#Fictional contagion

[selene-and-the-cold]

Recently my brain is stuck on a scenario where a character A is sick with a bad, messy cold, but insisting that they don't need to be in bed because it's "only a little cold" and not contagious at all...

They get challenged over this by character B, who keeps pointing out that A caught more than just sniffles and should be at home in bed instead of spreading their cold around. B also criticizes A for being so careless and sneezing their cold around.

A insists that they are fine, and so an argument ensues. At some point, A challenges B to prove that A's cold is contagious. There have been some romantic vibes between them all along, so B ends up kissing a squarely on the lips, making sure to really go for the kiss and collect A's cooties. Fast forward a few days, B shows up at the office sick as hell with A's cold, thus providingproof that A was in fact contagious.

A, who had noticed that B is not the only one sneezing their head off, admits sheepishly "I guess I shouldn't have come in with my cold after all..."

[snzyspencer]

I’m desperate for more fictional contagion content. Give me scenarios, fics, random thoughts, I don’t care.

[wetsnifflesneeze]

Contagion Filth. Lil bit Dom/Subby. A + B.

Listen guys this is kind of gross haha so if you don't like intentional contagion probably don't read it. This part is about A but obviously B is going to get sick too, I just need to write another part for that!

................................................................................

"Hey" A sniffles and faces B.

"Hi honey"

"I *SNFff* I caught a cold"

"Come here darling" B gestures to their lap, inviting A to sit there.

Once A is seated comfortably B gently cups their face and looks at their sniffly nose, starting to turn a little bit pink at the edges. B gives their nose a little kiss and A sniffles again in response.

"And is this going to be your cold or our cold?" B asks.

A smiles gently and confirms "Our cold"

"So you know what you need to do?" B asks.

"Yeah, when I need to sneeze I need to sneeze on you or at you. Or if you're not close by I have to sneeze into the air or on some of your things"

"Exactly my love." B gently kisses A's lips and feels a little bit of the clear snot dripping down from their nose. A continues sniffling. It wouldn't be long before they would need to sneeze.

B loved catching A's colds and vice versa. Rather than inducing A's sneezes there was something about letting the sneezes come naturally. That way it was all of A's poor noses fault they would end up sneezing too.

A's breath started to hitch.. "I'm.. huh.. going to sne.. sne.. uhEEIISSSCHOO" B watched as A's nostrils flared and felt a light mist after the explosion from their sniffly nose.

"Bless you gorgeous. That's it, I want you to sneeze for me like that"

"*SNFFGH did you like it? Could you feel it?"

"I did baby, I felt your wet sneeze on my face. I love you." B gave A's face some light kisses"

A's head tilted back a little, nostrils twitching and flaring again as they sneezed a double "huhEIISHTCHIEW.......hehIIISSSSHHH ugh"

The second sneeze the wettest so far. Giving B's face a nice bit of spray with their germs.

"Bless you my love. This cold is giving you some nice sneezes already. Thanks for sharing them with me, you're a good baby."

B was out of the house stocking up on some tissues and other supplies for this sneezy cold they were going to share.

While B was out A took a shower and sneezed "EEIIIKSSSSHEW" in the bathroom afterwards spraying their mirror. Perhaps it would be still visible to B when they came home later. Then afterwards in their bedroom A felt another tickle, they had time to grab B's water bottle from the nightstand, unscrew it and let out a "HAHIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO". They screwed the lid back on. That sneeze was pretty big and messy they were left with a couple strings of snot coming down from each nostril. They really needed to blow their nose now. They got some tissues and blew enough to clean themselves up and ease the congestion. They left the used tissues on B's side of the bed after rather than in the bin. As is the cycle with a head cold they could already feel their nose getting stuffy again and their sensitive nose was already starting to tickle they sneezed "EEIIIKSSSSHEW" onto B's pillow. They knew B would be happy to hear about this later.

B came home and not long after A felt a sneeze coming. They quickly got up and tried to make it as close to B as possible before sneezing. They made it to the living room where B was but not close enough to actually sneeze on them.. so they sneezed "HAHTIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO" across the room. B watched the small cloud of spray lingering in the air in awe as it began to fade away some droplets lingering on the coffee table.

"Bless you baby, that was a big sneezie, c'mere" they bring A onto their lap again and used their t-shirt to clean some snot dripping from A's nose. "That was a nice welcome home" they add and kiss A's cheek. "Did I miss any more sneezies?"

"I sdneezed in the bathroom, ond our mirror. Thend I sdneezed ond your water bottle ahnd your pillow *SNDF SNFF*"

"Oh baby, you're doing everything you can to give me your cold"

"Sharing is caring *Snf*"

"Here let's blow your nose, you're getting all stuffy my love" B holds a tissue to A's nose and they give a soft but productive blow.

"Better?" B asks kindly

"Yeah, much. It won't last for long though... honestly my head is starting to hurt from all the congestion" A replies a little bit dejectedly.

"Oh love, you're really starting to feel under the weather now huh. Don't worry, I bought some medicine and we'll order some nice soup for dinner. I'll make you some tea right now too. You won't feel bad for long, promise" B leans in and give them a gentle kiss before going to prepare the tea.

A needs to sneeze again and doesn't want to get off the couch, they sneeze openly towards the coffee table "hehtIIISSSSHHHIEW" where the tv remote and B's phone were.

B came back with the tea and let A rest their head in their lap until their dinner arrived, B played with their hair and helped them to blow their poor runny nose every so often. The room punctuated with A's wet sniffles and a little bit of background noise from the TV which neither was really paying attention too.

Not too long after they were having their soup. It felt good on A's throat which hurt a little bit and helped with their blocked nose a little too. The warm steam was tickling their nose a bit and B noticed they had out down their spoon and had that distant look right before they closed their eyes and snapped forward with a sneeze "TIIISSSSHHHIEW" aimed towards their bowls of soup and teacups.

"Bless you, my love" B gently rubbed their back.

