again: i don't play video games, and i never did. i've noticed that the language has been changing, but in my time you'd call people that liked video games and anime and card games geeks, whereas you'd call people into math homework and classical music nerds. there are always overlaps, but i was a nerd. i had friends that were geeks. i haven't seen or talked to them in years.

so, i don't understand gamer culture. at all.

but, this instagram killing is something out of a gibson or pynchon text. i guess that's another difference - nerds read books that win awards and get taught in schools, whereas geeks read comic books and serials for young adults with recurring characters....into their 40s. i don't know how many times i've read something like this in a novel; it's pretty surreal to see it in real life.

and, what kind of insight can i provide from reading all this cyberpunk, post-modern literature?

people can't separate between the images they're used to seeing, and the images of her dead body. the literary term is hyperreal. so, to the apparently tens or hundreds of thousands of people seeking out these photos (and i am not one of them), this is just another photo shoot - the blood and death and brutality isn't real, but just a corollary of good showmanship. so, have you seen her latest sets? but, it's also a finale, a climax, a grand ending - a final hurrah.

as twisted as this is, and as important as the conversation about patriarchy also is, i'd like to see a deeper discussion around this phenomenon of instagram users falling into this condition of blurry hyperrealism. if there's an "instagram story", it is this - the question of if we're all slowly collapsing into a collective schizophrenia, a shared dystopia defined by ubiquitous dysmorphism, where we simply don't know what is real and what isn't, any more, and may not particularly care to find out.