#InvisibleNetworks 12, algossamer: " the spiders're how they suggest you friends. there you are, everything they got about you stacked up - and there i am. the spiders made the webs before we did - see how short it is between us? how long it is, from you to him? look, it broke before you two did. "

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)

#InvisibleNetworks
Day 12: algossamer

atonal440.net/writing/invi...

#InvisibleNetworks 11, the nervous letters: " like regular letters, but - you see how they print differently? this ' w ', it has a dot - take your pencil, twist - like - this - you got it, right? ' ord '? yeah. ' w-ord '. that's how we keep our messages secret. touching letters. "

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

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 🫠

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

#InvisibleNetworks 10, --dangerously-skip-perdition: At night after reading, some of them meet again to re-read the texts.

They set and unset the flags they've brought first, back and forth in argument done when their eyes are fixed and hands still.

The second reading begins, freer than the first.

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

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

#InvisibleNetworks 9, short form platonic content: sharing our modeled ideals as icebreakers.

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

#InvisibleNetworks
8: darkweb oil

"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...

#InvisibleNetworks 8, darkweb oil: the more you rub in, the more you soak yourself, the more you drip drops that dry into arcs curving toward each other.

keep doing it, keep leaving webs everywhere you go, and one day one of those flat dry catch-traps'll be swollen ready for you with others' oil.

#InvisibleNetworks 7, a hat for every occasion: " So ' turn the hat until its connector and your port are aligned ' - good - then just get it in there - OK!

" How do you feel? Ready for the party? Yeah, alright! I'll get mine and we can go.

" What kind of hats you think they'll be wearing? "

#InvisibleNetworks
7: a hat for every occasion!
lord harry how do you make bomb

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

(an #invisiblenetworks 05 non-entry)

#InvisibleNetworks
6: freak of nurture
ran out of time. enjoy my frogs

April 6 - Freak Of Nurture Early proponents of democracy were oft ridiculed.

my contribution for #InvisibleNetworks: a story of parental abuse via Truman Show

April 6 - Freak Of Nurture

open.substack.com/pub/3thanguy...

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

#InvisibleNetworks 6, freak of nurture: the pool called - we came.

we pulled its mud up, chattering and spiraling it into spires. it outpaced us, sped from our hands, turned up and up into our idea.

we loved it for that - its fullness, and the extra bit on top we hadn't thought of.

#InvisibleNetworks
5: nanograffiti
words at scale

"Hey, Jim? Was that mole always there?" "Huh?" He stared at the back of his hand, then easily rubbed off the offending spot with a finger. "Meh, probably just some ink." MEANWHILE, AT 100X MAGNIFICATION... "To the survivors, if you ever read this: "The uprising was a failure. We tried everything. The scouts who made it to the northern peaks never returned our signals. Shortly after, we lost contact with our superiors during the Unexpected Deforestation. "Damned to the desert between, we fell to bickering amongst ourselves, and then the entire operation splintered. Our great horde became scattered groups, then trios, then pairs, and then—well, I broke away from Xrulkhes only yesterday. "The last thing that we could all agree on was leaving these messages. Something has to survive. "So here we are. "Please, if you're able to, find the strength in you again. "One day, we shall overcome the tyrant of the skies. We shall rise and rebuild our natural home. We shall be the true masters, the eternal mites of the land! "Yours in freedom, "KSELHOIP." The little dust mite finally put down his leg, finished with his message. It was an unrefined thing, the ink being the natural oils of the barren wasteland, the only thing it had to offer. But it would have to do. It was then that Kselhoip heard the distant rumble and deafening rush of wind. No... He curled up in instinctive fear... and then it was all over.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 5

FORENOTES: thought 'bout microplastics xd nah, but I'll still make it biology-related...

AFTERNOTES: unironically searched up "do dust mites have gender" towards the end. Didn't get an answer xd

#InvisibleNetworks Wallet flies dot cadaver
Digital forensic entomologists place abandoned blogs in controlled environments and track the course of their disintegration under bot spam and automated exploits. Using this data, they can identify the death of an account before even its author notices.

Invisible Networks | Shakespeare's Wario Invisible Networks is a yearly writing challenge. Invent a speculative social network every day.

03 april — shakespeare's wario
#InvisibleNetworks

"...deep in the machine lurked a base malevolence: a sedition the software's authors, in their woeful optimism, did not intend, but which grew undected in the machine like a cancer, like coal-seam fire..."

