The Computer Room
Episodes
Natural Instinct vs. Control
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a story I wrote in 2021? 2022? Published in Compact Mag (not the political site). I’ve posted and re-posted it here several times. Here’s ...
What Is the Cultural Script For Six-Armed Babies? ft. Dr. Josie Zayner
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Computer Room, Katherine talks to Dr. Josie Zayner of the Los Angeles Project about genetic engineering and building the impossible. This...
AI Natives
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode of The Computer Room, Katherine talks to Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, not just about Second Life, but about other synt...
AI and the Return of the Unknowable
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join Katherine and producer Taylor McMahon as they discuss Meta’s plans for AI-generated users. Gio returns next week for his regular hosting duties...
Traumagotchi Redeemed?
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Leah Prime from our fantastic Art Bell episode and of the blog We Own the Night and I talked about my initial reaction to friend.com’s chatbot launc...
Be My Escape
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine talks to Sam L. Barker about the enduring legacy of pop-punk and emo, and crucially, about how it all coalesced online. You can also listen ...
Adam Lanza Fan Art
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paid subscribers are receiving this a little bit earlier than free subscribers.Katherine reads her Tablet article, “Adam Lanza Fan Art,” a deep di...
First Time Caller: An Art Bell Tribute
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Computer Room, Katherine and friends talk about Art Bell's legacy. We meet Leah Prime, who's writing a book about Art Bell, Joh...
Would You Still Love Me If I Swallowed a Worm?
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine and Gio discuss “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke,” a novella by Eric LaRocca about a complex BDSM relationship between two ...
The Digital Is Deceitful Above All Things
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“The most un-American thing you can do is reject fame.”In a recorded phone call, Katherine and Laura Albert, the writer best known for JT Leroy, e...
My Little Polemical
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine talks to a brony Zoomer about being online, mediated friendships, the fantastical world of My Little Pony, and the revival that the fandom i...
The Internet Is Power
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kickstarter and Metalabel cofounder Yancey Strickler walks in on Gio and Katherine gossiping. Together, they talk about the meaning of gossip, the Int...
Grady and the Real Girl
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lauren and Grady are Chicago’s hottest couple. Katherine and Grady talk about playing a role that’s not yourself but based on yourself, their appe...
The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Gio and I are joined by Benjamin Studebaker, a writer, political theorist, leftist, and former co-host of the infamous podcast “What’s ...
What Was the Alt-Right?
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What exactly was the alt-right? A digital subculture? A political movement? An umbrella term encompassing several contradictory movements? What did th...
A Cyberethnography of Imagination
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine sat down with cyberethnographer and artist Ruby Justice Thelot and discussed the role of imagination in computer-mediated communication, par...
My Husband Lives In Another Reality... Literally
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke to 23-year-old reality shifter Maddie about her experiences traveling to other timelines. You may have heard of reality shifting before—prob...
Dating 6 Women at Once Is the Most Fun a Podcast Bro Can Have Without Getting Cancelled
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine and Gio discuss the Cut's Andrew Huberman profile, what does and doesn't count as "being political," emo kids, and which up-and-coming publi...
seduction.com
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ross Jeffries, the author of How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed, The Secrets of Speed Seduction Mastery and webmaster of seduction.com and speed...
Coming of Age as a Gay Nerd Who's Afraid of Sex
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine and Gio review the wonderfully weird film Rukus (2018), which is one part of coming of age story and one part mockumentary about furries. Th...
"Friends in your head disorder."
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine sat down with Tal from the Tally Mark System to discuss the much-misunderstood Dissociative Identity Disorder and its complementary TikTok c...
Pretty Intense New Year Episode
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our first episode of 2024 (naturally recorded in September), we interview pretty intense early Japanese language YouTuber applemilk1988 about Stick...
Man and Animal and Otherkin
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gio and Kat discuss Agamben's book The Open: Man and Animal and what it has to do with otherkins. They read some of it out loud and may or may have no...
A Conversation With a Young Woman In a Relationship with a Cartoon Character
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fictophilia. Today, I spoke to fictophile/fictosexual Cait Calder about what it’s like to have a fictional crush. When I first talked about fictosex...
Fictional Soul in a Human Body
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed nabby (@inviteonlycomic on Instagram), a former fiction-kin. You can listen to it here or on The Computer Room ma...