A was silent, because they were building up to another sneeze "EETIIIKSSSSHEW" spraying their soup once again.

"Bless you love"

"Ugh thandks *SnNgFF*"

They finished eating their soup, B turned on that they were eating soup sprayed by their sickie's germs.

"Shall we go to bed my love?" B asked

"Yeah, I'mb tired."

"I bet you are, poor baby."

They got into bed, B gave A some cold medicine and rubbed their chest and back with vaporub. Ready to sleep A layed their head down on B's chest and made a little whiny noise. B rubs their back reassuringly. "HEAATTtSSSHHOO" A sneezes onto B's chest and they feel the mist of fine droplets settle onto their bare skin some reaching as far as their neck and chin.

"Bless you honey" B kisses their lips which were nice and moist after the sneeze. A's breath gets shaky and they explode with another "hahTTIIIISSSSSSHHHU" into B's neck.

"Bless you again darling" they grab a tissue and clean up around A's drippy nose before giving it a kiss. "My poor sneezy baby."

"Ugh, just want to sleep now but my ndose won't let me" A whined and pouted.

"You'll sleep soon my love, your body must be exhausted fighting off this big bad cold. Just lay here on me, don't move. I'll take care of your nose"

A's breathing changed and B knew in an instant what was coming, they gently covered A's nose and mouth with one hand and caught the "APTTIIIIISSHEW".

"Bless you, beautiful" B grabbed a few tissues and secured them around A's nose. "Now blow for me."

A followed B's instructions and B felt the way their nose vibrated as A tried their hardest to clear their nose. This just started to make their nose tickle and they sneezed a "HAPTTtSSSSHHOO" into the tissues.

"Bless you, poor little thing all the cold germs inside your nose are getting it all irritated." B discarded the tissue into their bed and A let out an uncovered "HAHTIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO" and another "hehIIISSSSHHH" onto B's face

"That's it baby sneeze it out, get it all out. It's meant to be shared, share it with me"

"I can breathe a bit better now." A said.

"I'm so glad baby, now get some sleep" B kissed their forehead.

"Okay, love you"

"I love you too"

[l-ultimo-squalo]

The Carrier (1988) dir. Nathan J. White

[snzjoyer]

really hoping my immune system is as strong as it’s seemed to be (since moving continents 2+ months ago - starting in their winter - i’ve only had one very mild cold that lasted like two days) cos the two other people on my row on my 4.5 hour flight early this morning seemed to have some pretty bad colds.

one guy had a sneezing fit not long after i sat down which lasted several minutes and he didn’t even cover half the time. his girlfriend (who i was sat next to, in between me and the guy) wasn’t so bad but she did sneeze into her plane-supplied blanket at one point

[variantoutcast]

I really liked the first 3 witcher books and I liked elements in the remaining ones but it has increasingly become a men writing women series as it progresses. Like it's no longer the trappings "she breasted boobily down the stairs" but is fully "lets put a child in a situation where she has to have sex with her captor in order to regain her freedom" (and not portray this for the horror that it is)

[phe-purple-parade]

Been waking up stressed lately, today's stress dream featured such hits as:

Contamination

Social exclusion

Supernatural beings

Preying on vulnerable people

Violent pursuit

Mental contagion

A performance to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'

Shopping

So,, a mix of anxieties..

[joncronshawauthor]

Dive into the Gripping Post-Apocalyptic Thriller "Black Death Survival" - Read for Free Now!

In a society ravaged by a devastating plague, Liam, Jenna, and their young son Tommy must navigate the dangers of disease, desperation, and a menacing cult known as the Doctors. As the world crumbles around them, they’ll risk everything to stay together and protect what matters most. “Black Death Survival” is a gripping, character-driven thriller that explores the lengths people will go to…

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #111 - Twenty Pieces of Documentation Presented To the Emergency Committee On the Study and Understanding of the M3D1154 Contagion by Damien Angelica Walters

Previous | Next What if women didn’t have to be afraid of men? What if they had a way to protect themselves from those predators who hide among us and strike at the vulnerable at their weakest? This short epistolary piece, less than two thousand words in length, examines the aftermath of a world in which women have just this power. It does not play coy, doesn’t shy away from the poisonous…

[libraryofbaxobab]

November 14, 2023:

I spent the whole time reading this brick oscillating between "there is too much book left" and "there is not enough book left." What I mean by that is, it came pretty close to a full story surprisingly early on, but kept going, and going, and going, but then the ending stopped just short of satisfying with a "TO BE CONTINUED..." Brother, if you can't bring it full circle in 700 pages what are we even doing here? Not that I'm anti-series. Just that when you give a character a mission and lead a reader by the nose through a book this long, it's distasteful, in my opinion, to not complete that mission by the end. Sequels are for further adventures, for problems that arise from the solution to the previous story. I detest being shown the metaphorical promised land just to be told I can't go to it.

That being said, the book overall kicked ass. Each ship has the feel of a Fallout vault where everyone inside has the same mental illness. The horrors held within each are uniquely fucked up, which kept things gruesomely exciting. I was never bored; I blazed through this thing. There's action, there's madness, there's spaceship maneuvers, there's close escapes, there's body horror, there's daring rescues, there's [spoiler redacted], there's AI avatars with spooky red eyes. Weak points: I didn't especially like the sarcastic anti-human robot sidekick, but I tolerated him. I thought the climax was a little cartoonish, compared to the rest of the book. Actual Disney-villain shit. And the aforementioned AIs with glowing red eyes... seemed a little condescending. With the exquisite horror all around, the creepypasta scary-face gambit didn't really match. But again, these are minor slights compared to the work overall.