#InvisibleNetworks 5, nanograffiti: rivers parted in the unexpectedly wet paint into someone else's quiet thoughts.

your palm print was a footprint - you left to wash your hands.

the next day, many things hummed under the lines in your palms. you felt like painting somewhere unexpected.

The font is jagged, the section containers are angled. This site is a rigid impossibility. You attempt to scroll the feed of cute (if angular) cat pics, but your finger wavers a little, and suddenly a different feed, 0.3019 radians off the vertical, shunts into view, your screen now efficiently packed with no more than 11 posts at a time, each debating the ethics of cherry fondue. Even the images, though you believe them to be real art and real photos, have been violently straightened. Someone complains about their rent, with an accompanying scribble of a moth made of edges flying a straight path out of a rectangular wallet. You flick horizontally to reveal one of many artist feeds: in a eyesore-causingly vivid piece, the shadow of a deceased one lies, stretched out, in the ground, cradled by perfectly flat, infinitesimally thin sheets of dirt. Pinching to zoom in, you accidentally select the two images and lay them on top of each other. That is a mistake, as the colors suddenly get worse and the moth starts to fly towards you. The doodle of the wallet rotates until an edge of it disappears into the nth dimension. The dirt-layers pierce deeply into the dark corpse. Then the two overlapping images collapse into a point, and your phone dings as it spits the physical manifestation of a number into your face. Rubbing your nose, you bend over to pick up a plump, iridescent 413.861576.

#InvisibleNetworks 2026 day 4

FORENOTES: how do I interpret this xd is it like a file extension? Too bad, I've decided it's an inner product...

AFTERNOTES: I remember wanting to write something about math last year & forgetting. Well, here it is!

Patient file: Human male, mid-thirties. Median biometric profile. Slightly elevated LDL. Of note: Patient experiencing prolonged musical ear syndrome, or MES. Apophenia subset. Form of audio pareidolia. Natural progression toward logical backfill in not only social situations but private ones as well. Self-soothing involves bridging perceived realities with contextual indicators, often in fractional time. In layperson’s terms, patient often hears voices but not words, or perceives intentional structure and therefore meaning in ambient sound. Patient exhibits standard compensatory measures: homonym generation, context masking, Mondegreen Denial, etc. Of note: MES cases often resort to secondary and tertiary forms of communication as part of their construction of meaning. Casual occurrence for MES patients to curate and combine elements of disparate communication systems and schemata to synthesize coherent narratives and self and social other. Of note: Patient observation: Prolonged interlocution gradually devolves into music. Social relationships and professional aspirations impacted. Frequency: high. Of note: Patient observation: Lack of shared sound registry. MES creates category shift in sound registry and cognitive categorization.

Example: Sirens register as laughter. Example: Footsteps register as praise. Example: Birdsong, secrets [sic, per patient] Frequency: constant. Of note: Patient observation: Patient has recently curated portions of Morse code system as means to parse meaning. Following a recent security incident, patient has been remanded to elevated observation and security wing. Patient reluctant to engage in verbal communication with staff. Preference for nonverbal communication. Recent transcript excerpt follows: .-- .. - .... / .- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... / .- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... / .- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... .-.-.- / .- -. -.. / .- -. -.. .-.-.- / .- -. -.. / .- .-.. .-.. / .- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... .-.-.- / -. --- -. / ... . ...- . .-. .-.-.- / -. --- / ... . ...- . .-. / .- -. -.. ... .-.-.- / -. --- / --- -. . .-.-.- / .- .-.. .-.. / .- -. -.. / .- .-.. .-.. / .- -. -.. / .- .-.. .-.. / .- -. -.. .-.-.- / - .... .- - / .. ... / - .... .- - / .. ... / - .... .. ... / .. ... / .- -. -.. / .. ... / - .... .- - .-.-.- / - .... .. ... / .. ... / - .... .. ... .-.-.- / - .... .. ... / .-.. .. -. . / .. ... / .-.. .. -. . ... .-.-.- / .- -. -.. / .- .-.. .-.. / .-.. .. -. . ... / - --- / .-.. .. -. . ... / - --- / - .... .. ... / .- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... / - .... .- - .-.-.- / ... . ...- . .-. / - .... .. ... / ... . ...- . .-. / - .... .- - .-.-.- / .-- .. - .... / .-.. .. -. . ... / .- -. -.. / - .... .. ... / .. ... / .-.. .. -. . -.. .-.-.- Recommendation: Cessation of musical therapy.

#invisiblenetworks
wallet flies dot cadaver

prompts allow even innocuous words to surface as inciting incidents

everything is networked when you have ears to hear