MSN memories, image burn-out, and digital countercultures at ‘We Need to Talk About Computing #1’

“I made a TikTok two weeks ago that got a bunch of attention, about a quarter of a million views. That’s more people than ever heard Henry VIII talk, the king of England. That’s really weird! It also hasn’t changed my life at all, like zero percent.”
–  @brendonfreakinglemon on Tiktok

These are the words that new media artist and moderator of the evening Florian van Zandwijk presents to open ‘We need to talk about Computing #1’ at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on February 15th, 2024. The event is part of the current exhibition REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art by LI-MA and Nieuwe Instituut and features the guests Bregtje van der Haak (Director of EYE Filmmuseum) and Ali Eslami (VR artist, exhibiting at REBOOT). Their input of photos and videos serve as conversation starters for a horizontal and rhizomatic dialogue with the audience on ambiguous connectivity, identity, and tech optimism. Much like the internet itself, the evening navigates shared and individual perspectives, blending analysis with anecdotal insights.

Florian: “Do you remember your first experience of the internet?”

It is an attempt to get a view of the generational blend of the public. The experiences vary from MSN messenger nostalgia in the 2000s to the utter amazement of sending an electronic message across the ocean in the early 90s, leading the conversation into a rabbit hole of our crazy first e-mail addresses like pigsarecool@hotmail.com. 

These diverse personal histories of the internet come together with Bregtje’s contribution, as she shows the December 2007 edition of TIME Magazine. Instead of a portrait of the person of the year, the cover shows an iMac desktop and the text “YOU”. “Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to the world.” It was a turning point in the history of the internet, where ‘you’ are no longer just a consumer but become a product. On the PowerPoint at Nieuwe Instituut, the image of the cover shows an iPhone in the reflection of the computer screen. It takes us a moment to realise it was never part of the actual print – the iPhone wasn’t even launched yet. Whilst Bregtje took a photo of the cover, her iPhone camera was reflected in the glossy magazine, making the devices meet in the image.

The accidental conflation of technologies from different times underlines changing user cultures and the relative newness of today’s phenomena like the mirror selfie. It makes us wonder whether social media would be what it is today without the smartphone. “How about Apple’s newest gadget, the Vision Pro glasses? That’s gonna change everything!”, a member of the audience says. Elsewhere in the room: “Do I hear a tech optimist?”

Later in the conversation and fast-forwarding in time, Ali Eslami shares his project Nerd Funk, which he started in 2018. It is a dystopian VR experience about content overload, that in hindsight, could have been an omen for Apple’s new goggles. In a mortal combat-style game, seven Instagram personas throw their content at you. If you slice up their videos and images in time, the influencer demons become weaker. If you miss, their content flashes in your face, fatiguing your avatar until eventually, you die. The intensity and rollercoaster-like character of the project makes us think about how we experience the consumption of visual media today.

Ali aptly asks, “Are we facing a collective image burn-out?”

The conversation moves to recent developments, internet behavior from younger generations, and what seems to be a general shift towards text-based media such as podcasts and discord servers. Are there still countercultures online, and did they ever really exist? How do you even measure that? When asked for any famous last words, someone brings up the long tail theory. If you were to make a graph of the popularity of Spotify artists, you would see that a high yet short peak of fame is followed by a nearly endless tail of niche artists. A hopeful message for the future of diversity in experiences and content on the internet?

REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art was on view at Nieuwe Instituut between October 7th 2023 – May 12th 2024.

Marijn Bril is an independent curator and researcher focusing on media art and digital culture.