7/10 #WhatsKenyaReading

[drchucktingle]

I know that Lucky Day is definitely a horror novel, but is it also going to be a spy novel?

no if anything it is also a science fiction or thriller along with horror but honestly i think it is mostly (and i am hesitant to use this word as there is a lot of baggage with it but here we go) LITERARY. maybe something like don delillo or thomas pynchon. at least that is how i see it.

it is VERY existential and i think the HORROR part comes from some very frightening existential ideas

i think there are TWO main thematic battles in the book. there is a bisexual character whose main journey is that of EXISTENCE vs NOTHINGNESS. i think this is the queer horror aspect because us bi buckaroos know what it is like to hear someone say 'bisexuals do not exist'. really the kernel for this idea was to say 'okay i want to write a story thats about a bi buckaroo FACING DOWN non-existence.'

and then there is the battle of ABSURDISM vs NIHILISM. when existence makes no sense then what are we supposed to do with that? how do you trot on in a world full of tragedy and grief? how do you make sense of a life that makes no sense?

i think buckaroos who are curious about my philosophy that LOVE IS REAL will really have a lot to pull apart in the trot of this story. it is VERY strange and goes very very deep into that kind of thing. honestly just a MASSIVE existential swing and i am happy that i have the support of a publisher willing to take it with me and to really press into these ideas with a large scale audience

you can preorder here buds:

[antiphrastic]

Schrodinger's Wolfwood is at least 50% of why I haven't read trimax yet.

Listen. LISTEN. I know Wolfwood is probably going to die in Stampede. There's a 99.9% chance. It's movingly tragic and an excellently executed story beat, I can't even say that I want them to change that moment because the emotional impact is so deep. I don't even know how Orange would manage to hit that depth without it.

But also, that .1% chance they've set up with the changes they've made is so tantalizing. After living a life of torment, a life truly not lived, Wolfwood only has a moment of self-redemption and catharsis before that's it. Before he realizes how much he wishes he could live, and he can't. And that's what makes it so well done, but on the other side of the coin, it can be so moving and meaningful and impactful for someone to get dragged through hell, come out the other side of it, and keep walking. Do better and be better. Be the change that Vash himself sees in the world. Sometimes it means the world to see a trauma survivor keep kicking instead of crumbling under the wounds that the world's given them.

Like I said, I don't know if they could make that as powerful or as meaningful as what always happens to Wolfwood in every other universe. And I trust Nightow and Orange to do the story justice. Tbh I think the first season is going to seem light and fun compared to the darkness that will be coming. But until I am once again inevitably emotionally gutted, I'm going to cup this thought in my hands and admire it, even if I know the odds are a mountain against me.

So I know I'm off my rocker, but Stampede's Wolfwood stays Schrodinger's Wolfwood. To me.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The disenshittified internet starts with loyal "user agents"

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (TOMORROW, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

There's one overwhelmingly common mistake that people make about enshittification: assuming that the contagion is the result of the Great Forces of History, or that it is the inevitable end-point of any kind of for-profit online world.

In other words, they class enshittification as an ideological phenomenon, rather than as a material phenomenon. Corporate leaders have always felt the impulse to enshittify their offerings, shifting value from end users, business customers and their own workers to their shareholders. The decades of largely enshittification-free online services were not the product of corporate leaders with better ideas or purer hearts. Those years were the result of constraints on the mediocre sociopaths who would trade our wellbeing and happiness for their own, constraints that forced them to act better than they do today, even if the were not any better:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Corporate leaders' moments of good leadership didn't come from morals, they came from fear. Fear that a competitor would take away a disgruntled customer or worker. Fear that a regulator would punish the company so severely that all gains from cheating would be wiped out. Fear that a rival technology – alternative clients, tracker blockers, third-party mods and plugins – would emerge that permanently severed the company's relationship with their customers. Fears that key workers in their impossible-to-replace workforce would leave for a job somewhere else rather than participate in the enshittification of the services they worked so hard to build:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

When those constraints melted away – thanks to decades of official tolerance for monopolies, which led to regulatory capture and victory over the tech workforce – the same mediocre sociopaths found themselves able to pursue their most enshittificatory impulses without fear.

The effects of this are all around us. In This Is Your Phone On Feminism, the great Maria Farrell describes how audiences at her lectures profess both love for their smartphones and mistrust for them. Farrell says, "We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship":

https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/

I (re)discovered this Farrell quote in a paper by Robin Berjon, who recently co-authored a magnificent paper with Farrell entitled "We Need to Rewild the Internet":

https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/

The new Berjon paper is narrower in scope, but still packed with material examples of the way the internet goes wrong and how it can be put right. It's called "The Fiduciary Duties of User Agents":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3827421

In "Fiduciary Duties," Berjon focuses on the technical term "user agent," which is how web browsers are described in formal standards documents. This notion of a "user agent" is a holdover from a more civilized age, when technologists tried to figure out how to build a new digital space where technology served users.

A web browser that's a "user agent" is a comforting thought. An agent's job is to serve you and your interests. When you tell it to fetch a web-page, your agent should figure out how to get that page, make sense of the code that's embedded in, and render the page in a way that represents its best guess of how you'd like the page seen.

For example, the user agent might judge that you'd like it to block ads. More than half of all web users have installed ad-blockers, constituting the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Your user agent might judge that the colors on the page are outside your visual range. Maybe you're colorblind, in which case, the user agent could shift the gamut of the colors away from the colors chosen by the page's creator and into a set that suits you better:

https://dankaminsky.com/dankam/

Or maybe you (like me) have a low-vision disability that makes low-contrast type difficult to impossible to read, and maybe the page's creator is a thoughtless dolt who's chosen light grey-on-white type, or maybe they've fallen prey to the absurd urban legend that not-quite-black type is somehow more legible than actual black type:

https://uxplanet.org/basicdesign-never-use-pure-black-in-typography-36138a3327a6

The user agent is loyal to you. Even when you want something the page's creator didn't consider – even when you want something the page's creator violently objects to – your user agent acts on your behalf and delivers your desires, as best as it can.

Now – as Berjon points out – you might not know exactly what you want. Like, you know that you want the privacy guarantees of TLS (the difference between "http" and "https") but not really understand the internal cryptographic mysteries involved. Your user agent might detect evidence of shenanigans indicating that your session isn't secure, and choose not to show you the web-page you requested.

