Don't Look at Me

MAY '19
DON'T LOOK @ ME
PARANOIA IN THE TECHNICAL AGE

Manifesto / / We’re Living 1984 Today / / Monthly Comics / / Meet xxxxxxx of xxxxxxx: The Voyager / / Monthly Record

Thinking the world is out to get you makes everyday life pretty
fucking uncomfortable. Applying a mind fixated on all the ways in
which the world could go about damaging you in an exponentially
increasing social environment can make you feel insane. More bodies
and minds around you make for more avenues of unfortunate
events. And, as these avenues are perceived by the senses — and thus
the mind—the more one begins to focus in on these microcosms of
jinxed possibilities. As more eyes watch you and more hands reach
out toward you, you become increasingly aware that these beings,
though out of your control, are perceiving you. You can turn away
from humanity to seek some sort of peace or solace or comfort,
but you will only begin to conjure up all the ways your environment
could harm you. In extreme times, this sensory overload may lead
to hallucinations or a scrambling of the senses—a desperate grasp
for the window back into stable reality.
This is the paranoia Don’t Look at Me will explore. A collection
of raw words and associated imagery will guide you through the
progression, culmination, and effects of acute paranoia in a modern,
everyday context.
We don’t want you to feel afraid or anxious when you put this
zine down. Rather, if you resonate with the feelings and imagery
conveyed here, please use the experience as a catharsis. Conversely,
if you have no idea what modern paranoia feels like, please use
the content as a way to gain knowledge and understanding that can
be used for empathy and kindness.

MANIFESTO

It appears that the police now have a device that
can read license plates and check if a car is
unregistered, uninsured or stolen. We already
know that the National Security Agency can
dip into your Facebook page and Google searches.
And it seems that almost every store we go into
these days wants your home phone number and z i p
code as part of any transaction...

So when Edward Snowden — now
cooling his heels in Russia — revealed
the extent to which the nsa is surely
spying on Americans, collecting data
on phone calls we make, it’s not as
if we should have been surprised. We
live in a world that George Orwell
predicted in 1984. And that realization
has caused sales of the dystopian
novel to spike recently. A week after
President Donald Trump was voted
into office, George Orwell’s 1984 was
the best-selling book.
Orwell set his story in
Oceania, one of three
blocs or mega-states fighting over the globe in
1984. There has been a nuclear exchange, and the
blocs seem to have agreed to perpetual conventional
war, probably because constant warfare
serves their shared interests in domestic control.
Oceania demands total subservience. It is a police
state, with helicopters monitoring people’s
activities, even watching through their windows.
But Orwell emphasizes it is the “ThinkPol,” the
Thought Police, who really monitor the “Proles,”
the lowest 85 percent of the population outside
the party elite. The ThinkPol move invisibly
among society seeking out, even encouraging,
thought crimes so they can make the perpetrators
disappear for reprogramming.
The story revolves around Winston Smith
and Julia, who try to resist their government’s
overwhelming control over facts. Winston works
at the colossal Ministry of Truth, on which is emblazoned
ignor ance is str ength. His job is
to erase politically inconvenient data from the
public record. A party member falls out of favor?
She never existed. Big Brother made a promise
he could not fulfill? Never happened.
Orwell’s setting in 1984 is inspired by the
way he saw the Cold War playing out. He wrote
it just a few years after watching Roosevelt,
Churchill and Stalin carve up the world at the
Tehran and Yalta conferences. The book is
remarkably prescient about aspects of the
Stalinist Soviet Union, East Germany and Maoist
China. Orwell was a socialist. 1984 in part
describes his fear that the democratic socialism
in which he believed would be hijacked by
authoritarian Stalinism. The novel grew out of
his sharp observations of his world and the
fact that Stalinists tried to kill him.
In Oceania, there is no freedom to speak
facts except those that are official. In 2018
America, at least among many of the powerful
minority who selected its president, the more
official the fact, the more dubious. For Winston,
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus
two make four.” For this powerful minority,
freedom is the freedom to say two plus two
make five. Comparisons between Orwell’s novel
about a tightly controlled totalitarian future
ruled by the ubiquitous Big Brother and today are
quite apt. Here are a few of the most obvious ones.

