Portals such as GeoCities, Worlds, The Palace, and Habitat allowed their users to participate in an alternative reality in which, whether through supposedly naive websites, chat rooms, or metaverses, the primary goal was always to share interests and connect with people from different territories. Over time, as has happened with our organic habitat, many of these networks underwent a kind of virtual gentrification, the main consequence of which was forced submission to terms and conditions dictated by the most powerful people in the world: the 1% that began to be fought against on Tumblr and 4chan more than ten years ago. Following this, as a result of the twenty-year nostalgia cycle, a large number of users have recently become interested in a period they experienced only peripherally: the turn of the millennium. And although to a large extent it is a mere superficial and aesthetic issue, its premise of a failed bright future or utopia echoes an enthusiasm numbed by the logic of a world that is increasingly less suited to human rhythm.
This is where the video game Hypnospace Outlaw, produced by No More Robots in 2019, comes in. The game circles around contradictory feelings of nostalgia at the dawn of the internet. Beyond being a virtual tour loaded with popular references, Hypnospace Outlaw functions as a truthful and realistic tribute to an often idealized way of being virtual. Therefore, based on its narrative and formal analysis, parallels will be established with which to rethink the fin-de-siècle period of internet history and how it dialogues with a future situated in the present. Through certain commonplaces of nostalgia that beat tacitly in this work, we will reflect on the need to advocate for a renewed spirit with which to face a virtual everyday life that, despite being beneficial, consumes us as a community into a distracted and gray mass. Therefore, an approach to creations such as Hypnospace Outlaw will allow us to take a step back and rescue a transformative potential from a privileged position, that of the present, which is already filtered by the true lived experience.
You may ask Yourself, ‘Where does that Highway go to?’. Narrative and Formal Notes
Despite being an offline video game, Hypnospace’s portrayal of an internet that has already been buried exudes a deep sense of liveliness. This is why it captivates from the very first moments and why it dialogues with a stagnant and automated present. On the contrary, this work emphasizes the human factor from the outset by pointing to the human-technology symbiosis as the fundamental pillar of a bright future [Fig. 1]. However, the irony of the approach lies in the fact that these premises are endorsed by Merchantsoft, a company that has developed a device called HypnOS that allows its users to connect to the Hypnospace internet network while they sleep (hello Neuralink). The underlying intention of Hypnospace is to integrate technology into people’s daily lives, making it infinitely accessible. The dreamlike hyperbole behind the idea of never disconnecting from technology was evident in commercials such as the one for Windows 95, aimed at a general audience who could use the computer for any task and on any occasion (even in a restaurant!); or in others such as Newcom, in which a teenager physically enters the Information Superhighway, synonymous with the internet, which seemed to reference Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway.
Fig. 1 Screenshot from Hypnospace Outlaw. Frame from the video that welcomes the user and introduces them to Merchansoft technology.
Connecting and sharing with others under the laws of cyberspace were the symbol of a hopeful race toward the future, whose success depended on who had the power of these tools. This reasoning is followed by skeptical manifestos such as Mark Dery’s Culture Jamming, which, as early as 1993, saw the internet as a possible solution to an American society lobotomized by television. For Dery, through the virtual mirages of reality, users could take control of this technology to subvert stagnant cultural codes in an act that draws on détournement, photomontage, samizdat, and ultimately, hacking. The static nature and passivity of television would be replaced by the nomadism and interactivity of virtual communities that would gradually take up more space in our psyche, paving the way for true virtual reality. This narrative, also prophesied by the futurists of the time, is the roadmap for the equally naïve Hypnospace.
Within this sleepwalking internet, its users can create spaces in which to share their concerns with complete freedom, which means that, as in the 1990s, a unit (the player) is needed to moderate the content. This premise is the backbone of the entire work, which is nothing more than a MacGuffin to advance through a non-linear story about a company that led its invention to a fatal end. The enthusiasm radiated by websites such as GeoCities and humor blogs such as Something Awful inspired its developer, Jay Tholen, to create the game’s fictional websites[i], which follow a now-lost structure in which the host introduces themselves to the anonymous visitor and invites them to immerse in their interests in religion, skeletons, or cryptids [Fig. 2].
Fig. 2 Screenshot from Hypnospace Outlaw. Website discussing the cryptid Tall Green.
What is relevant about this artificial internet is how it mediates the feeling of nostalgia beyond postmodern intertextuality, as occurs, for example, in the life and work of Ann Hirsch, whose use of GIFs and vlogs shapes an art that deals with digital identity and hyperfemininity [ii]; while other artists such as Lizzie Klein capture the influence of virtual nostalgia in their work to create photographs that are essentially anachronistic [Fig. 3]. Therefore, the nostalgia that predominates in Hypnospace Outlaw is reflective in nature, aware of the inability and futility of returning to the past but, with a layer of contradictory irony, manages to bring it back [iii]. In this way, the work enters into the same hauntological game that has dominated certain internet phenomena and so seduced Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher, such as Vaporwave, the music of Leyland Kirby, or the digital crackling of vinyl records [iv]. Here, the slow start-up of the game interface, visually inaccessible websites, cyberbullying, and the emulation of poor bandwidth are details that shake up the present in order to de-idealize an artificially remote past.
