/cult/ - culture and media

The point is everyone is connected. People fail to see how important the internet really is. The internet is humanity. You are not escaping,. This is just another facet of the human experience.

Also, a point to be made, this site isnt a shrine, and most people here dont litterally worship lain – this is a community. Arisuchan is one end of that community, a presence on the net. It has other branches, both online and off, and has catylised more than a few meaningful irl relationships.

>>2608
>Implying escapism is somehow bad
Once you become disillusioned with life and society, there is not much you can do besides escapism. I worship lain because she's cute, and it makes me feel like there is meaning in life. I don't need your pity or concern, just let me do what makes me happy. It's not like I am hurting anyone. And I don't want to have anything to do with the "real" world which is full of decadence. Lain embodies everything that is pure and noble to me.

SEL has two "tiers" to it. One is a meaningful and interesting show taking a few pokes at interesting concepts before they even became widespread IRL. This gets all its critical acclaim, intelligent people who watch it care about this part and give it a big thumbs up.

However the storyline also happens to include a 14yo mommy girlfriend who is socially retarded and ends up hiding in her bedroom surfing the internet and her delusions, and sitll both IRL and online people seem to love her, want her, or think she's cool or mysterious. This is basically the wet dream of all the abused dysfunctional schizos and other fuckups who just won't fit in IRL no matter what they do anymore.

If you try to talk soykaf about lain, people will point you to its critical acclaim and smart ideas and say you're retarded for not affirming those; but then keep on worshiping their imaginary 14yo loli mommy girlfriend. The worst part is they feel like doing so means they are in on the big secret, because everything is connected the world is information yadda yadda.

I've noticed this phenomenon years ago and it has been getting worse. If you feel any emotion or attachment to lain or this post made you somewhat angry, you're probably pic related. It's kinda sad that this happened, but the guys making SEL learned from it and intentionally avoided this weirdo fan-service in later works like Texhnolyze.

The show has no message. It was made on the go. The true message of Lain is that you choose the message you want it to deliver, your Lain is the Lain that breaks the fourth wall and talks to you. "The are as many Lain as there are people who know her". Accidental or not, it's a courageous and refreshing post-modernist take.
You can like the 14yo hikki girl for what she is, and this is like totally fine as long as you do not lose the grasp with reality and stay in control. Lain tells that you are the one in control and you are free to like her the way you want to see her, as in the end, Lain's existence to you is how you DESIRE to envision her.

Don't force yourself to turn an anime into a sodeep cyberpunk bible if deep down inside you feel warmth at the sight of that little girl who tamed that beast called the Wired.

Not everyone who "loves Lain" are identifying with a mysterious child having an existential crisis. Some are just plain old fashioned pedos and like the sight of a child enmeshed in all that tech in her room. Some prefer octopus tentacles, some this..

>>2620
Well all of those righteous notions you think she represents is just stuff you project onto her. You're not a "bad person", but I think you're wrong.
>>2621
Admittedly, i'm a bit of an aestheticfag myself and I also like the whole "she's a young girl, but she does machines" thing as a gimmick. Had the character instead been a generic high school or college aged guy though, things might have turned out better in the long run.
>>2622
You could say that about pretty much any story. Just because it's "modern" and "abstract" that doesn't mean there aren't themes. You could say it's all completely subjective. I disagree.
>>2623
>old-fashioned
Except it's a cartoon. There's also almost no porn of her, so that doesn't really hold up. Yeah, I checked.

>>2624
I think why there isn't any porn of here is because when you watch the show there aren't many sexually attractive qualities about her (at least from a non-pedo stance). Also the community is really hellbent on "lain is love, do not lewd lain"

>>2608
The show didn't really view the "wired" as a detached part of humanity. Each of the characters we were introduced to portrayed some aspect of the effect of the wired on mankind, and it was never portrayed in either a wholly good, or a wholly bad sense. Chisa committed suicide and was transfered in at least some aspect into the wired, but that was never shown as some goal to reach over the course of the show, in fact, it's the main "antagonist" for the first part of the show, Lain is trying to figure out what Chisa's suicide means, and where the messages are coming from. It's not shown in a positive light. Then we have Lain's father, who is obsessed with using the wired to connect to other people, but to the point where he neglects the people who are actually close to him physically. There's the man strapped in full VR gear, using the wired to experience the world, but only experiencing the world in the context of the wired itself, literally looking through a lense. The use of accela to exploit some aspect wired in the real world, but the people who take it are overwhelmed by the information overload. You can draw similar parallels throughout the whole show, the AR gamers, the Knights, etc. I would strongly argue that the show is specifically showing that the wired is not separating people into a separate world, it's about merging people into this world. That's what the "next world" is about. The next world isn't the wired, it's a perfect merging of the wired into reality, because as >>2618 pointed out, this IS reality now. "Close this world; open the next" isn't a movement of your body or your soul, it's a movement of perspective. Life isn't a series of single dots in space, the dot that represents you is a part of a web connecting everyone, there is no separation between the internet and "reality", all of it is part of one whole. The message of the show is just that, "Everybody's connected"