In the novel, nearly all public and private places
have large TV screens that broadcast government
propaganda, news and approved entertainment.
But they are also two-way monitors that spy on
citizens’ private lives. Today websites like Facebook
track our likes and dislikes, and governments
and private individuals hack into our computers
and find out what they want to know. Then there
are the ever-present surveillance cameras that spy
on the average person as they go about their
daily routine.

The other main way the party elite, symbolized
in the figurehead Big Brother, encourage and
police correct thought is through the technology
of the Telescreen. These metal plaques transmit
things like frightening video of enemy armies and
of course the wisdom of Big Brother. But the
Telescreen can see you, too. During mandatory
morning exercise, the Telescreen not only
shows a young, wiry trainer leading cardio, it
can see if you are keeping up. Telescreens are
everywhere: They are in every room of homes.
At the office, people use them to do their jobs.

In Orwell’s book, there’s a global
war that has been going on
seemingly forever, and the enemy
keeps changing. One week
we’re at war with Eastasia. The
next week, it’s just the opposite.
Smith lives in a constant state
of fear, thereby making dissent
unthinkable—or punishable.
Today we have the so-called war
on terror, with no end in sight,
a generalized societal fear, suspension
of certain civil liberties,
and an ill-defined enemy who
could be anywhere, and anything.

Orwell’s novel defines this as
the act of accepting two mutually
contradictory beliefs as correct.
It was exemplified by some of the
key slogans used by the repressive
government in the book:
war is peace, freedom is slavery,
ignor ance is strength. It has
also been particularly useful to
the activists who have been
hard at work introducing legislation
regulating abortion clinics.
The claim is that these laws are
only to protect women’s health,
but by forcing clinics to close
because of stringent regulations,
they are effectively shutting
women off not only from abortion,
but other health services.
This is the machine used in the book to alter or disappear
incriminating or embarrassing documents. Paper shredders had
been invented, but were hardly used when Orwell wrote his book,
and the concept of wiping out a hard drive was years in the future.
But the memory hole foretold both technologies.

ALL
So what’s it all mean? In 1984,
Winston Smith, after an intense
round of “behavior modification”
learns to love Big Brother, and
the harsh world he was born into.
Jump forward to today, and it
seems we’ve willingly given up
all sorts of freedoms, and much
of our right to privacy. Fears of
terrorism have a lot to do with
this, but dizzying advances in
technology, and the ubiquity of
social media, play a big part.
There are those who say that
if you don’t have anything to hide,
you have nothing to be afraid
of. But the fact is, when a government
agency can monitor
everyone’s phone calls, we have
all become suspects. This is one
of the most frightening aspects
of our modern society. And even
more frightening is the fact
that we have gone so far down
the road, there is probably no
turning back. Unless you spend
your life in a wilderness cabin,
totally off the grid, there is simply
no way the government won’t
have information stored away.
What this means, unfortunately,
is that we are all Winston
Smith. And Big Brother is the
modern surveillance state.

MONTHLY COMIC
COURTESY DON KENN
LURKERS

MEET

OF
THE
VOY
AG
ER
result, a direct victim of virtual mayhem...
interview with this entity and is, as a
one mutual friend who has completed an
affirmative, you probably have at least
name Voyager? If you answered in the
online publication dubbed with the last
dozen or so major cities with an art-centric
you live in Boston or another one of the
Are you a twenty-something creative? Do

