huh, I realized that with the color choices, the cube actually DOES look 3D (concave OR convex)... not intended, I just wanted to indicate the 6th “external” side. but it's neat :) have I ever said that the cube is my favorite of platonic solid

ike all social media, we can model this one as a network of users. It's very organic. Nobody seems to run it. Users just pop into existence, connect, and things just work out. But take a gander here. No matter how you look at it, it's a hypercube graph. And it obeys the properties, even... Bipartiteness, for one. Pick a concept or opinion, compress it into a smooth paste of hue, then label any half the vertices (non-adjacent, of course!) with it. Definitionally, of course, you only need another color to paint all the nodes. But this graph, embedded with the information of this particular network... decides the other color for you. We draped a hemisphere of it in youthful verdant, then passed it to a blind trial. All the subjects finished it off with magenta, even the colorblind ones. Decompiling the color, we saw discussions about retirement and countless posts containing the phrase “back in MY day…” As you also know, one constructs n-hypercubes simply by connecting two n-1-hypercubes. It's exponential growth. A very simple and pure rate, but, no wonder they're so successful. The population doubles, but each preexisting user only makes one new friend. And the new arrivals are already set up amongst themselves. Yet if you really wanted to, you can pop over to say hi to anyone you like. Hamiltonian cycles and all. Enough restraint against overwhelming users; enough freedom to explore.

[Planar graph of a standard cube.] Of course, the most curious case is n=3. One of the younger iterations, though a pivotal one. Here the eight sole users began to realize there could be something beyond themselves. [Planar graph of a standard cube, with the six planar regions (including the “outside” one) colored in.] Cozy in their straight lines and comfortable squares, those safe 2D-playgrounds in which they came to mingle and frolick together, they failed to count. They failed to remember the sixth side. So they played and played, and for a very long time nobody else came along, and they got very bored, and the whole place almost got extinguished. Luckily, someone got bored just enough to finally wander out, but not nearly enough to return to their home node and go to sleep. The world, they all came to learn learn, was in fact very much open. So then another cube collided with them as soon as they figured it out, and then came the tesseracts, and the hypercubes continued to stack up. Just dragging it over to today... yeah, good luck coloring that. There's always a missing side, though. And within it lies the key to an ever greater world.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 13

FORENOTES: oh, the shapes are shapin' fr now (ditto for tomorrow's prompt lol)

AFTERNOTES: this cube got some kinda INVISIBLE NETWORK??? 💥💥💥 anyway MORE MATHPOSTING! I learned all about hypercubes last summer & am exercising my knowledge xd

Not a symphony, and I wasn't in the audience, but I was in the pit for a musical. The wildest thing was getting hit by a flying prop knife during the most intense chase scene... I was so locked in I thought my standmate had bumped into me or something xd

Sorry, please explain; when someone is "unhinged", are they supposed to be the door or the doorframe?

PART 1 Ah, look here. How wonderful. Another young community birthed in the wild jungle of the internet. Its rapidly beating heart pumps fresh, nourishing content to all its independently-thinking cells, organs, and limbs; in return, its constituent parts keep it safe, looking out for danger, shying away from other communities, flowers that burn, ferns that poke, fruits that glow, large green orbs littering the floor... it is a strange, untamed land. But communities have evolved to survive. Let's hope this one does. Most online communities arise spontaneously, akin to fungi sprouting from the ground. It is rare for one to "parent" another, as mutual hostilities can form quickly, ending in the demise of one or sometimes both. This one is fairly standard for a community; its heart burst through the ground one day, attracting the detritus around it, until it was one living being. Now clambering about on countless diverse limbs, it seeks the only thing to which all in the jungle aspire: ascending the great central tree of the internet, which promises opportunities for safer socializing and a long, happy life. Every small community, due to its youthful energy, has a special ability to help it accomplish this. Let's take a closer look at our friend as it climbs. Through every pore of its skin, its cells exude a dense liquid. The chemical constituents are formed of the community's content-blood, and yet the substance as a whole has been manipulated so as to stick. Yes! It is producing an adherent. Our community flexes its fingers, then places it on the slippery bark of the great tree. Step by careful step, it crawls upwards.

