The Null Device

Warren Ellis (he who knows all too many scary goth camgirls) writes a commentary on the intersection of the geek/tech and goth subcultures:

Sometimes I think of LiveJournal as the world's biggest technogoth community. LJ has been both lauded and derided as a space for people with black clothes and strange hair to work out their alienation and disaffection in electronic public. That hasn't stopped it being successful, and it hasn't stopped it being a tool for national and international networking. As a piece of "social software," it's not flawless, but its influence and effect has been huge. If nothing else, several thousand alt.models, often very ambitious and creative, seem to have hooked up together with this thing. An army could be formed. That would be an army worth supporting with taxes. In fact, it could probably be paid for by Paypal donation links.

(Though I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of goths forming an underground army. It's too easy to imagine paramilitary groups of real-life Blackshirts, motivated by the nihilistic tirades of Marilyn Manson and the cryptofascist bombast of VNV Nation, and filled with contempt for the inferiors who wear coloured clothing. First they came for the jocks, but I didn't speak out because I wasn't a jock, and so on. But I digress)

Though I was wondering whether LiveJournal was another one of those Gothic Internet Startups of the Not-So-Long Boom, like Dimension X (now part of Microsoft) and Netizen (no longer around). I once had the idea of a parallel history where the boom doesn't end, and the goth subculture evolves into a sort of tech-industry freemasonry, with membership and initiation essential for getting any sort of consulting gigs; and the usual goth-club "courtly intrigues" and catfights happening behind the scenes. It'd make a decent setting for a story or a novel.

¶ goth subculture technogoth warren ellis 2

Research reveals that the MS Windows API is intrinsically insecure; any application can spoof window messages to any other application, regardless of permissions, bypass the feeble "security" present and pull off all sorts of exploits. In other words, typical Microsoft security. And furthermore, the flaw is fundamental to the API and is irreparable, short of changing the fundamental design of the Windows message queue mechanism and breaking every existing Win32 application. (via the Reg)

¶ microsoft security technogoth windows 3