Start Here
Eight essays. One thread.
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, some of us were convinced hypertext was going to reinvent literature.
We were book people dreaming in links, so breaking the most obvious physical limitation—linearity—felt radical. We imagined literature becoming a geometry, not a sequence. Not “turn the page,” but jump.
Open a link, fall through a trapdoor, land somewhere else entirely.
The internet had different plans. It didn’t replace anything—it devoured everything. The dream of wandering through a text, choosing your path, breaking linearity—the part that felt genuinely rebellious—splintered into something chaotic and erratic. Instead of Choose Your Own Adventure, we got optimized algorithms farming our engagement.
Fishbrain comes from that early internet lineage and a deep love for books.
That’s my origin story: half-computer, half-library.
Here, wandering is intentional. It is in the narration, in the digressions, in the connections you make and the ones I refuse to make for you.
the reading here is linear. It has an order, like a book. The aim is to build something that explodes.
Here’s the map. How you read this matters.
[The Token] – How objects become stories, and why value is never where you think it is.
[The Headlamp] – Technology, optimism, melancholy, and the light that blinds.
[How Did We Get Here?] – Leg 1: A broken university desk and the quiet violence of beginnings.
[A Greater Future] – Utopias, anarchists, immigrants, and the lies we build our worlds with.
[The Mark] – Punk rock, logos, identity, and the tragedy of becoming a brand.
[Fluffy Numbers in Your Head] – Addiction, Gödel, biology, and the illusions we call “mind.”
[Who the Fuck Was Sylvia Plath?] – Pain, life, literature, and the brutality we prefer to clean up.
[Fishbrain] – (The Conclusion).
Wander if you want. But start here.
NB: The notes/links will become active as I publish them.