border between honoring alterity and reacting in line with one's own principles is blurred when looking at conflict up close. A useful distinction could be: am I reacting to this, or am I trying to erase this, erase that it's happening, erase the possibility of it ever happening again?

Making Yourself Subject to Others

When trying to live up to honoring alterity, it might be very tempting to adopt individualism as a shield. A self-sufficient attitude lowers the chances of situations in which a person might come in conflict with the actions of others. However, this is neither a way to honor what is other, since it treats everything outside the individual with disinterest, nor can it be compatible with the second part of the definition.

To make one's self subject to others entails living one's life with full awareness that everything that is said and done reverberates into the lives of other creatures. It's not enough to acknowledge, in a pseudo-spiritual sense, that we are all connected. The actions that one takes, even in privacy and isolation, are part of a intricate web of causality that stretches beyond what we can keep track of.

It's not just the people in our lives, those whose names we know, that are affected by what we do, say or think, and by what we hold back and repress. We share the responsibility of our actions with others, to the extent that it's not worth trying to determine where we end and they begin.

The delicate balance of Relationship Anarchy is that between acting with care in the world, and allowing ourselves to be acted upon by others, whose hands and thoughts are outside our control.

Distance and Friction

Practicing relationship anarchy can be imagined as a function of distance and friction.

Stand too close to others, and your boundaries dissolve. You identify completely with the other. Alterity is erased. Stand too far, and you end up disconnected, alienated from inter-dependance.

Too little friction makes one a subject of others, instead of a subject to others. When we put up no resistance, "just follow orders", fawn or seek to always please, never contradict, we deny others the possibility of encountering alterity as conflict. Too much resistance pushes us outside the reach of even those closest to our heart, and into a paranoid individualism.

Even with the best intentions, we may still not find a good balance in our practice. The narrow, in-the-moment perspective on our actions, and the actions of others, may, at times, make us feel like there is no right choice.

I will not quantify the principles of relationship anarchy. There is no "amount" of otherness that is ideal, no timetable to describe how much time you should spend being subject to others. Reducing these principles to something that can be measured would erase the friction contained in the very exercise of applying them.

Certain pervasive technologies are antithetical to the principles of relationship anarchy. I will exemplify a few of them. However, this essay doesn't seek to make a witch worth burning out of every single one of these technologies. The way out of looping inside an overflow, or pressing into the invisible edge of the map isn't always obvious. We may have to keep using some of these technologies for a while longer, while we build the ones that can serve us better.

The Technologies That Got Us So Far...

Recommender systems govern what we see, and interact with, on a large subset of widely-used Internet websites. These algorithms populate our social media feeds, guide our online shopping, shape our consumption of art (via streaming platforms), and present us with people we might want to go on dates with.

The promise of recommender systems is that, by storing and interpreting data about us, they can guide our online interactions towards more fulfilling experiences. Content we like. Products we need. People whose eyes we're likely to gaze into, lovingly. The wider practice of profiling us though our digital "footprint", of which recommender systems are only one implementation, assumes that data about us is knowledge about us.

Recommender systems create the illusion that they follow our desire. But they have long overflowed into the opposite: this technology primes us to consume certain objects by manufacturing the desire and feeding it to us. From Cambridge Analytica to the present day, we have seen that recommender systems can influence, radicalize, rile up and induce states of helplessness and political apathy. This technology reduces alterity to statistical correlation, and then acts on these correlations as though they carry the weight of causality.

Generative artificial intelligence built on large language models is, perhaps, the best example of global collision-boxing. The most insidious aspect of genAI is the hyper-realistic 2D artwork on the invisible walls at the edges of the map. This technology for generating legible content has been presented to us almost exclusively in terms of the promises it can not fulfill, promises that create the illusion of boundless space and possibility. Much like an in-game valley is bounded by invisible walls with drawings of mountain peaks that promise the thrill of ascent, genAI is bounded by the myths of intelligence, agency, and self-awareness.

GenAI is entirely antithetical to the minimum viable relationship anarchy defined earlier. The content it generates is statistically correlated to the prompt, making it mechanically impossible for genAI to represent contingent alterity. Even more, interacting with chatbots erodes the ability and practice of making ourselves subject to others, by atrophying our very ability to endure friction, to have a sense of distance.

Monogamy, polyamory, and even amato-normativity are similar cases of technologies which can end up binding or distorting the relationships they were intended to build. Rules and constraints, when they are imposed and not adopted willingly, can turn relating into submitting. For this reason, relationship anarchy doesn't describe how connections should look. It doesn't make it mandatory that certain connections exist at all.

There are many other technologies that break down in our hands when we try to put them to the task of building a better future. This is not an exhaustive catalogue. Rather, it is a display of methods of inquiry. These examples are meant to guide your eyes, dear reader, and prime your mind, to look critically at the way you use technology.

