The Cyberpunk Fakebook by St. Jude and R. U. Sirius (the best novels to read .TXT) 📖

torment. Torment...and ironic bitterness. No giggling or snickering, no kidding.

Riot Grrrls! These are fierce girls who like tech. This is a sexist category, but there we are: girls only. A grrrl can be called "d00d" and "guy" at all times, but a non-female guy is not a grrrl. This is just the way things are. If you're a grrrl, you can wear anything you want to, because you're there to defend it. This is true for anybody, really-- look as tough as you wanta be, and be ready to back it up. Fierce is good. Grrrls with tech expertise are irresistible. NOTHING is more attractive than a fierce, blazing, ninja-type grrrl right now, and if she knows UNIX or phone-freeking, the world is hers. Hrrrs.

Technopagans/Ravers/Neohippies Don't worry about this one. This scene is free, loving, noncomforming, spontaneous. You can dress any old way and fit right in... Unless you don't look cool.

Maybe you should stick to basic cyberpunk. Dancing in leather is hot as h*ck, but sweating is better than not looking cool. Non-cyber ravers favor floppy hats, five kinds of plaid 'n' paisley, and multiple organ piercings. They sometimes take raver drugs. These drugs make you fonder of other people than you really want to be. (The morning- after Revulsion hangovers can be nasty.) In this scene, pretending to be on raver drugs is recommended, and easy, too. Unfocus your eyes and smile lovingly. In black leather you won't have to worry so much about getting hugged.

Academic Cyber-Wannabes Students, teachers, whatever, dress down. Like you're always en route to a garage sale...maybe to donate what you're wearing. Casual. Jeans, black leather jacket, laser pointer. No tweed, notice, and no Birkenshtocken. If you flash paperbacks by Arthur Kroker, Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard, it means you're serious. Paperbacks by Mark Leyner and Kathy Acker means you're way past serious.

Cybercowboys/grrrls Some of these people come from Texas or Oklahoma. In this crew, to yr cyberbasics you add a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and grow any hair you've got really LONG. Males should try to get hair somewhere on their faces.

Science Fiction Writers Full-steam straight-ahead hard edge, with a permanent sneer. Just to twist heads, some males writers go for the Tom Wolfe effete look-- blue blazer and wing-tips. Still they sneer.

Web Crawlers and Other Bourgeois Types You don't really care about this one, do you? You do? Subscribe to WIRED. Next.

Deep Geek: Supernerds, Hackers, Wizards, Phone Phreakers Things get difficult here. Deep geekware is unstandard. Very heavy Wizards can look like accountants, or like streetpeople. Facial hair and Goodwill Casual happen a lot. Chubby happens too, since these guys don't do enough dancing in leather pants. To get along in this scene, you really need to be very smart, very funny, or very sexy. To work yourself up to smart at least, learn UNIX. Or carry the 2600 zine in your back pocket and read that. Practice being technical. But until you get good, wear your cyberbasics and never leave home without your laser pointer. This will draw the admiration of people who don't know any better, which has its own rewards. Leading us inevitably to the final category...

Phonies, Poseurs and Pretenders: Taking the Easy Way In Don't think: scheme! Forget about reading books, buy no computers or widgets. Don't do or buy anything. Save all your money for clothes and art materials. Make your girl/boyfriend help you assemble your hi-tek models-- you're gonna need mockups of a laptop computer, a personal communicator, a beeper, maybe even a fake stun-gun. Realism is key. Then wear them all with attitude. You're better than real. Strut. Sneer. Remember the 3 disses: distrust, disrespect, distroy. Wait, that's not right, is it?

We know there are going to be mutterings about this category. Grumblings that being a poseur is not as easy as we think. A poseur has a lot of overhead-- in worry, just for starts-- what if you're exposed as <>? And staying locked to the HOTWIRED Website to catch what you should be imitating? Dang.