This is only superficially paradoxical. Yes, you asked your browser for a web-page. Yes, the browser defied your request and declined to show you that page. But you also asked your browser to protect you from security defects, and your browser made a judgment call and decided that security trumped delivery of the page. No paradox needed.

But of course, the person who designed your user agent/browser can't anticipate all the ways this contradiction might arise. Like, maybe you're trying to access your own website, and you know that the security problem the browser has detected is the result of your own forgetful failure to renew your site's cryptographic certificate. At that point, you can tell your browser, "Thanks for having my back, pal, but actually this time it's fine. Stand down and show me that webpage."

That's your user agent serving you, too.

User agents can be well-designed or they can be poorly made. The fact that a user agent is designed to act in accord with your desires doesn't mean that it always will. A software agent, like a human agent, is not infallible.

However – and this is the key – if a user agent thwarts your desire due to a fault, that is fundamentally different from a user agent that thwarts your desires because it is designed to serve the interests of someone else, even when that is detrimental to your own interests.

A "faithless" user agent is utterly different from a "clumsy" user agent, and faithless user agents have become the norm. Indeed, as crude early internet clients progressed in sophistication, they grew increasingly treacherous. Most non-browser tools are designed for treachery.

A smart speaker or voice assistant routes all your requests through its manufacturer's servers and uses this to build a nonconsensual surveillance dossier on you. Smart speakers and voice assistants even secretly record your speech and route it to the manufacturer's subcontractors, whether or not you're explicitly interacting with them:

https://www.sciencealert.com/creepy-new-amazon-patent-would-mean-alexa-records-everything-you-say-from-now-on

By design, apps and in-app browsers seek to thwart your preferences regarding surveillance and tracking. An app will even try to figure out if you're using a VPN to obscure your location from its maker, and snitch you out with its guess about your true location.

Mobile phones assign persistent tracking IDs to their owners and transmit them without permission (to its credit, Apple recently switch to an opt-in system for transmitting these IDs) (but to its detriment, Apple offers no opt-out from its own tracking, and actively lies about the very existence of this tracking):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

An Android device running Chrome and sitting inert, with no user interaction, transmits location data to Google every five minutes. This is the "resting heartbeat" of surveillance for an Android device. Ask that device to do any work for you and its pulse quickens, until it is emitting a nearly continuous stream of information about your activities to Google:

https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/

These faithless user agents both reflect and enable enshittification. The locked-down nature of the hardware and operating systems for Android and Ios devices means that manufacturers – and their business partners – have an arsenal of legal weapons they can use to block anyone who gives you a tool to modify the device's behavior. These weapons are generically referred to as "IP rights" which are, broadly speaking, the right to control the conduct of a company's critics, customers and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

A canny tech company can design their products so that any modification that puts the user's interests above its shareholders is illegal, a violation of its copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets, contracts, terms of service, nondisclosure, noncompete, most favored nation, or anticircumvention rights. Wrap your product in the right mix of IP, and its faithless betrayals acquire the force of law.

This is – in Jay Freeman's memorable phrase – "felony contempt of business model." While more than half of all web users have installed an ad-blocker, thus overriding the manufacturer's defaults to make their browser a more loyal agent, no app users have modified their apps with ad-blockers.

The first step of making such a blocker, reverse-engineering the app, creates criminal liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $500,000 fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in sufficient IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it (no wonder every company wants to coerce you into using its app, rather than its website).

If you know that increasing the invasiveness of the ads on your web-page could trigger mass installations of ad-blockers by your users, it becomes irrational and self-defeating to ramp up your ads' invasiveness. The possibility of interoperability acts as a constraint on tech bosses' impulse to enshittify their products.

The shift to platforms dominated by treacherous user agents – apps, mobile ecosystems, walled gardens – weakens or removes that constraint. As your ability to discipline your agent so that it serves you wanes, the temptation to turn your user agent against you grows, and enshittification follows.

This has been tacitly understood by technologists since the web's earliest days and has been reaffirmed even as enshittification increased. Berjon quotes extensively from "The Internet Is For End-Users," AKA Internet Architecture Board RFC 8890:

Defining the user agent role in standards also creates a virtuous cycle; it allows multiple implementations, allowing end users to switch between them with relatively low costs (…). This creates an incentive for implementers to consider the users' needs carefully, which are often reflected into the defining standards. The resulting ecosystem has many remaining problems, but a distinguished user agent role provides an opportunity to improve it.

And the W3C's Technical Architecture Group echoes these sentiments in "Web Platform Design Principles," which articulates a "Priority of Constituencies" that is supposed to be central to the W3C's mission:

User needs come before the needs of web page authors, which come before the needs of user agent implementors, which come before the needs of specification writers, which come before theoretical purity.

https://w3ctag.github.io/design-principles/

But the W3C's commitment to faithful agents is contingent on its own members' commitment to these principles. In 2017, the W3C finalized "EME," a standard for blocking mods that interact with streaming videos. Nominally aimed at preventing copyright infringement, EME also prevents users from choosing to add accessibility add-ons that beyond the ones the streaming service permits. These services may support closed captioning and additional narration of visual elements, but they block tools that adapt video for color-blind users or prevent strobe effects that trigger seizures in users with photosensitive epilepsy.

The fight over EME was the most contentious struggle in the W3C's history, in which the organization's leadership had to decide whether to honor the "priority of constituencies" and make a standard that allowed users to override manufacturers, or whether to facilitate the creation of faithless agents specifically designed to thwart users' desires on behalf of manufacturers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This fight was settled in favor of a handful of extremely large and powerful companies, over the objections of a broad collection of smaller firms, nonprofits representing users, academics and other parties agitating for a web built on faithful agents. This coincided with the W3C's operating budget becoming entirely dependent on the very large sums its largest corporate members paid.