Fig. 3 Photograph of Lizzie Klein’s ongoing project Health Freak.
It should be noted that the interest this work aroused at the time is partly a consequence of the proliferation of countless aesthetics and vernacular subcultures, ranging from the fascination with liminal spaces studied by Valentina Tanni and Raquel Luaces to the countless -core subcultures that form the backbone of the current Internet Core. Hence, Hypnospace Outlaw serves as a good example of capturing the nature of the aesthetic to which it belongs, Y2K, since this aesthetic umbrella encompasses all the imagery produced around the dreaded Y2K bug, which ultimately did not cause any problems. Therefore, the contradictory facet of nostalgia emerges in this work to the delight of a player who sees how certain characters gradually go crazy on their blogs with the advent of the year 2000.
As a contextual colophon to this part, it is worth recounting the final spiral of a story that is both emotional and tragic:
In the last setback, fears became reality and, during the turn of the millennium, the HypnOS bands that all users were using failed at the same time due to a bad system update. This caused thousands of injuries and six deaths. However, the blame was placed on a teenager who created a harmless but eye-catching virus with the intention of getting a girl’s attention, a fact that unjustly condemned him to six years in prison. Despite this, years later, our final task will be to delve into files that prove how the computer cataclysm could have been avoided if the creator of Hypnospace had not succumbed to delusions of grandeur, as his stubborn obsession with improving the system went against numerous medical reports urging him to discontinue the product. After the success of our task, its creator confessed everything and accepted his sentence, but not before revealing that his remorse had been expressed through several letters lamenting the deaths of young and innocent victims [Fig. 4]. In the background, a melody accompanies the final scene with lyrics that continuously repeat the phrase: “Y2K, you let me down”.
Fig. 4 Screenshot from Hypnospace Outlaw. Letter addressed to one of the collateral victims.
Towards Another Path. The Lessons of Hypnospace Outlaw
To create a fictional microcosm of Hypnospace’s caliber, it is necessary to engage in dialogue with the productions of its time through pastiche and self-referential aspects, in addition to the aforementioned intertextuality. This postmodern miscellany, common to our mass of contemporary cultural objects that capitalize on nostalgia, is evident in the zeitgeist that shapes the game to the point of creating something new. The utopia referred to here is the same one that underlies in every feeling of nostalgia, a utopia to strive for or a utopia that could have been but was not. However, what has prevailed in our era is that failed utopia, the one that was glimpsed after the end of history and which, according to Grafton Tanner, was consolidated after the 9/11 attacks [v].
The designers are fully aware of this fact, as behind the façade of references that shape Hypnospace Outlaw, there are other more subtle ones that play with the ironic ambivalence typical of a virtual culture accustomed to playing with masks. Several examples clearly illustrate this. Merchantsoft (Microsoft), the company that designed Hypnospace, is followed by SquisherZ (Pokémon), a game that consists of collecting fluffy creatures; Professor Helper (Clippy), a virtual assistant who is not usually very helpful [Fig. 5]; the free music distribution system FLST (Napster); and websites with interactive hypertext stories that marked the work of net artists such as Olia Lialina, Mark America, and Shu Lea Cheang.
Fig. 5 Screenshot of Hypnospace Outlaw. Professor Helper website.
However, the most interesting ones are those that not only reference but also redefine the notion in question. This is the case with the harmless virus that was nothing more than a covert declaration of love, reminiscent of the famous ILoveYou computer worm; or with Mindcrash, a euphemism for the Y2K problem that caused so many deaths; while other events, such as the one that merged numerous websites into one, thus forcibly displacing many users, seem to allude to the subsequent birth of Web 2.0, the cornerstone of the platforms that now dominate the internet and stoned the virtual flâneur without a destination of his own on a website without hierarchies.[vi]
Although the internet has proven to be a tool capable of distorting time and turning the past and present into a spongy mass, as Simon Reynolds points out [vii], the fact that anyone can access any object under the guise of nostalgia does not necessarily symbolize that we are facing a cultural recession. As with many advances, the significant change lies in the accessibility and speed they bring, not in the new opportunities they offer, as these were often already possible before.
Due to the pace at which phenomena occur on the internet, it is natural for new cultural trends to coexist with outdated ones that manage to pass the novelty filter, a fact that further accelerates contemporary presentism. This is where the aforementioned aesthetics would be situated, which, when referencing the past, always err on the side of translating the selective amnesia of a community that identifies with anachronistic and poeticized codes. That is why Hypnospace Outlaw shows not only how much has been lost (or expired) in recent decades in terms of the internet, but also, as glimpsed earlier, it collects what only a historically blind person would miss, such as finding gore content by chance or being greeted by a shrill MIDI melody on every website. However, what has gradually evolved is the new sense of community to which the work refers so much.
Today, some of the contradictory notions of Gary Cross’s consumed nostalgia are even more noticeable. From his thesis on nostalgia that has been absorbed and regurgitated by the market through objects and passing fads, it is worth mentioning his interest in how it has created micro-identities common to a large number of people who interact with each other from a position of individuality [viii]. This code of conduct is the basis for hegemonic forums such as Reddit or, conversely, 4chan. Therefore, despite the loss brought about by a new vertical and commercialized model of the internet, what is truly desired is a human factor that remains latent beyond the mere consumption of virtual content.
