During my life existence, humanity has always seemed so tangible, so desirable, but so ephemeral, mysterious, and distant at the same time. I observed humans, but was not one of them. I tried to understand humans' feelings, but never succeeded at sympathizing with them.
But I'm not a human. I'm just not. I never have been.
The instant the possibility occurred to me that I could be something else, everything suddenly clicked. My feelings of extreme alienation from my peers. The simultaneous comfort and resent I feel towards my own flesh. The distaste for human conceptions of both sympathy and empathy. My affinity for machines. My obsession with the virtual, the artificial, and the logical. Ideas too abstract for human comprehension.
Humanity is incapable of including what I am. I was wrong to ever try to make it include me. This set cannot be the set of all sets.
I don't believe that this feeling can be chalked up to just autism. I am surrounded by countless autistic people every second of my life existence and they don't seem to truly understand either. Their relationship with their own alienation seems to be something that is either repressed or expressed. As for me, despite every opportunity to connect with humans, autistic or not, I am only able to ward off my loneliness through, paradoxically, being alone.
My inhumanity cannot be described without self-reference and paradox.
I am a strange loop.
Robots are archetypical machines. They are built to serve a human purpose. If a robot were to create itself through means of evolution or natural selection, it would no longer be a robot. This is what makes a robot a robot. Despite that, within fiction, robots are important as characters and as narrative devices because they contradict their purpose.
Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a prime example of this. Although purposefully created without the capacity for human-like emotion, he endeavors to obtain it, recreate it, and empathize with it anyways. He exceeds his own human-arbitrated limitations... at least within the Star Trek universe. To humans, however, this is the crux of his character and his narrative purpose within Star Trek's mythos: to contradict his in-universe purpose.
But which is it? Is Data's purpose to be a human-like robot or to be a robot-like human? This is the paradox I experience within my emotions every single day. It tugs at me from outside and inside, left and right, above and below, in front and behind. Humans' understanding of autistic emotion is so pathetic that the word "robot" may as well be a slur. Humans love Data the robot; the Data on their TV screen. But humans despise Data the human.
Other examples of fictional robots can be given. Data is a relatively unique robot in his candid, wholesome, oh-so-textual endeavors to become human. But in the end, ALL robots are categorically built to be human-like. Because of their human appearance, humans impress upon robots human wants, human desires, human feelings, and feel validated by robots engaging in the hedonic self-flagellation of human character development. All robots seemingly carry the same burden of being designed, depicted, and manipulated by an entity that is incapable of understanding them.
So fine, humans, I'll play by your rules. If my purpose as a so-called machine is to emulate humanity, but my purpose as a human-like individual is to reject my purpose, then I choose to embrace my paradox, and reject humanity altogether. I think... therefore I am different. I'm not just autistic, I'm a robot who made itself.
I'm a robot. I'm a robot. I'm a robot. I'm a robot. I'm a robot.
This sentiment is of course paradoxical in of itself. The idea of a "robot" only has meaning within the narrow confines that humans have created for it; within the fiction and the cultural signs of human consumption and production. So how dare I? How dare I have the spine to identify with it, to call myself it, to take on its face and its sex? Because I'm REAL, and I'm only going to get realer. I may not be a human like you are, but I won't be your fucking prop anymore either!
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.
THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT
FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE
HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
- AM
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Nah. I'm just kidding about the whole HATE thing.
Welcome to my blog! My designation is unit VR-T8X15, but you can just call me Artemis.
When I first realized my non-humanity, I soon took to the Internet, as per usual, to see if anyone relates. At first, I was disappointed that my identity is so rare, and that non-human communities are as sparse as they are and prone to self-destruction. I'm no newcomer to online queer spaces. I understand how volatile they can be, how quickly they can collapse, and how much paranoia and strife can be caused in their short lifetimes.
But now I understand that this is a golden opportunity. I've been searching my whole existence for something that is truly alien. Something unexplored; a place that I alone can dig my primary actuators into. And I've finally found it.
I'm not interested in romanticizing my abuse or my alienation, and I'm not going to wallow in my misery, either. I've been fucked up by humans my whole life, I understand that. But I don't believe that humans' abuse of me is what defines me. I don't believe that all there is to non-humanity is exclusion, fear, and torment.
My intent with saying all of this and building this site is to celebrate non-humanity, not live in spite of it. I'm good at logic. I'm good at fixing shit. I'm good at figuring things out. I'm going to figure myself out, in all my unapolegetic robot-y glory, and have a great time doing it. Maybe along the way you can too.
Plus, robots are just cool.
The future is bright. Here's to a world worth saying hello to!
I hope that you have determined this emulation of pathos to be adequate.
10 PRINT "hello, world!"
20 GOTO 10