Uhh content warning for potentially existential stuff? I don’t think it’s that heavy but better safe than sorry so I’m mentioning it here. Also, major spoilers for Serial Experiments Lain.

I’ve been lightly obsessed with Serial Experiments Lain since rewatching it a few weeks ago. So I’m going to write a long ass blog-essay-post-thing to try and get everything off my mind. 

To start with, Serial Experiments Lain is a very unique anime from 1998. It primarily focuses on the internet and the titular main character Lain as she slowly uncovers various mysteries relating to both herself and the Wired. The show was ahead of its time in a lot of ways. You won't find many other shows from the 90s talking about online identities and the dangers of humanity becoming overly dependent on using the internet. Obviously, being an anime, it incorporates quite a few fantasy elements with how its version of the internet works. But a lot of the things it discusses are very relevant to the internet today.

Now, I mentioned the Wired in that previous paragraph. In the anime, The Wired is the in-universe equivalent of the internet. Seemingly its own separate universe from reality in most cases. However, it’s still inhabited by real people. To exist only in the Wired is basically akin to being a God in the show. And there are different levels to just how connected someone can be with the Wired. With most users interacting with it in the same way we do the internet. A mouse and keyboard or a touch screen. But there are people who are capable of more or less connecting their consciousness into the Wired on some level.

In my mind, the act of more advanced users being consciously present in the Wired can be viewed as a representation of what it feels like to be fully absorbed in something such as a game, an online conversation, or a YouTube video. It can become very easy to completely forget about real life. Everything else fades away from your mind. Your entire focus is suddenly on your computer, it’s the only thing you’re likely thinking of, it can be as if reality itself disappears. Similar to how the Wired is depicted, with it being like another world.

Now, digital media isn’t wholly unique in that sort of experience, right? A good book can grip you in a similar way. But, much of digital media is unique in the way it can be interacted with. When you’re really engrossed in a book it’s (at least for me) more like you’re there experiencing the story as if it were a movie. I’m a spectator of what I’m reading, more or less. With something like an online chat or game, you are physically in control of things. It gives you an extra layer of interconnectedness you don’t get with a book. And that really makes a difference, at least to me. There’s been many times where I’ve finished a game of Civilization I’ve been playing for hours unknowingly. And once I quit it’s like I’m coming back to reality proper. Like my mind had just been fully connected to my computer and that game without a second thought.

When it's all said and done, the Wired is just a medium of communication and the transfer of information. You mustn't confuse it with the real world.

Aside from just consciousness, very advanced users in of the Wired can manifest parts of themselves physically into the Wired, though usually only mouths, eyes, arms (and hands), or ears. You can view this as the equivalent to an avatar, maybe. But I think those four things were chosen and mentioned very intentionally. What are the main ways we can see and interact with things online? We can talk on voice chats using our mouths, see the screen using our eyes, and hear things, such as music or other people, using our ears. And obviously, we interact with the internet with our arms and hands, typing and clicking. The more we use the internet the more connected those senses become. The anime represents this as those human aspects manifesting into the Wired. 
 

9/25 Edit: After learning about some of the behind the scenes details of Serial Experiments Lain I’m even more certain those things were chosen completely intentionally. There’s no chance they just picked them on a whim. Same goes for most everything here, there was real thought and care put into everything they mention and show.

You have characters becoming entirely different people on the Wired. Very similar to our own internet. Some people become more confident, some more cruel. And sometimes, or rather often times, those online personas conflict with who we are IRL. Which happens with Lain in the show. Lain is outgoing and confident on the Wired, but bashful in real life.

All of this sort of overarches into what is, in my mind, the main theme of the show, the internet leading to everything and everyone always being connected. Our personas online are connected to who we are offline, even if we try to distance the two. Our physical senses always connected to how we interact with things online. Everything online is meant to activate your neurons, tingle your senses, get you to continue using it. You can connect with anyone, any place, any time, instantly. Even without an internet connection, the posts you’ve left online remain, always there for someone to see.

In the show this theme culminates with the barriers between the Wired and reality breaking down, allowing everyone to be connected with one another, like a hive mind, or the LCL soup in The End of Evangelion. I don’t think one is meant to take that at literal face value. Instead I see it as an a metaphor for the internet becoming more and more prevalent in everyone’s life, to the point where it becomes completely intertwined with our personal lives. Where the things that happen online impact us in real life. Both of which have never been more true than right now.

The anime also discusses memories and the meaning of existence. How we can only really exist if we have other people to remember us, and the whole idea of how different people can view the same person in completely different lights. Something Evangelion also touches on. Though with Lain this also comes along with idea of living on forever on the Wired. With one character doing exactly that, living on in the Wired after dying.

As for how that relates to the real life internet… The way I interpret it, I think it's meant to represent how each of our posts online are sort of like leaving behind a small, never aging piece of who we are. A small part of us can live on forever in the memories of those who read these posts. So as long as the data that constitutes those posts continues to exist online, so will we. Regardless of what happens to us IRL.

If you are not remembered, you never existed

I just find it fascinating how this show from the 90s has quite accurately predicted what it’s like to use the modern day internet with all of our modern devices. Better than any other sci-fi series I’ve seen. And you know, even if the sort of themes mentioned in this post don’t interest you that much, I still think it’s a worth giving Lain a try. The vibes of the show are immaculate. You don’t need an interest in the subject material to enjoy that.

Hopefully this made sense and you got something from this. Okay, see ya.