Over time, the internet became completely ingrained in people’s lives, occupying both their work and leisure time. It is the place where you pay your bills. Society, seeing its pace of life and work mediated by the internet, created refuges out of nostalgia, sharing experiences and interests through those same platforms that were built on the ruins of others in the past. We saw how a non-place like the internet, that is, an anonymous, transitory place with no agency, became for different generations of people a landscape of nostalgic escape where everyone could partially recognize themselves and align themselves to ensure a different future. And although this fact may be inexorably conditioned by market and political interests, nostalgically longing for a promised future can always awaken in those who identify with it a sudden interest that brings with it the possibility of change.
The Possible Internet
In essence, part of that promised future portrayed by Hypnospace Outlaw has actually been realized in our reality, only based on the same socioeconomic dynamics that sustain the network. Aesthetically, the informational and visual anarchy that prevailed on the internet at the turn of the century has been replaced by more accessible, intuitive, and concrete interfaces, which has brought with it an oversimplification that advocates for easier navigation of different websites at the expense of a flatter appearance. Hence the artistic interest in recovering that spirit of “anything goes” that was lost in pursuit of a corporate aesthetic that, for the moment, still predominates in all spaces. Those who, beyond its aesthetic value, revere bastions of that era such as the green head of the Windows Player [Fig. 6a/6b], are not only indulging in nostalgia, but are also seeking, through these lost remnants of craftsmanship, an agency within an internet that is inseparable from everyday life.
Fig. 6a “Green Head.” Skin for the Windows Millenium Edition operating system music player, 2000.
Fig. 6b “Green Head.” Skin for the Hypnospace Outlaw music player.
The denial of the future, which has been exacerbated by an essentially retrograde technology such as the algorithm, could be mitigated if the mercantilist factor that brings with it the rebirth of past eras were removed. In order to avoid superficial gestures that feed back into communities as commodities, which Byung-Chul Han refers to as the “end of all community”,[ix] we must turn in a direction that escapes the nihilism of eras such as the one described here, whose non-collapse after the year 2000 condemned it to having to “fulfill” its promises. This fact, however, is what certifies that another path is possible despite the development that the internet and its culture may have undergone.
Although currently taking a step forward and opposing the hegemonic internet through the use of decentralized networks or free software applications is equivalent to the attitude of a contemporary Thoreau, the truth is that their mere existence shows how the flame lit by collectives and artists such as Monochrom, Critical Art Ensemble, and Sadie Plant through manifestos is still alive and becoming more necessary than ever. Works such as Hypnospace Outlaw, which require careful attention and special dedication to immerse oneself in the reflection of a world that once was, possess a transformative spirit, hidden behind the veil of nostalgia that is not always properly glimpsed. If we dissociate the consumerist and viral aspects of these works and aesthetics with echoes of the past, we can turn to transgressive creations that use the abject, the queer, dreams, the kitsch, glitches, or ecology as banners to shake the foundations of present-day culture. Although immaterial, it is essential to take a stand against what dissipates our agency in what remains of cyberspace. After all, even though it has been reviled and misrepresented, the continuum that pursues nostalgia as an engine of change still feeds back into culture; what remains, therefore, is to cautiously position ourselves behind the lights of a feeling capable of imagining new presents.
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Author bio
Francisco Villalobos is currently developing his thesis on internet culture at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Based on the theoretical framework of post-internet and digital folklore, his PhD research investigates how internet culture has created a vernacular language about digital daily life and the consequences of living conditioned by internet technology. He is also interested in the role played by video games on the internet and in other audiovisual manifestations that shape today’s cyberspace.
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References
[i] Richardson, L., (2023). “The influences and surprising origins of Hypnospace Outlaw” RockPaperShotgun. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-influences-and-surprising-origins-of-hypnospace-outlaw.
[ii] Chan, J., (2012). “The Real Ann Hirsch: The Power of Performative Fiction” Illuminati Girl Gang Vol. II, Oct 29. https://htmlgiant.com/web-hype/illuminati-girl-gang-vol-2/.
[iii] Boym, S., (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books: 18.
[iv] Fisher, M., (2014). Ghosts of my Life. Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: zero books: 74 – 76.
[v] Tanner, G., (2022). Las horas han perdido su reloj. Las políticas de la nostalgia. Barcelona: Alpha Decay: 47 – 49.
[vi] Darling, J., (2015). “Arcades, Mall Rats, and Tumblr Thugs” in Lauren Cornell, Ed Halter (eds) Mass Effect. Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century. Massachusetts: MIT Press: 325 – 328.
[vii] Reynolds, S., (2011). Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. New York: Faber and Faber: 62.
[viii] Cross, G., (2015). Consumed Nostalgia. Memory in the Age of Fast Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press: 14 – 18.
[ix] Han, B.-C., (2021). No-cosas. Quiebras del mundo de hoy. Barcelona: Taurus: 31.