https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkpcYv9Qm5w

"No matter where you go, everyone's connected."

Serial Experiments Lain (1998) is a 13-episode anime that follows a teenage girl named Lain Iwakura and the dissolution of her identity as she explores a proto-internet called the Wired. Many long-time fans of the show find something eerie in how predictive the show is of our modern society. The show is very open to interpretation, and there are some very interesting conclusions you can come to. For that reason, I really recommended checking it out, even if you're not into anime. I'll keep it brief in order to give you the incentive to watch the show, but I want to discuss some themes that speak to me and why you should take the Lainpill. There will be spoilers below, so don't read if you want to go in blind, but I honestly don't think many of you will, so here are my (very scattered) thoughts.

LAYER 01: The Parasocial

Lain is a socially awkward, lonely girl. Her parents are distant and her older sister is cold. She only has a few friends. At the beginning of the show, the Wired (what we would now call the internet) is a new phenomenon that allows people to connect with others all around the world behind layers of obscured identity. Lain is one of the last people to get the new technology, spurred on by receiving an email from a student who committed suicide earlier in the school year, suggesting that the classmate took her life to become immortal in the Wired.

It's very transhumanistic, for sure, but I think there's an interesting way to read it.

Going viral is a major motivation for people since the advent of social media and the fame that can be derived from it. We use the internet to appear larger and more important than we are in real life, whether that be through positive things like our appearance or achievements, or through negative things, like the state of the world or the hardships we face. We play much of it up to stand out, to be seen, and to exist in a way outside of our physical being. This is what I think her classmate was trying to achieve; life in the minds of others, and, by extension, the Wired. It's what we do (to a lesser degree) when we come to the internet to complain or to brag. We put our feelings on the internet to be validated, to be interacted with, and to form images in others' minds. There then exists a rift between who we are online and who we are in person when we are ourselves in a whole piece and not fragments we choose to show.

The show tackles the internet-induced splintering of personalities. After getting deeper into the Wired, Lain quickly takes on two other personalities much bolder than her real-life shy demeanor. One is cunning, and bold, and goes to great ends to have her questions answered. The other is evil, doing harm to others, even her few real-life friends. The further Lain goes into the Wired, the more expressive she is able to be online. At the same time, only pieces of her become more empowered, and the rest of her is left underdeveloped. There are huge parallels to these moments in Serial Experiments Lain and how parasocial we act online. Online, we are usually not one whole person, but only the curated, very best parts of us (or worst). We then cast judgments of each other based on what we're presented with online, which is often not accurate to how people think and behave in the real world.

This causes us to create false bonds; one-sided parasocial relationships from creator to follower, ideas about groups of people that are based on overexaggerated charactures of the loud minority, and a further distance between us and the people we desire to be close to.

LAYER 02: Isolation

While Lain is able to expand the connections she has through the wire, there a large portion of the scenes in which we see her in the real world shows her alone, in her room, surrounded by wires.

I don't think there's a better representation of how the internet isolates you than the visual of such a small girl surrounded by these huge, cold machines. Behind the illusion of interconnectedness, we are left alone. Especially for men, there are so many online replacements for human intimacy- porn, the 'girlfriend experience' Onlyfans creators, and relationships formed on anonymous message boards. These things serve as bandaids to the wound of loneliness. This is Lain's main reason for turning to the Wired in the first place- to connect to others in a way that she feels she cannot in real life. This intention isn't wrong, but it goes left very quickly. She loses her friends and family, becomes very isolated, and, in turn, delves deeper into the Wired. It's a vicious cycle that continues throughout the entire show, all the way until the end.

LAYER 03: Take the Lainpill

Spoilers for the end of the show below!

So how does Serial Experiments Lain wrap up?

Lain deletes herself from the Wired, and erases herself from everyone's memories. She vows to keep the Wired and the material world separate. It's a somber ending, watching her walk amongst a crowd of people who don't notice her at all, but, despite it all, she runs into her closest friend. She vaguely recognizes her, and the genuine connection between the two is a very sweet, real moment, contrasted with the cold interactions Lain has had throughout the show.

So is the Lainpill deleting your existence? No lol. To me, the Lainpill is recognizing the problems of modern society's dependence on technology for socialization, and taking steps to truly separate what you have on the internet from what you have in real life. We were never met to interact with this many people; before the internet, there was a smaller pool of people you'd interact with in your entire life, let alone in a single day. The amount of opinions and wild stories and beautiful faces we see in a day is not normal and is quite detrimental. This sub is one of the best representations of allowing the icon of a social group replaces the real-life version. Debates done here, about something as fickle as people and relationships, are often done in absolutes. Allowing representations of what you've seen online taint your few of the real world is easy to do, and I don't blame anyone for it. Lain clearly shows how easy it is to be sucked into something that promises you comfort and companionship, and how easy it is to see the internet and the real world as interchangeable. Lain's choice to disconnect from the Wired near the end of the series is her taking back some of her power over her life, breaking away from the all-encompassing influence of the Wired. Whenever I take some time to log off and spend time with my friends and family in person, I really see how different your perception of others and self is when you're not functioning in an echo chamber.

This also doesn't mean that positive experiences we have online are to be discounted, rather, there's a balance to be had. Don't let me fool you, I'm definitely terminally online, and in the past, it was very detrimental to my mental health. I've since disconnected parts of myself from the internet- for example, I don't post pictures of myself online anymore, and I try to only interact with things I am genuinely interested in (art, music, movies, etc), rather than posturing myself for the validation of people online. The cycle of attention-seeking and subsequent anxiety from being perceived caused me a lot of grief. However, I do stay plugged-in in many ways; I've met some of my best friends online, and had some truly wonderful experiences with people I would have never been able to meet in real life. The internet should be a tool for communication, not the end all be all of how you connect with other people.

As Lain's father says to her near the beginning of the series:

"Don't get them confused. You mustn't misconstrue the real world and the Wired as the same thing."

There's so much to this anime, this tiny post could never tackle all of the angles presented in the show. It's also jumbled because I'm eating dinner right now and I did not proofread it. If you have seen Lain, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you read this far and haven't watched Lain, I love you and you should give it a shot. Happy purge.

tl;dr go touch some fucking grass and watch Serial Experiments Lain :3