Starpunk: What if the future began with everyone, including you?
Starpunk began way back in 2015, when social networks were more innocent and forgiving places.
Or at least, they seemed to be.
This project began life as an indie sci-fi zine project. The purpose of that project was to teach about concepts like digital human rights and the value of user privacy -- "how to prevent the dystopia you see in cyberpunk sci-fi like Blade Runner and Snow Crash".
The core of the zine project was to use existing social networks -- Reddit, Twitter, and Tumblr (never, ever Facebook) -- to find contributors, subscriptions, feedback and new ideas directly from fans and anyone who wanted to participate. Our ultimate goal was to finance films outside the restrictive Hollywood system.
One such film project is an authentic live-action version of Ghost in the Shell (a cyberpunk anime), which was the subject of the usual Hollywood whitewashing in 2017 by casting Scarlett Johansson instead of an Asian actress --- even going so far as to murder the Japanese main character and literally replace her with a white one (Johansson), with the excuse that the character had become a “cyborg” (who somehow needed to be white, though the film was set in Japan).
2017 was one turning point in the zine project, witnessing the use of social media as a set of echo chambers for the kind of deeply embedded virulent racism that has made itself nearly immune to change.
A key theme of the zine project was (and still is) a vision of the future. An anti-dystopian vision where everyone could live their lives with full recognition of their fundamental rights as human beings. This emphasised people who are traditionally excluded, harassed and silenced online: women, LGBT people, the "disabled", people of all non-extremist religious beliefs (including "no religion"), and neurodiverse people.
Early in 2018, however, it became clear that the zine project was reaching obstacles that all led back to a common cause: the existing social networks are poisoned. The poison is not their technology. The poison is their culture, and their culture was set very early on in the social networks' development.
Here's our purpose, in a question:
What if, rather than remaining trapped in the dysfunctional past, new social networks could reflect a better future for everyone?
Starpunk is a zine, powered by a social network. Both the zine and social network are based on a foundational set of principles. A recent term that seems to fit is "digital humanism".
So now the project has evolved from a tiny zine idea to a vision for repairing social networks as places where all people are welcome.
We’re in the early testing stages for the social network. If you want to join, get in touch on Twitter to request a username: @starpunkzine