... Won't Get Us Any Further

The sign reads: "There is no technology immune to breaking down when it is pushed beyond its limits. There is no ideal technology, upon which we build utopia".

Don't make me tap the sign.

We have to let go of the idea that technology itself will save us. We have to let go of the idea that politics alone will save us. We have to let go of the idea that there is a perfect person for us, or an ideal combination of people that will delight our soul forever. Seeking absolutes will only make us absolutely miserable.

I want to repeat the definition I proposed, one more time, before I attempt to sketch out my final proposal. ...honoring alterity while making ourselves subject to others. Relationship anarchy dares us to act, think and love, knowing that we are already connected with all creatures, and the only thing we all have in common is difference. I don't take credit for this latter, succint and beautiful expression. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari came up with it, writing together, as an unlikely pair of comrades: a university professor and a social activist.

The impulse to control others grows when we perceive ourselves to be powerless, threatened, precarious. We might be tempted to exert control directly (over individuals) or we might support state or military control. The paranoia that makes us distrust others and seek to subjugate them is fed by the myth that everyone around seeks to do the same to us. It is nonetheless possible to stop before overflowing from self-protection into dominating others. It takes the awareness to establish when one is safe enough.

Relationship anarchy doesn't have a fixed form. If you knew nothing about the people involved in these relationships, and were only looking from the outside, a monogamous couple, a polycule, and an aromantic-asexual person who is oscillating between platonic cuddles and sending horny poetry to their friends are all just as likely to be relationship anarchists. If we extrapolate from individuals to building the future, there is no unique political form that livable anarchy prefigurates. Instead, the principles compel us to always walk the tight-rope.

Technology itself deserves the scrutiny of the hysteric-luddite. The workers' movements sabotaged industrial equipment not in order to destroy the technology, but to destroy the conditions of work that were imposed on them, that technology merely mediated. Today's hysteric-luddite should react to the precarization and de-professionalization of labour with a question in one hand, and a hammer, prepared for sabotage, in the other: "who is this technology for?"

Relationship anarchy only gives us the first principles, but it says nothing about what kinds of connections we can (or should) build. Every time we arrive at a point of tension with the people we are drawn to, every time we want different things, we only have the principles to return to. The real work of building connections or a future for ourselves is a deliberate and patient walk along the tight-rope.

Building is messy. From the code not compiling to the affinity group splintering from within, we must expect failure, regardless of the technology we make use of. What is more, it's not even guaranteed that what we perceive as success will be recognized as such by others. Sometimes, a connection that feels chosen and deliberate may make no sense to the other dear people in our lives. Sometimes, it may feel like we are rejecting the technologies that offer the most bountiful promise to society.

I don't have simple answers.

I know that decentralized technology is better than monoliths and monopolies. I know that giving creatures direct autonomy in how they interact, though technology, will be messy and that's a feature, not a bug. I know that it's better to gather as little data as possible about people, and use it strictly for the purposes it was gathered for. That data doesn't equate knowledge.

The Personal is a List of Books

This essay is the result of a lot of reading and thinking about the technology of generative artificial intelligence, as it is implemented in products such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or multi-modal implementations that also generate images, audio and video content. Problematizing this technology quickly went from being interesting to draining every ounce of joy from my body. My own writing about genAI can be summed up as: "The only thing that generative artificial intelligence is proficient at is de-professionalizing people and making them precarious".

The most influential piece of writing on the technology of generative artificial intelligence, for me, has been Dan McQuillan's Resisting AI. An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.

The book that challenged me in a way that felt like letting in fresh, crisp-cold air into a stale room was David Golumbia's Cyberlibertarianism. The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology.

The Italian writer Christian Nirvana Damato published Multiplication of Organs Manifesto. Body, Technology, Identity, Desire in 2025, just as I was gathering my thoughts for this essay. The moment I got my hands on it, I opened the cover with a sunken, sullen heart, thinking that Damato had already said everything I wanted to say. I was relieved to find out it wasn't the case. Damato goes beyond the "body without organs" adage, rising from the writing of Deleuze and Guattari and culminating in a post-pandemic, hyper-digital psychoanalytical perspective.

A lot of ideas presented in this essay took their shape in conversation with Bogdan Lungu, a dear Romanian comrade. Their essay, Machines Looping Me: Artificial Intelligence, Recursive Selves and the Ethics of De-looping, is a dense academic exploration of a particular instance of self-representation overflow. Bogdan described the recursive reduction of the self in digital representation as something akin to lossy compression (my metaphor, not theirs).

"Relationship Anarchy. Dreaming in the Belly of the Whale" was published in December 2024. "...Tinkering in the Belly of the Whale", in December 2025. These essays are just another voice in a choir that will sing itself into the future.