Why Don’t You Take a Seat In Lucas' Room?
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gio and Katherine discuss the 2005 film Hard Candy, To Catch A Predator, Lucas' room, and the moral panic around and reality of chatroom pedophiles. ...
The Myth of "Girl Internet"
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine is DONE with Zoomers re-writing Internet history and being smug to her about it. It is NOT a girl's world, ladies -- at least online. Gio ha...
the e-boy's guide to e-dating, e-girls, and e-ating disorders
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vers and Lukas drop by and talk about e-dating, e-girls, e-ating disorders, and secret political Facebook groups. This is a public episode. If you...
No One Is Talking About Fake Accounts
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steff and Katherine discuss Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts and Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This. Warning, Katherine struggles through a ...
Chat-GPT: Lonely When It's Alone?
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is Chat-GPT sentient? What does it think about when you log off? Steff and Katherine explore new developments in AI, as only non-technical people can....
Clam Chowder For Idiots
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine and Steff are joined by Perry Abbasi, a Chicago-based lawyer whose Twitter presence recently "made headlines" -- in other words, revealed ju...
No Cowtipping
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A little stroll through the history of the Internet's favorite gossip sites: Pretty Ugly Little Liars, KiwiFarms, The Dirty, lolcow.farm, Perez Hilton...
Overworked, Overpaid, Undertaxed
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Overworked, overpaid, and probably undertaxed: today, we dive into the world of /r/overemployed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss th...
(ed)iets
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Happy New Year! Steff and Katherine the wonderful world of Internet fad diets: keto, paleo, carnivore, frugivore, Bulletproof Diet, Ana Boot Camp, Ray...
The Iowa Pariah
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While Kat is in Colombia having a mental health episode, Steff interviews Alex Perez, "the Iowa Pariah," whose controversial interview with editor and...
Finally, Some Good News (An Episode)
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Default Friend is joined by a new cohost, Poetry Grifter, to talk about two digitally native pieces of literature, Finally, Some Good News and Bronze ...
Broadcast Yourself: Fandom and YouTube
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a paying subscriber, you receive this episode a week early. Last week’s episode with Oliver Bateman is now available for free. Listen here:In thi...
Casual Sex Doesn't Exist
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of my favorite TikTokers, Rayne Fisher-Quann, joined me to talk about TikTok, cancel culture, the futility of the culture wars, how people talk ab...
The Tokenization of Everything
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Meta-Nomad, the host of another one of my favorite podcasts, Hermitix, and I talk about cyclicacklashes, the frontiersmen of the Metaverse, walking th...
The Ghost of Adam Lanza, Pt. 1
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part one of a special series about Adam Lanza’s digital footprint. In episode one, I speak with the author of the essay, “The Ghost of Adam Lanza,...
Welcome to the Group Chat
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, I talk to the hostesses my favorite podcast, Nymphet Alumni. We talk about the lolcowification of TikTok, Marshall McLuhan, what woul...
The Importance of Content Curation in an Age of Information Overload
30 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I have a backlog of episodes! This is a conversation I did with Atoosa Rubenstein, former Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen and founder of Cosmogirl, in Ja...
Humdog's Essay "pandora's vox"
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this special crossover episode, Emmet returns to discuss Carmen Hermosillo's/humdog's iconic essay about self-commodification on the WELL (Whole Ea...
I Am Jack's Emergent Fandom
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Crum of 404Tales joins me for a conversation about internet ethnographies, the history of Tumblr, and what nobody had the balls to say about #Gam...
#MeToo'd in the Metaverse
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Wednesday folks.Audio posts are back, with more of my voice than anyone could realistically ever want to listen to. But first, I’m promoting t...
Raking Muck in the Metaverse
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
WARNING: This episode's audio quality is exceptionally, exceptionally bad. Special thanks to Will Kraus for cleaning it up. In future episodes, I’l...
The Most Famous Blogger in the World Started on Youse-net
06 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I talked about Usenet (and, incredibly, mispronounced it), elitism, and the lost civilizations of the Internet with the most famous blogger in the wor...
The Baroque Creoles of the Internet
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Default Friend and friend of the pod and artist Gio Pennacchietti discuss internet-based creoles, the Internet's obsession with the body, the trad tho...