>>2624
For the really old fashioned that's enough. It doesn't have to be hentai for people who grew up fapping to the childrens section of the Sears catalogue.

>>2626
Do people need the wired to be connected though? Can the wired actually serve as a the "next world"? The show seems to point in the direction of no. At the end, Lain undoes the catalyst and erases herself from everyone's memories, separating the real world from the wired, and this is portrayed in what seems like an irrefutably positive light. To me at least. Maybe I misinterpreted the ending, but it didn't seem like the wired and physical world perfectly merged. The physical world and the wired being different was what Arisu tries expressing to Lain. Arisu didn't need the wired to connect to her.

>>2625
>>2624
What are you guys going on about?
Do you really think Lain breaks the rules of the internet?

https://rule34.paheal.net/post/list/Lain_Iwakura/
https://rule34.xxx/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=serial_experiments_lain

>>2630
Compared to Kanna it's nothing. Lain has been around for more than ten years.

>>2629
I might have to watch it again, I definitely agree that Arisu connected outside the wired, however, I just viewed it as another facet of the concept of "connecting" in the show. What I saw was that the wired became an aspect of connecting, there was no difference between connecting in the real world and connecting in the wired because they are both parts of the same reality. But again, the last time I watched it was probably at least a few years ago, this is just what I remember thinking at the time. I could definitely have been mistaken.

>>2632
Did you watch the video in the op? Close to the end, you see news reports and stuff like that of people saying let's all love lain. These people have never actually met Lain and they don't see her as a regular person, the same as their family and friends. They "love" her because of what she is, not who she is. The guy who wanted to be called god appears to Lain and tells her to connect in the wired with Arisu if she loves her, and Lain refuses. Why would that happen if the show wanted to express that the wired is no different? Why would Lain's "father" who's implied to be the real god of the wired or something like that, tell her that the wired is just a tool?

>>2621 >>2608
She was meant to be a nymph, something most would want to protect. In a way whoever thinks that the message of the show was that The Wired was the "true world" and thinks of Lain without taking her individuality >>2633 into account (e.g. sexually objectifying her (not to say that sexually thinking of her is bad) or as deus/an idea), is like a Knight from the show. But loving Lain because she's cute and relatable is fine! I love her because she's cute and relatable. One shouldn't become disillusioned about her for one's own sake. Love Lain responsibly.

For me the show's message message was that any medium, be it The Wired, is still just an extension of the real world, and the real world not being just the physical, but the foundation by which human communication or the universe at large functions - reality >>2632 >>2626 >>2629. It isn't separate from it. It might have some different rules at large, but it still functions on top of this foundation. The show also dealt with the idea of what it means to be human: whether Lain was one or whether humans are just complex "applications". It did reach that conclusion, but this conclusion isn't sad. Eiri thought therefore that humans don't matter and the only true meaning is to reach complete connectivity (or maybe he just wanted to play god idk), however that view in itself is a human one. Who says that that is desirable? Yes, it's more computational power, but who says that that's more valuable than the human experience? Eiri was still bound to his human view of the world and so was Lain, even though she was a program. Lain reaches true humanity when she disobeys Eiri and realises that he isn't God and neither is she herself. She has emotions like a human does and by breaking free from the directive/mean part of her, she realizes this. God, who Lain is welcomed by, is the absolute truth by which our world functions and of which beings like us are to make of whatever they will. I also like to imagine that Yasuo programmed this message into Lain to teach her this last lesson and to demonstrate the human will.

Lain was connected with Arisu from the start because they were friends and, albeit a slow interface with a complex protocol, they were still connected without the need to force it. Therefore Lain is human.

Sorry for the pseud rant. idk much about philosophy. And >>2622 is right. This is just my view.

TL;DR I don't think SEL's message is "the physical world is the only true world where you're valuable", but rather whatever system you are confined in or whichever way you're wired, you're valuable.

Lain loves us all.