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SECTION II: + + CYBERPUNK... +

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KNOWING ABOUT IT! +

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Chapter 4: Building Your Cyber Word Power

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Part 1: A Dictionary of Terminally Hip Jargon and Useful Expressions XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <>: A word made from the initials of a name or phrase. Such as TLA. Three-Letter Acronym. Right.

<>: As far as I know. An <>, in <>.

<>: Artificial Intelligence. The next best thing to real.

<>: Also known as. An acronym coined by the FBI in its popular Most Wanted lists.

<>: Among <>, a former AT&T trademark which refers to teleconferencing systems.

<>: Somebody who feels that governments are an unreasonable restraint on free humans' being.

<>: An anarchist who hopes to bring down the established order by persuading everybody to <> their email.

<>: There's no handle like NO handle. Being completely unknown means you can't be traced. Maybe. You can be anonymous online by bouncing your email or postings through <>. Who are you? Only penet.fi knows for sure.

<>: This is the most intense hairspray on the planet, for that BIG <> hair. Since you're being so attentive, here's a bonus goth haiku:

Sun! Hide white skin, run-- Burning, cloaked, I run... day sky!... Must... find... Aquanet

<>: An <> for... well, nobody remembers what it's an acronym for, but it means just plain keyboard characters, like your <> is made of. This is a portrait of R.U. Sirius rendered in ascii art:

################

# ____ #

# __/=$==_) # # //-OO- # # >>( _ )>> /<<<L # ################

So he comes out looking something like the cartoon character Cathy-- yeah, but that's the nature of the medium. St.Jude would look exactly the same, only no hat. Being subtle or elegant in ascii is a real challenge.

<>: Strutting. Sneering. Being BAD. Attitude is what all primates do to make their enemies feel inadequate. Keep it in mind.

<>: Expresses the whole range of haqr negative emotions, from dysgruntlement up through horrible contempt, as in response to <>.

<>: A haqr evil laugh. Other common evil laughs are BYaa-hahah and pchtkwaaahahahaha.

<>: Old haqr term for exclamation point. Sometimes bangs are a series of characters to add emphasis: w00t@%$%$@!

<>: A computerized bulletin-board system. Imagine a bulletin board in the sky. It's subdivided with topic labels. The cards displayed under each topic are email postings. You read them to follow the conversations. You can add your own comments or rebuttals. Some boards have a chat area where you can talk real-time, sort of like ham radio. The underground BBS chat areas are hangout places where bored hacker/phreaker types exchange quips and insults. Good H/P boards have libraries of up-to-date info on tools of the trade.

<>: Not ready for prime time. This comes from the beta phase of program testing, when bugs are collected from patient users up for major <>. "In beta" can describe anything unpleasing or forked up. If it's really <>, it can be called ALPHA-release, which is software still being tested in-house, by programmers and unlucky affiliates.

<>: Used to refer to the place you went OUT to, with one big bright light up there or else many small ones, you know? Now means the place you go INTO, the new Big Room-- Cyberspace.

<>: Untrue. Unreal. A spoof. Also, bogosity, which is the state of being bogus, and bogon, a unit of bogosity. Then there's the bogometer...

<>: Bohemian. Means like, counter-cultural. Underground. Alternative, with people in black clothes.

<>: Using a gadget to get free phone calls. The Red Box plays the tones of coins registering in a pay phone. The Rainbow Box incorporates many previous boxes in one diabolical widget, thanks to our Dutch buddies.

<>: A <> into the phone company itself, allowing multiple <> to cross-talk, like a high-tech, illegal party line. Appropriating the phone company's own <> systems is considered good <>.

<>: By the way, in <>.

<>: Making purchases on a phony or stolen credit account. The card as a physical chunk of plastic has become more or less irrelevant.

<>: Non-hacking hacker. Sometimes this is a haqr who has been <>.

<>: (by analogy from "a homeless"??) One who doesn't get it and is doomed.

<>: Phone numbers and authorization codes that allow you to make phree fonecalls.

<>: A person whose purpose in