“”
U
I
nder any other
circumstances, such a
publication would be aptly referred to as,
well, a publication. However, the circumstances
surrounding the Voyager obscure this business/
publication/scam from justified identification,
so we must resort to calling it an entity.
To cut to the chase: popular, seemingly local
online publication Boston Voyager has recently
come under speculation after one vigilant (read:
paranoid with a healthy dose of nosy) internet
patron dug deeper into the void that is this faceless
entity. Taking his findings to Reddit, where
paranoid people can freely conjure with other
paranoid people under the guises of casual conversation
and amateur reporting, user DiscoRace
made the case that Boston Voyager was a faux
publication run by Russian bots determined to
harvest information to assemble fake personas
for some unclear but definitely devious reasons.
DiscoRace made a decently coherent case, so
feel free to read their findings and assumptions
in their own words:
So I am a web developer and I recently went
down the rabbit hole which is:
‘What the fuck is Boston Voyager’s deal?’
If you don’t know what it is, it’s a site that publishes I’ve heard things about Boston Voyager “staff”
“interviews” with artists and small businesses. who contacted artists not responding, or seeming
If you are an artist or are friends with artists, you’ve like bots. I Googled all the names of the people
probably seen posts on social media like “Meet who have corresponded with interviewees (Grace
DiscoRace of Bullshit Media” in your feed. I always Samolde, Meryll Galino and Emma Scott). I lookwas
suspect of this site, but I recently took a much ed at other social media posts from other Voyager
deeper dive. There’s a lot more I found but these cities thanking the “Editor from l a Voyager”
points are easily explainable and hopefully easy (Mike Bhand). None exist. non e. no on e. The very
to understand. There are several Voyager sites in little info I could find was their address and their
other cities, with the “flagship” being in l a.
phone number. The only address I could find for
They haven’t updated their Twitter or Instagram Boston Voyager was the downtown Marriott
in years, using all unoriginal content obviously with a phone number for The Red Lantern. The
by someone who doesn’t know how to use social address of their l a office where you are supmedia
at all, let alone someone who runs a media posed to send d c m a requests is a virtual office —
site like that.
an address that does not actually exist.
Someone reported them using their birth name
instead of their performer name, with no real
response from the people they contacted. I saw
someone using just text from an email in the
url that should not be in the url if you are any sane
publisher. There are more details to this but
looking into this deeper made me certain the content
is bot generated. We’re still in like pretty
mild raised-eyebrow territory here.
After looking at their interview submittal
forms it seems like a form template that could be
easily used to compile data to create fake social
media profiles. Additionally, a profile photo was
required. Links to social media and email address
were also necessary. These values are pretty much
anything and everything you would put on a
social media profile.
Everything on their “publication” site is like
bullshit Instagram content, to which I was like,
“Well maybe it’s to increase Instagram impressions
or something like that,” which is honestly
mostly harmless but still fucked. But this might
not be the purpose. It seems too random and all
over the place from people who wouldn’t want
to pay to have their Instagram posts on the site.
Random pictures of families they posted like
thirty-five months ago.
The site shares a lot of attributes with astro
turfing players — people who create fake content.
Their server information is notoriously sketchy.
It’s purposefully obscured. People will do this to
hide their registration information about their
website. Who owns it, where they live, etc. If this
site is what I think it is, it’s just a pretty large
red flag after all the other shit I looked up about
them. Put it along with rest of the pieces. The
virtual office, the lack of any presence on social
media, what seems like fabricated staff with no
internet presence, bot-created content.
I do not know what the purpose is behind it
or what their goal is, but whatever it is, it is not
Boston-based and it’s probably not even us based.
If you want my paranoid version of what I think
this is, I think it’s taking content you provide to
use in fake social media profiles with intention
to sell. That is the worst case scenario. The best
case scenario its to push Instagram impressions,
or solicit larger media pr shit. Either way, it’s fake
and potentially dangerous.

My first concern with all this was started with your interviews and then tries to get
WA
you to buy
S
the fact that people have had very personal infor- things from them. I’ve yet to find any proof
mation about themselves published and not edited. otherwise. The comments from the “founder” Sid
One person literally had the words “do not publish
— this is personal info” and where they lived, just make me more worried. His explanations do
and people who are jumping in to support him
something like that in the url of their interview. not support the site being based in the us, other
That to me is dangerous; that there’s no one at the than saying that it’s not. There is still no proof
wheel here.
from the names of the people who have contacted
I’m here to see if there are any other people artists. I am out of my league but I still stand by
who think they can dig up anymore information what I am saying here. I’ve toned it down, because I
on this. I honestly feel sick about it because it’s was pretty terrified. I still am.
taking advantage of artists, but I’m now afraid This is what you can do to combat this shit:
it’s also taking advantage of small businesses and report and block emails from them if you get
anyone else who does anything on their site and is solicited. Tell your friends.
a lot worse than just bullshit cookie-cutter
PRETTY
content generation crap. I’d really like to be
proven wrong about this.
I need help researching this. I am not a wizard
but I’m pretty sure this is some kind of scam. I
personally don’t think it’s Russians, but I also don’t
think that it’s a legitimate arts website based in
the us trying to help unique people get their stories
out. Middle ground: it’s a scam that publishes
TER-
RIFIED

I STILL AM
I STILL AM
I STILL AM.
I STILL AM.
I STILL AM.
I STILL AM.
I STILL AM.
I STILL AM.