W3C membership is on a sliding scale, based on a member's size. Nominally, the W3C is a one-member, one-vote organization, but when a highly concentrated collection of very high-value members flex their muscles, W3C leadership seemingly perceived an existential risk to the organization, and opted to sacrifice the faithfulness of user agents in service to the anti-user priorities of its largest members.

For W3C's largest corporate members, the fight was absolutely worth it. The W3C's EME standard transformed the web, making it impossible to ship a fully featured web-browser without securing permission – and a paid license – from one of the cartel of companies that dominate the internet. In effect, Big Tech used the W3C to secure the right to decide who would compete with them in future, and how:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

Enshittification arises when the everyday mediocre sociopaths who run tech companies are freed from the constraints that act against them. When the web – and its browsers – were a big, contented, diverse, competitive space, it was harder for tech companies to collude to capture standards bodies like the W3C to secure even more dominance. As the web turned into Tom Eastman's "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four," that kind of collusion became much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In arguing for faithful agents, Berjon associates himself with the group of scholars, regulators and activists who call for user agents to serve as "information fiduciaries." Mostly, information fiduciaries come up in the context of user privacy, with the idea that entities that hold a user's data would have the obligation to put the user's interests ahead of their own. Think of a lawyer's fiduciary duty in respect of their clients, to give advice that reflects the client's best interests, even when that conflicts with the lawyer's own self-interest. For example, a lawyer who believes that settling a case is the best course of action for a client is required to tell them so, even if keeping the case going would generate more billings for the lawyer and their firm.

For a user agent to be faithful, it must be your fiduciary. It must put your interests ahead of the interests of the entity that made it or operates it. Browsers, email clients, and other internet software that served as a fiduciary would do things like automatically blocking tracking (which most email clients don't do, especially webmail clients made by companies like Google, who also sell advertising and tracking).

Berjon contemplates a legally mandated fiduciary duty, citing Lindsey Barrett's "Confiding in Con Men":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3354129

He describes a fiduciary duty as a remedy for the enforcement failures of EU's GDPR, a solidly written, and dismally enforced, privacy law. A legally backstopped duty for agents to be fiduciaries would also help us distinguish good and bad forms of "innovation" – innovation in ways of thwarting a user's will are always bad.

Now, the tech giants insist that they are already fiduciaries, and that when they thwart a user's request, that's more like blocking access to a page where the encryption has been compromised than like HAL9000's "I can't let you do that, Dave." For example, when Louis Barclay created "Unfollow Everything," he (and his enthusiastic users) found that automating the process of unfollowing every account on Facebook made their use of the service significantly better:

https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-everything-cease-desist.html

When Facebook shut the service down with blood-curdling legal threats, they insisted that they were simply protecting users from themselves. Sure, this browser automation tool – which just automatically clicked links on Facebook's own settings pages – seemed to do what the users wanted. But what if the user interface changed? What if so many users added this feature to Facebook without Facebook's permission that they overwhelmed Facebook's (presumably tiny and fragile) servers and crashed the system?

These arguments have lately resurfaced with Ethan Zuckerman and Knight First Amendment Institute's lawsuit to clarify that "Unfollow Everything 2.0" is legal and doesn't violate any of those "felony contempt of business model" laws:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/

Sure, Zuckerman seems like a good guy, but what if he makes a mistake and his automation tool does something you don't want? You, the Facebook user, are also a nice guy, but let's face it, you're also a naive dolt and you can't be trusted to make decisions for yourself. Those decisions can only be made by Facebook, whom we can rely upon to exercise its authority wisely.

Other versions of this argument surfaced in the debate over the EU's decision to mandate interoperability for end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging through the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which would let you switch from, say, Whatsapp to Signal and still send messages to your Whatsapp contacts.

There are some good arguments that this could go horribly awry. If it is rushed, or internally sabotaged by the EU's state security services who loathe the privacy that comes from encrypted messaging, it could expose billions of people to serious risks.

But that's not the only argument that DMA opponents made: they also argued that even if interoperable messaging worked perfectly and had no security breaches, it would still be bad for users, because this would make it impossible for tech giants like Meta, Google and Apple to spy on message traffic (if not its content) and identify likely coordinated harassment campaigns. This is literally the identical argument the NSA made in support of its "metadata" mass-surveillance program: "Reading your messages might violate your privacy, but watching your messages doesn't."

This is obvious nonsense, so its proponents need an equally obviously intellectually dishonest way to defend it. When called on the absurdity of "protecting" users by spying on them against their will, they simply shake their heads and say, "You just can't understand the burdens of running a service with hundreds of millions or billions of users, and if I even tried to explain these issues to you, I would divulge secrets that I'm legally and ethically bound to keep. And even if I could tell you, you wouldn't understand, because anyone who doesn't work for a Big Tech company is a naive dolt who can't be trusted to understand how the world works (much like our users)."

Not coincidentally, this is also literally the same argument the NSA makes in support of mass surveillance, and there's a very useful name for it: scalesplaining.

Now, it's totally true that every one of us is capable of lapses in judgment that put us, and the people connected to us, at risk (my own parents gave their genome to the pseudoscience genetic surveillance company 23andme, which means they have my genome, too). A true information fiduciary shouldn't automatically deliver everything the user asks for. When the agent perceives that the user is about to put themselves in harm's way, it should throw up a roadblock and explain the risks to the user.

But the system should also let the user override it.

This is a contentious statement in information security circles. Users can be "socially engineered" (tricked), and even the most sophisticated users are vulnerable to this:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

The only way to be certain a user won't be tricked into taking a course of action is to forbid that course of action under any circumstances. If there is any means by which a user can flip the "are you very sure?" circuit-breaker back on, then the user can be tricked into using that means.

This is absolutely true. As you read these words, all over the world, vulnerable people are being tricked into speaking the very specific set of directives that cause a suspicious bank-teller to authorize a transfer or cash withdrawal that will result in their life's savings being stolen by a scammer:

https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-warrants.html

We keep making it harder for bank customers to make large transfers, but so long as it is possible to make such a transfer, the scammers have the means, motive and opportunity to discover how the process works, and they will go on to trick their victims into invoking that process.

