Short Stories

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/19286344

I. Defining the Neck People

The Neck People are not a subculture, but a species transition - an emergent anthropotechnic phenotype produced by persistent mobile immersion. Characterized by a forward-bent neck, lowered gaze, and two-hand device occupation, their morphology signals more than posture: it encodes a sociotechnical reconfiguration of public space, human contact, and selfhood.

The term refers to a ubiquitous, somatic condition where the head is lowered not in shame, but in submission to the interface. It is not incidental. It is systemic. The bowed head becomes the posture of modern reverence - not to gods, but to the machine-mediated feed of affirmations, anxieties, and ambient dopamine.

II. Public Space as Dead Channel

For the Neck People, public space no longer functions as a field of spontaneous encounter, aesthetic experience, or unpredictable social choreography. It has become transit-only geometry - a liminal territory between one private algorithmic pocket and another. Sidewalks, subways, elevators, cafes—each has become an extension of the screen, a place to retreat into simulation.

The gaze, once a vector of social bonding or confrontation, is now a threat. Eye contact is deprecated. Serendipity is classified as discomfort. Emotional exposure is minimized. The social is flattened into pre-scheduled, avatar-mediated interactions - opt-in only, cognitively buffered, and emotionally distant.

III. Ergonomic Governance and the New Obedience

The chronic downward neck angle is not just ergonomic hazard; it is the body adapting to permanent submission. The posture becomes architecture. Biomechanical compliance to handheld technologies becomes a subconscious performance of docility and inwardness.

More than surveillance, this is self-surveillance - the internalisation of the feed as the authoritative sensorium. By designing interfaces that reward haptic isolation and micro-engagement, the system ensures that the user becomes both jailer and inmate, priest and supplicant.

IV. Sociotechnical Amnesia

The Neck People have forgotten how to be seen. Social anxiety is not pathological in this society - it is normative. Physical presence is tolerated only as a shell for continued digital immersion. Human proximity without a screen buffer is now felt as ontological intrusion - a break in the closed loop of personalised relevance.

Conversation becomes labor. Spontaneity becomes risk. Attention becomes currency - spent only where algorithmic trust has been validated. The random, the unscripted, the non-consensual encounter - all are deprecated as legacy behaviors.

V. Toward the Absolute Interior

Ultimately, the Neck People are not addicted. They are transformed. The device is no longer tool but interface-organ - a prosthetic of cognition, memory, and identity curation. It mediates grief, desire, boredom, rage, affection, and hope. Without it, the self ceases to stabilize.

This is not dystopia in the cinematic sense. It is post-social utopia by design. Optimized, personalized, frictionless. It is the completion of a project that began with screens, passed through feeds, and ends in the absolute privatization of subjectivity.

The Neck People are not looking down. They are looking inward, into the glowing oracle that tells them who they are, what they want, and why it matters. And in doing so, they no longer see each other.