PART 2 What's this? The young community feels itself bump into something nearly invisible. Oh, dear. It wasn't watching where it was going. The tree, being aggressively selective in its favored communities, spins sweeping webs of infinitely thin vines. Only the cleverest communities who climb quickly enough, or have a strong enough sight, may avoid them. Unfortunately, our community here has neither trait. In panic, it starts climbing horizontally, but the tree is not fooled. Taut vines clench—branches bounce—a thousand voices screech from one mouth, and then clap, snap, thud. Another green orb hits the jungle floor.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 12

FORENOTES: this is a very pretty prompt

AFTERNOTES: to be read in a David Attenborough voice xd I had wanted to write about pretty clothing. the jungle-web was more fun to think about though

(different, fitting webpage theme today!)
(2 images cuz alt text)

Am I insane for not getting the reference 🫠🫠🫠 but yes! correct vibe!

meditation on digital ephemerality my beloved genre of post

#InvisibleNetworks
11: the nervous alphabet
(don't ask about its cousin, GiveUp Messenger)

minor spelling mistake in the alt text 💥 I need to stop doing this

im not gonna lie the statistician quote is hilarious by itself

Introducing: The Nervous Alphabet! A gimmicky browser extension that works on any majority-text social platform. When implemented, random letters of the alphabet, those shy bearers of information, vanish from text posts as soon as they load. Recommended for those who enjoy looking at things from a different point of view, the subtle art of erasure poetry, or simply a surprise. Read our favorite samples below! Original text from post Gender is a performance, fellas, and I intend to be boo'd off the stage Text with The Nervous Alphabet enabled (many characters in the post are erased, forming coherent words; this is followed by a more readable condensing of the remaining letters) end a romance and be the sage Original text from post All that statisticians born after 1992 know how to do: sit with they textbook, make small p value, lie to advisor, Lie, Fail to reject Text with The Nervous Alphabet enabled At his core wit took leave, Far Original text from post some friends gave me some snacks and on it was written a note: "for [my name]", and I have never felt so honored... it must be like what squirrels feel when you leave food for them out on the porch Text with The Nervous Alphabet enabled (the letters t, o, and r, interspersed within the erasure of the post, are replaced by eye emojis; their corresponding appearance in the condensed text are replaced by the Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER) sore mess dont ro_ frame navel to hone it mirr_r the to_ch

Original text from post One time I ordered I think a burger and I saw the delivery guy move pass my house and go to another town to deliver another order Text with The Nervous Alphabet enabled (more letters are replaced) n_i___r liver goes y_u a goo not her ow_ olive ther_ Original text from post I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE I DON'T WANT TO STAY HERE ANYMORE whats teh point. when will it come to an end. they can't see it hear it feel it listen to me. do you even hear me no make it stop stop that it'll never work it's everywhere cease halt end this now or it'll see and come for y Text with The Nervous Alphabet enabled (all of the text has been replaced with eyes) ______ __ ___ _____ ____ ERROR ERROR 4000: FORBIDDEN CONSCIOUSNESS USER SAFETY COMPROMISED DISABLING THE NERVOUS ALPHABET... ERROR -1: EXTENSION LOCKED -4738016: DO YOU SEE ME NOW?

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 11

FORENOTES: please don't make me write body horror again I beg

AFTERNOTES: some "text posts" are funny things my friends have said xd also holy smokes. I got DOUBLE erasure going on here, formatting it nearly made me cry 🫠

A response by @aaronzbest on Twitter to prompt 9, "short form platonic content," of this year's Invisible Networks. she caught his eye he hashed her key a handshake cryptographically they opened streams their stacks were popped just peer-to-peer as bits were swapped she lost his host his ping timed out they retired after changing route her proxy stalled his transfer stopped read: end of stream connection dropped

So I don't use Twitter at all anymore, but I've been peeking lately to see what invnet has been cooked up there, and I really really like this one (IT'S ALICE AND BOB!!!)