Beyond a certain point, making it harder for bank depositors to harm themselves creates a world in which people who aren't being scammed find it nearly impossible to draw out a lot of cash for an emergency and where scam artists know exactly how to manage the trick. After all, non-scammers only rarely experience emergencies and thus have no opportunity to become practiced in navigating all the anti-fraud checks, while the fraudster gets to run through them several times per day, until they know them even better than the bank staff do.

This is broadly true of any system intended to control users at scale – beyond a certain point, additional security measures are trivially surmounted hurdles for dedicated bad actors and as nearly insurmountable hurdles for their victims:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

At this point, we've had a couple of decades' worth of experience with technological "walled gardens" in which corporate executives get to override their users' decisions about how the system should work, even when that means reaching into the users' own computer and compelling it to thwart the user's desire. The record is inarguable: while companies often use those walls to lock bad guys out of the system, they also use the walls to lock their users in, so that they'll be easy pickings for the tech company that owns the system:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

This is neatly predicted by enshittification's theory of constraints: when a company can override your choices, it will be irresistibly tempted to do so for its own benefit, and to your detriment.

What's more, the mere possibility that you can override the way the system works acts as a disciplining force on corporate executives, forcing them to reckon with your priorities even when these are counter to their shareholders' interests. If Facebook is genuinely worried that an "Unfollow Everything" script will break its servers, it can solve that by giving users an unfollow everything button of its own design. But so long as Facebook can sue anyone who makes an "Unfollow Everything" tool, they have no reason to give their users such a button, because it would give them more control over their Facebook experience, including the controls needed to use Facebook less.

It's been more than 20 years since Seth Schoen and I got a demo of Microsoft's first "trusted computing" system, with its "remote attestations," which would let remote servers demand and receive accurate information about what kind of computer you were using and what software was running on it.

This could be beneficial to the user – you could send a "remote attestation" to a third party you trusted and ask, "Hey, do you think my computer is infected with malicious software?" Since the trusted computing system produced its report on your computer using a sealed, separate processor that the user couldn't directly interact with, any malicious code you were infected with would not be able to forge this attestation.

But this remote attestation feature could also be used to allow Microsoft to block you from opening a Word document with Libreoffice, Apple Pages, or Google Docs, or it could be used to allow a website to refuse to send you pages if you were running an ad-blocker. In other words, it could transform your information fiduciary into a faithless agent.

Seth proposed an answer to this: "owner override," a hardware switch that would allow you to force your computer to lie on your behalf, when that was beneficial to you, for example, by insisting that you were using Microsoft Word to open a document when you were really using Apple Pages:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021004125515/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html

Seth wasn't naive. He knew that such a system could be exploited by scammers and used to harm users. But Seth calculated – correctly! – that the risks of having a key to let yourself out of the walled garden were less than being stuck in a walled garden where some corporate executive got to decide whether and when you could leave.

Tech executives never stopped questing after a way to turn your user agent from a fiduciary into a traitor. Last year, Google toyed with the idea of adding remote attestation to web browsers, which would let services refuse to interact with you if they thought you were using an ad blocker:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

The reasoning for this was incredible: by adding remote attestation to browsers, they'd be creating "feature parity" with apps – that is, they'd be making it as practical for your browser to betray you as it is for your apps to do so (note that this is the same justification that the W3C gave for creating EME, the treacherous user agent in your browser – "streaming services won't allow you to access movies with your browser unless your browser is as enshittifiable and authoritarian as an app").

Technologists who work for giant tech companies can come up with endless scalesplaining explanations for why their bosses, and not you, should decide how your computer works. They're wrong. Your computer should do what you tell it to do:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/your-computer-should-say-what-you-tell-it-say-1

These people can kid themselves that they're only taking away your power and handing it to their boss because they have your best interests at heart. As Upton Sinclair told us, it's impossible to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.

The only way to get a tech boss to consistently treat you well is to ensure that if they stop, you can quit. Anything less is a one-way ticket to enshittification.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[shion-yu]

Day 30: Contagion

We made it, folks! I really pushed myself to finish @sicktember and I’m so proud I did. For this last work I decided to just let go and do something different. TW for fictional contagion and some mess. Like, contagion is all it is. Which is not something I usually write, but I was inspired by @poetryandsniffles “Going Around” at 3am. It starts with unnamed characters and ends with you. Hope someone enjoys this. As you guys might know, snz isn't fully my thing but I know I have a lot of followers for whom it is, so this is for you. 1,933 words, TW fictional contagion.

It’s Saturday, and all the new freshmen students are moving into the dorms down the street. The bookseller is ready for them, knowing all the students are eager to exercise their first taste of freedom and want to window shop in their new college town. It's probably his busiest day of the year, which is why he absolutely cannot close the store despite the wretched cold he woke up with. He has a cough that won't let him finish a sentence without interrupting himself, and being surrounded by all the used books is making the sneezes that overtake him every minute even worse. He’s putting an old tome of Shakespeare away when he hears the bell ring, signaling a customer. He closes the book and accidentally inhales a noseful of dust. He tries to say, “Welcome,” but instead all he gets out is “Wehh - heee - ahh hatchoo!” 

“Bless you!” It's definitely a freshman, round glasses overtaking half her face and her little homemade clay earrings dangling on either side. 

“Tdangks,” the bookseller mumbles, snorting a huge noseful of congestion up into his face in an attempt to clear his voice. Apparently that's the wrong move, because it causes him to erupt into a harsh round of coughing that forces him to sit down behind his desk. 

The freshman doesn't seem to mind. She’s too interested in looking around the store, fascinated by the used books. The bookseller nurses his poor nose into the fiftieth tissue of the morning, blowing as hard as he can yet it doesn't seem to clear the congestion. He hasn't been this sick in ages. Why did it have to be today of all days?

“I’ll take this, please.”