.
Others expressed their newfound anxious
dispositions, stating that they have submitted
information to the Voyager under the context
of an interview and are now worried about
the state of their personal information.
CREEPE
Many were just
.
THE FUCK
So what’s the deal?
I STILL AM.
This manifesto was reinforced with hundreds
of commenters affirming the incredibly suspect
nature of the Voyager.
But things get even more interesting when
“Sid R,” a k a SidReddy88 (no more context or
verification provided about this user’s identity),
the alleged founder of this Voyager entity,
commented on the post defending the virtual
publication. Sid’s wall of text, in essence, defended
each of DiscoRace’s points with no real
evidence. Despite stating that the Voyager was
a small publication developed for no reason other
than to promote artists, and that the anonymity
was purely personal preference, no real hard
evidence was provided to back up such claims.
OUT.
He also could not confirm that the Voyager
interviewers were real people. However, many
commenters ate up Sid’s words and made peace
with the Voyager in their own minds.
So, what’s the deal? Your guess is as good
as any. Both Sid R and DiscoRace have made
big claims with no evidence for verification. If
anything, the virtual mess that is the Voyager
debacle simply shows that nothing, especially that
on the internet, can be trusted. Your information
is getting harvested by some, while you are getting
doxxed by others. Ironically, the internet gives
many a sense of security in perceived anonymity —
though this can’t be further from the truth.

LIKE THEY ARE
SEARCHING FOR YOU
To beat them, you gotta know them. Practice the
SEARCH
art of knowing your enemies by starting small.
Find the words in the list in the square letter
block on the right.
paranoia
delusions
psychosis
obsession
suspicion
watched
stalked
waiting
thinking
moving
computer
webcam
window
surveillance
phone
danger
fear
think
risk
terror
overthink
hazard
fright
think
threat
distress
overthink
possibility
dread
think
panic
overthink
disfigured
anxiety
think
scarred
hysteria
overthink
think
alarm
think
overthink

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MONTHLY
RECORD
This
month's journal
collection based on true
encounters and thoughts
combining technology with
the everyday struggle of
feeling looming presences
and glaring eyes.

I have to walk past an abandoned building. I’m not
sure what it was, and I’m also not sure that it even
matters anymore. All that matters is what is. It’s
been abandoned for a while — the brick is crumbling.
Large tarps cover some structures closest
to the streets. A chain link fence overgrown with
brush surrounds the perimeter, creating a barrier.
But it has been breached — a hole has been cut
into the fence. Someone’s forced their way in.
There is a part of the building that now consists
of simply open pavement. There’s a large pickaxe
lying in the center of it. I hope it is never used.
It’s five in the morning and time to walk to
work. I’ve been awake for an hour, but I can still
feel the sleep in the corners of my eyes. It’s still
dark out and that’s not going to change for a few
hours. Anyone could be waiting right outside my
door. Anyone could be waiting in the alcove next
to my front steps.

I woke up at two in the morning. Call it instinct.
I knew I had to get up for work early in the
morning, so I naturally reached for my phone to
check the time. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t check
the time. All I could see was the Find My iPhone
screen, proudly displaying my current location
on a map. I had turned off the feature on my phone.
And I couldn’t turn it off. In a desperate panic,
I factory reset my phone in one last ditch effort to
protect myself. My phone goes black for over
an hour — it won’t turn on.

How was this happening? Who was coming?

Paranoia is the worst at night. I can’t see anything
beyond the few feet of illuminated darkness
courtesy of my single street lamp. Everything else
is a void. I don’t know who exists out there; I
don’t know what exists out there.
My bedroom contains a single window that
sits just above a porch. Sometimes when I’ve
been restless at night or have forced myself awake
too many hours in a row, I wonder if I see the
faint outline of a large, black shadow. I wonder if
someone’s waiting by the window. Sometimes
I am too frightened to check.

There are blinds on my window, but they just
barely fit. When air is blowing out of the vents
in my room, a small crack of window is exposed
from behind the blinds. I can’t see out at night,
but anyone can see in. I wonder who is looking in.