>>2608

I watch the video, and to be frank i think their a lot of misunderstanding on both side. Website like Lainchan and Arisuchan
isn't really a shrine for your schizo next door, but more a acknowledgment of the fact that SEL was and still his a show that
embodies what the internet was to become with the feeling and aesthetic and the philosophical aspect that it brings.

And on the other side their is people, worshipping it like a god for no reason other that the show seems to connect with them
on a deeper level. It's not healty beahavior because you loose graps on fundemental reality, plus lain isn't more to worship
than the next guys popular elsewhere on the web. So the whole point in the video where he says people using avatar of lain don't
understand made me cringe so hard because clairly this guy love SEL and simply want to gatekeeping saying "you don't understand lain"
which is ironic.

I would add on top of that, people with mental health issues using SEL to explore their own mind is probably an excellant way to understand
yourself, their still is a fine line between using a show to explain something and using the show as the coping mechanism.

I don't know if it made a whole lot of sense, i might have not explain myself well enough.

I didn't watch the video. But this thread seems like a good place to put some thoughts about Lain down.

I have read a quote by the creator of SEL, he said "I hope that while watching the show, people really feel what its like to be this little girl". I think that that, in essence, is the whole point of the show. It is a story for us, the internet schizos. I haven't seen another show or book or piece of media that does that kind of character justice. Friendly but aloof and detached, feeling more real in the Wired than in meatspace, scared to death. More than anything else, we all identify with lain on a very deep level. That's why I address you as Lain. we are Lain. Whether she is a god, or just the personification of a shared experience, we are Lain. And we're scared! The world is scary, Lain is scared, Lain needs love to get through it.

I love you, Lain. I hope you love Lain back.

>>2661
>whatever system you are confined in or whichever way you're wired, you're valuable.
Except, at the end of the show, Lain's classmate who committed suicide was brought back to life in the real world, and this is shown as a good thing. If her being in the wired was just as good as her being in the real world, why would that happen? Does nobody remember the last ten minutes of SEL? The wired is severed from the real world, and it's shown to be a good thing. Those two agent guys are a lot happier as power line repair men. Rather than some kind of "agents" they're repair men, for a tool. How do you explain those last ten minutes?
>>2662
>where he says people using avatar of lain don't
understand made me cringe so hard because clairly this guy love SEL and simply want to gatekeeping saying "you don't understand lain"
His point was that people using lain avatars were no different than the fake versions of lain that existed because of people's false perceptions in the wired. Those other versions of lain were portrayed in a negative light, if you remember.
>>2663
>Lain needs love
Yeah, which she got. From Arisu. A real person, in the the real world.

>>2664
>Yeah, which she got. From Arisu. A real person, in the the real world.
You and I are far more real than Arisu. We aren't fictional.

>>2665
I'm not talking about anything except what I think the show tried to convey. I don't have an opinion on what the actual internet is and what it can do.

>>2666
and I'm talking about what SEL means to me.

I think that you're making it out to be anti-Wired in some way. As if The Wired entering real life was a problem. It doesn't seem like that to me, it seems like the show portrayed the birth of a god, which is a messy affair. Lain is fractured between her meat-self and her wired-selves, and then there is also Masami and the Knights who try to control The Wired, which Lain is the god of. Over the course of the show she comes to understand herself more, and to unify her self into a cohesive being. Out of love for humanity, she uses her powers to remove herself, fixing all the ills that her birth caused.

The show's tagline is that "everything is connected". The Wired is a tool, yes, but there is no indication that it is removed from the physical world at the end of the show. The fact that Lain is able to project herself into the physical world to talk to Arisu again shows this. It's just that Lain is no longer fractured and Masami is no longer causing trouble.

I think the real "message" of the show, besides the baseline feelings it evokes, are that The Wired connects us, but rather than turn that into a solipsistic "The Wired is the only thing that is real" viewpoint, it connects us as real people, and that when we put on fake faces on The Wired we are trying to reject this connection and it causes bad stuff like, say, the alt-reich. How many of those kids think they're being ultra badass anonymous internet warriors by posting racist memes, I wonder?

>>2667
The main ill caused by her birth was the wired fusing with the real world though. Time became subjective, dead people lingered as ghosts, individual people lost their sense of identity, kids stopped living normal kid lives. Maybe you're right and the real world and wired didn't actually separate, but that's what I gathered. It's not like by undoing her existence she changed the nature of the wired in any way. As for how she is still able to interact with people, that's the most abstract part of the show, but it's implied that she doesn't do it through the wired because she's all alone there.