The bookseller looks up to find the freshman standing in front of him, holding none other than the thick Shakespeare tome he just put away. The one that he knows he really should have wiped down before shelving. 

“Are you sure you want this one?” He asks hesitantly.

“Why?”

Explaining feels like too much work, and bad business. The bookseller shakes his head. “No reason,” he says, coughing into his elbow. “That’ll be $10.80.”

~.~.~.~

It’s well known that a cold isn't uncommon in the beginning of the semester, but the freshman can't believe it took less than a week for her to get hit with this plague. It’s only the end of the first day of classes when she feels a tickle in her throat that makes her cough. By evening she’s feeling the chill of an incoming fever, and by the next morning she feels like she’s been hit by a bus. This feels worse than just a cold, but it's literally the second day of classes in her first year of university. She can't afford to take a sick day so soon.

And so, the freshman drags herself to her English 101 lecture where she continues to cough and shiver, clutching the hoodie she's wearing around her ever tighter. Her bones ache and she feels like she desperately needs to be in bed, but this lecture is three hours long. Three torturous hours, and it's not a huge class. Everybody can hear her coughing away, she's sure of it. She's so embarrassed by her noisiness - the rustle as she plucks out tissue after tissue from the box she's helplessly taken to carrying around. The petite sniffle she's trying to hold back every few seconds, but if she doesn't her nose will be streaming. The stifled sneezes that more than often result in additional chesty coughs. By the end of the lecture she’s so cold and miserable that she's not sure she's going to make it to her next class, which is chemistry 100. 

Somehow she does, and before most of the other students too. She figures now is a good time to try and blow her nose as loudly as possible. Maybe if she can empty it out, she won't be so disruptive at this lecture. She blows into a tissue hard, and it makes her nose tickle. She can't hold it back, and she scrambles to grab another tissue - but it's too late. She ducks her head to the side and sneezes, uncovered, spraying the space next to her. Thankfully no one’s sat down yet. She hastily tries to clean the desk with the tissue, but she stupidly didn't bring any hand sanitizer and the desk is still gleaming with germs when a boy comes in and sits right next to her. 

He greets her and introduces himself as a football player who’s retaking the class. The freshman can't help but watch in horror as he puts his hands all over the desk, then proceeds to bite his nails. She can't just apologize, but she does so in her head, knowing he’s doomed. 

~.~.~.~

The football player is pretty pissed that he’s managed to catch something already. He doesn't have any time for a cold, especially not so early in the season. It doesn't matter that it’s cold for September, or that it's raining, or that he already had chills before practice started. He’s got to push through for the sake of the team, and also his reputation and scholarship. And he still has to finish that chemistry assignment. Who gives such a long homework in the first two weeks of classes? It should be illegal.

He’s drying off in the locker room, a now very wet cough echoing against the metal lockers. He changes into clean clothes, but he still feels sticky with sweat and rain water. He shivers and shleps off to his chemistry professor's office hours. He needs an extension.

The professor doesn't look happy to see him dripping and sniffling when he shows up at his door. “C’mon, professor, I just need a few days. It's the beginning of the season, I can't fall behind already, and I’m - koff koff koff - sick.”

“I can see that,” the professor says in mild disgust. “But I don't make exceptions. Not even for athletes,” she says before he can protest. 

“That's not fair,” the football player complains. “I really am s-siii-”

The professor tries to duck, but it's too late. The football player sneezes, only poorly half covering. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely.

“I think you'd better go home and lie down,” the professor says in a clipped tone. There's some spray on the corner of her glasses, much to both of their chagrin. “And skip practice tomorrow.”

“Yes ma'am,” the football player says. He’s too ashamed of himself now to keep begging. The professor sprays lysol all over her office and hopes it’ll be enough.

~.~.~.~

It’s not enough. By the end of the week the professor, too, is full of cold. She has to lecture through it, even though she barely has a voice and nearly spills chemical solutions on herself trying to contain her sneezes into her shoulder while holding glass beakers. The students keep blessing her, and that irritates her more than anything because it's their damn fault she’s sick. She's trying to make tenure though, and isn't about to call out, so she pushes through. Every sneeze hitches in the back of her throat as she tries to hold back, making a girlish noise that kills her inside a little. 

She’s already passed the cold along to her husband, your coworker, who has an immune system as good as a preschooler. She can't wait to get home where she can just relax. Her legs are cramping from standing for so long in heels, her makeup is running because of all the congestion, and she keeps making errors while lecturing that she never would otherwise. This cold is so embarrassing and comes with all the visible symptoms: cough, congestion, sneezing, fever. It's impossible to hide.

Her coworkers have even taken notice and mentioned she ought to take it easy, which the professor absolutely will not be doing. So what if she has to cough through her lectures? So what if the students in the front row may or may not be nursing colds of their own in a week? She has to work, that's just how it is. No exceptions, she tells her students. Not even for herself.

~.~.~.~

You can hear your coworker coughing from his cubicle opposite you. Yesterday he said his wife was sick, and today he seems to have brought her cold to share with everyone. How generous of him, you think dryly. You cringe as you hear him blow his nose again, a wet, harsh sound that is the audible equivalent of contagion. And now - oh no. Now he's coming to you.

“I've got the report done,” your coworker says as he approaches. His eyes are red rimmed and watery, nose raw red from blowing and his lips parted in an awkward fashion because he can't breathe properly. And now he's blowing germs all over your desk.

You take the report from him and hope to shoo him away quickly with a thank you, but no such luck. He bends over your desk and starts to explain part of the report that apparently, he finds is not self explanatory enough. You can hear the whistle of blocked sinuses and his voice crackles with congestion. “Does that make sense?” He asks, standing up and sniffling. He runs his temple, clearly also trying to work through a headache.

“Yes, perfect sense,” you tell your coworker. It doesn't matter if it made sense or not, you wish he'd just go away. “You don't look so good. Why don't you go home?” You ask.

“It's not so bad - snrrk!” He says before snorting loudly. “I can deal with it.”