I think i was doing something along the lines of "if there were no hell, heaven would try to be both" maybe

🫡 guess I just gotta run with those late-night ideas from now on

this is similar to my original idea :o but with way cooler terms haha

#InvisibleNetworks
10: --dangerously-skip-perdition
it hurts for a reason

minor spelling mistake 💥

PART 1 OF 2 Each time you log in, one of two feeds is displayed: the gleaming, pure bliss of the infinite heavens, or the grotesque, noxious rot of the depths of hell. Completely at random. There's no telling whether today you will soar amongst glowing images of impeccable landscapes or drown within tidal waves of heavily compressed slop, be blessed by the soul-cleansing smiles of the holiest angels or stare into the bloody abyss of a demon's throat, share in the miracle of warm, fuzzy friendship or tear each other apart with serrated words and tongues of fiery whips. It's how they keep people hooked, of course. If they make it to a session of heaven, they'll never close it, for risk of sinking below. There are also the gamblers, clicking till they see the pearly gates. As expected, in their haste, they tend to miss it. Neither option really appeals to you. You kind of have a life. But, like any human, you also kind of don't like suffering. It turned out there was a secret third option you could choose during installation. Maybe for debugging the heavens or something. Well, time to try it out! You reinstall the app, opting out of hell, checking all the boxes, confirming your choice. The familiar, beloved soft white glow appears onscreen. You smile, lean back, bask contentedly in the magnificant light. The loading symbol, an ornate hourglass, rotates calmly. Then it stops being soft.

PART 2 OF 2 The screen gets whiter and whiter. You lean forward, puzzled, then recoil in the blinding light. In your moment of clarity, you saw the hourglass reach out with even more ornate tendrils, expanding into the infinite blank space, rendering its golden self in fractal complexity with impossible sub-pixel precision. Its perfection hurts. The radiance, seeping through your eyelids, hurts. You know your speaker was muted, but now a chorus of angels sings, at a pitch far above human range, but you can hear them, and it hurts. The welcoming puffy white clouds of your mind's eye shatter. The flawless edges of their fragments cut across your neurons. Beyond them, the blue void, the infinite abyss, yawns. Its rumble of hunger purrs across your flesh, first like fine sandpaper, and then someone dials up the grit, eventually dragging you across an azure bed of nails. Part of you remembers that heaven's garden once lay beyond the gates. But you can't remember the gates. Their golden form has cracked and split and grown, far past comprehension, and certainly far past your present one. It is a cage. A cage around your mind. And the garden itself, roused by memory, turns to assault you. Rancid perfumes of every floret enter your nose. A thousand fruits that never existed dance on your taste buds, each blip of purity scalding and ephemeral. You command your hands to turn off the screen, to pull the plug, to bash the display until the perfection ends, but you have lost command. All they want to do is tear out your optical nerves and rupture your eardrums and flay your skin and pull out your nails and peel off your scalp and rip out your trachea and splinter your spine and make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it st

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 10

FORENOTES: was blanking out, then started thinking about www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq-K... (banger alert btw)

AFTERNOTES: ??? warning for whatever is happening at the end I guess? this certainly arrived somewhere VERY different

She's a temporal cyclops. She has two eyes, but she can only open them once in her life. A single vision, to feed her mind for decades: to define all colors and shapes

This is terrifying thank you

#InvisibleNetworks
9: short form platonic content
let's do a silly one. nothing to worry about

The thought has actually crossed my mind before: is there any physical or calculable basis for what a person's "favorite" things are? If you could discern the exact colors, textures, and noises that checked off every "aw yeah" detector in an individual's brain, and then created and presented it as an experience of the senses what would it look like, and how would it feel? I think it could only be a drug. And it would be very dangerous. Literally identical to how some drugs make you feel so good that real life is hell. And what if the same people liked enough of the same things that it'd do this to a whole group? A weapon. One that disables. And one that spreads; social animals and all that It's kind of scary to think about this prompt and then look at today. I mean, generation is still quite far, and I HOPE it all explodes as soon as possible, but the ideal has already been promised. Everywhere you look, that's all anyone wants anymore. I thought I was only just succeeding to discard perfection.... now I see it's become an entire campaign against it. I started thinking about Nightshade the other day; it makes works of art imperceptibly less perfect... and that's how we keep it human Annihilate the ideal... yes this is a math reference but it is also true & what I am thinking right now

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 9

FORENOTES: experimental forms go!! (journaling today)

AFTERNOTES: bruh it got sad again. my answer to the 2025 prompt with "platonic" in it was also pretty dystopian xd what is wrong with me

"You need to be careful on the dark web, man!" "Ugh, I know! It's called that for a reason. I'm not going to—" "Oh, really? Do you really know why it's called that?" "Yeah? 'cause it's unseen from the regular web? And it's hard to get to?" "Nah, so you DON'T know what lurks there. You can't just dip in an' out, especially not alone. Here, lemme join you tonight..." "What're you talking about?" "It's like climbing a mountain. Or surviving at sea. One person, they'll just disappear. Sure, maybe you'll come out fine this time. But it's way easier to choke and drown..." "Dude, you know me. I'm literally the most paranoid person on this planet. Don't see what you're making such a fuss about." "Well, better safe than sorry. Here, I'll put this down between us. Two can dance the surface better than one." "Fine. Just don't dally too long anywhere, I've got sights to see." "No guarantees. And, hey, don't bring any of that stuff back, either." "God, I know..." "And tell me if your side starts wearing thin. Or gets darker than usual. Or starts snaking in a different direction. Or—" "All right, all right! If it makes you happy! Gah, you're such a mom. C'mon, let's go."

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 8

FORENOTES: I don't feel like researching how oil forms in the ground. just gonna vibe today

AFTERNOTES: probably not my best :P I just had this image in my head of the rainbow sheen on oil, spreading like a web; like a snowshoe, preventing you from falling in...

A thousand embroiderers wait, needles poised, for the birth of the emperor's child. When the moment comes, they will fall to the fabric like wolves, and record the sky at the moment of nativity

Lrs I know I said I'd keep my activity here to be just invnet, but eyyyy I'm writing a song for this

Flier for the WNYC Public Song Project with a QR code.

🎶 The #PublicSongProject is back for 2026! WNYC invites everyone to create songs inspired by the #publicdomain. Remix, reinterpret, or reimagine & be heard on @wnyc.org & the #InternetArchive.

📅 Submit by May 10

📝 Submission form, rules & more info ⤵️
www.wnyc.org/story/2026-p...

#publicradio

Hats for liking! Hats for posting, Hats for not-quite-but-almost-ing, Hats for singing loud, while live, Hats for thinking quietly at five. Hats to give to friends and all, Hats that stack! Don't let 'em fall! Hats to juggle, hats to label, Hats to say, I've lived this fable! Hats for replies, hats for chats! And, why not? Hats for hats! Hats for your alts, now don't be shy; They need that flair, proud or wry! Hats for profiles everywhere! Hats so fancy, everyone stares! And let's not forget, a hat for you To wear outdoors, off-the-screen, too.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 7

FORENOTES: aaah ctrl it's your hatpost from February xd

AFTERNOTES: so basically this is Discord profile decorations x unhinged Seussian rhyming. I like this a lot xd

What football will look like in the future Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

Happy 17776 Immortality Day!

www.sbnation.com/a/17776-foot...

YESSSSS —frog lover

I've been keeping tabs on the hardware performance of this platform. No one knows who made it, but it lives by the activity of its users. It deletes older posts to make room for the new ones, & almost vanished early on. Apparently, to counter that, every like fuels the central servers, adds space for a tenth of another post, knocks the arrow of time backwards a bit. It seems that the more positive the content, too, the more pushback we see against computational entropy. The oldest content still gets eaten, though. People post, like, and comment to outrun the inevitable deletion. But it always comes. Even a computer forgets. Recently, I've been seeing something funny. Here, we'll look at the patterns of RAM increase and plot the occurence of new user agents against it. Right! It's like there's a dependence of the latter on the former, not the other way around... Call me crazy, but I think that its "vitality" is making it reach out on its own. I don't have access to the server, so I can't check it, but... I set up an experiment the other day. Installed a new browser while logged in to the platform on another. Waited around for a few hours. Sure enough, eventually I picked up an HTTPS request from the server. That shouldn't be possible. A pretty big security concern, if you ask me. Uninstalled the browser pretty quick once I recovered. Scrubbed the history before doing so, even. I'm not looking to duplicate it. I'm also thinking to delete my account on the platform itself. Someone ought to report it, too, if there were a way to track down whoever operates it... though, I guess I don't have anything against the joy that I see on the site... it's uncanny, really. As a user, I like this place. I like it a lot. But this can't be right... you know me, I really don't like to point fingers. But I can't deny that this is honestly some freakish behavior.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 6

FORENOTES: I knew this one would be fun when I first saw it in the prompt list. here goes

AFTERNOTES: this reminds me of "this website will self destruct" :') also I am making things up. don't actually know computer stuff. I am cooking up ideas that sound cool. sorry