“I see,” you say. And apparently everyone else has to deal with it, too. 

~.~.~.~

You hope you'll get lucky. That Emergen-C and hand sanitizer will save you - but it doesn't. Because a few days later you, too, wake up with an ache in your head and chest and a shiver that won't go away despite several fall layers of clothing. You have a cough that snaps and crackles against your sore throat and the sinus pressure behind your eyes throbs. You haven't even made it out of bed before you're overtaken by a round of three loud sneezes in succession. You’re definitely sick.

Unlike your coworker, you're not about to work through this cold. You feel too lousy, and the fever you're running is way too high to ignore. It's everywhere, this fever: deep in your bones, making everything ache from head to toe. You spend the day in bed, shivering and coughing away. The bed becomes a sea of used tissues, the small trashcan long since overflowing. The fever must be making you emotional, because you can't help but tear up a little when your partner finally comes home. 

“Aw, baby,” they say sympathetically. They press their cold hands against your hot cheeks and wet washcloths to cool you down. They climb into bed with you and cuddle you, your throbbing head and streaming nose in their lap, and don't complain about how you're getting snot all over their knee. “Poor love,” they say. “You’ll be better soon.”

You close your eyes and just listen to your partner’s soothing voice. In a few days, this will all be over, you tell yourself. Whatever this cold or flu from hell is, you’ll be back at it by next week. For right now though, you decide to just rely on your partner completely. Let them dote on you, take care of you, and hope you don’t get them - and didn't get too many others - sick, too.

[savagewildnerness]

Immortal, bloodthirsty creatures that feed on humans - they have sharp fangs and a hatred for sunlight and garlic.

Vampires might not be the hero you typically root for, but they have transfixed us for centuries.

The first short story about the monster written in the English language was John Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819.

More followed, with Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897 inspiring F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu in 1922. This is now being remade by Robert Eggers and is set to be released in the UK in 2025, starring Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult.

But what's driving our hunger for vampire stories?

For writer and actor Mark Gatiss, his fascination with vampires started early. The co-writer of BBC drama series Sherlock and Dracula has been a "horror obsessive" for as long as he can remember.

Gatiss went on from a childhood love of scary stories to star as Dracula in an audio production, made a documentary on the monster as well as a 2020 BBC series, which sees the Count (played by Claes Bang) venture to London.

He says the opportunity to bring Stoker's iconic vampire to life felt "too good to be true".

"Like Sherlock Holmes, it's an imperishable myth and, really, if anyone gives you the chance to have a go at it - you have to do it," he explains.

Gatiss explains an image of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes "silhouetted against a doorway when he comes back from the dead with his collar up" helped spark the 2020 Dracula series with Claes Bang

Rolin Jones is an executive producer and a writer on the TV adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, based on Anne Rice's collection of novels.

The series, available on BBC iPlayer, follows vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (played by Jacob Anderson) who shares the story of his life and relationship with Lestat de Lioncourt (played by Sam Reid) with a journalist.

He explains stories about the vampires "come back over and over again" because they "get in your bones and haunt you," with many raising questions of immortality, death and love.

The modern popularity of the figures can be seen on social media with #vampire having 2.7 million posts on TikTok.

Jones adds that each day he will see more people tattooing the characters' faces on their body, explaining "this is a rabid fan base".

"They're really tense and complex characters", Jones says

'Scared me to death'

While the characteristics of fictional vampires have changed throughout history - some burn to a crisp in the sunlight, others have famously sparkly skin - they have one thing in common: immortality.

Dr Sam George - an associate professor at the University of Hertfordshire who taught students about vampires in fiction - explains that part of the reason the monster endures is because they "get us to think about the big questions that concern us, ideas about ageing" as well as "what happens beyond the grave".

She adds that "the vampire's always been linked very strongly with disease, with contagion," adding that if we look back in history we can see that our interest in the immortal monster seems to pique around times of mass disease.

"When the first fictional vampire appeared in 1819, there was a strong link with tuberculosis," she says.

"Nosferatu is made to actually look like plague rats," Dr George explains

She adds that F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu in 1922, centring on a character famous for the plagued rats he brought in his wake, came shortly after the Spanish influenza pandemic.

The academic adds that this is "really important to why vampires are so popular and on trend now, when you think of Nosferatu and its link to the plague, post Covid we're very interested in the vampire as contagion."

Executive producer Jones adds that a key point of interest for him lies in working out why vampires want to keep living. "You take mortality out of any drama, and it's quite interesting," he says.

Jones adds that Ms Rice herself wrote the novel after losing her daughter and that this sense of "grief and mourning" is "exceptionally articulated" in the book.

'They seduce you'

"There's this allure to them," Jones says of vampires - like Assad Zaman, who plays the vampire Armand and Jacob Anderson, who plays Louis de Pointe du Lac

While vampires may let us play out our fears about mortality and death, Jones adds that there is something else that draws us to the fanged figures.

"They're the sexiest, the most sensual of monsters," he says. "They seduce you."

Jones adds that when he first picked up the novel Interview with the Vampire, "it seemed to me what I was reading was this really repressed and really messy love story."

Dr George agrees, explaining "vampires have gotten younger and better looking over the years" and notes the difference between Nosferatu and Twilight's Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson).

The academic adds there has been "a shift" in the way people read vampire fiction, explaining there has been a lot of interest in the topic of sexuality and vampires, like the "queer family" presented in Ms Rice's novel. 

The combination of love and immortality, Dr George says, is also seen in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, which ran with the tagline "love never dies".

For Dr George, the "sense that the vampire can address a number of questions all at once," from death to love is the reason it stays with us today.

This article made me curious (I haven't put combination of some/all as an option as 100% would vote for it, as of course it isn't just one thing... so I ask the *most* significant thing for you)...

Edit to add that this is very difficult even for me to answer and I created the poll. Now, I'd say existential questions would be my top answer, but when I first read the books, it was the exploration of the outsider/difference I think for me, so perhaps that's the truest answer?