Diskmag Tripping
Total immersion. You run it, let it load, click, and you're glued. Sound. Darkness around you, light only in front of you. Voices talking to you in your head. Total immersion.
You're absorbed. You're in it. Your world. This is the scene. THIS is the scene. This is the scene, and that's it: This is the scene. This is what makes you feel you're in the scene. Exactly this thing. This one.
Not parties. No. Parties - they are real world things. They were inspired by the real world, the scene just took over them. No, they're too real. You see real people, not sceners. You see that sceners are just real people. No, this isn't this. No. No. No, no. That is not the scene. THIS is the scene - in the diskmags.
It's the load of thoughts, well prepared, that enter your head, and it's the design that creates the atmosphere, the atmosphere of a different world that has nothing to do with reality.
You consume - and you're in. You're in the scene. You may see your name, but even if you don't - this doesn't matter much. You're in the scene when you're reading a diskmag. Yes. In the scene. Not a scener, not necessarily. In the scene. That's it.
And you want to contribute. But this is done outside. Outside the scene, outside the ecstasy. It is done in a text editor. Or whatever, of course it can also be done in another program (painting, music, blah, you know). But you need to leave immediate exposure to the atmosphere if you want to contribute. You must conserve it in your mind if you want to keep it up.
It's trance. Reading a diskmag is trance. A good diskmag - reading a good diskmag gets you in a state of ecstasy. It's what makes up the scene. Really. Demos - too. Sure. Yeah. These are the products of the scene. They are what the scene's acting is all about. They're its aims. But: the scene itself is not embodied more perfectly by anything than a diskmag.
A good diskmag, with its dark frame, bright text. The music that makes it easier to suck the thoughts the writers want to convey into your own head. The graphics that bear no resemblance to reality. The ones that have their own style.
It's like magic, you may say. More rationally expressed: It's something that totally changes your state of mind when you allow yourself to enter it, or it to enter you.
It's a full bunch of thoughts and feelings that bear great resemblance to your own. All of them available for immediate access. Without waiting. Without restrictions. Just click and read. Read. Thoughts written in the course of several months, the months the diskmag took to create. The similarity of opinions you never feel when dealing with sceners outside a diskmag is striking. It totally overwhelms you. The writing style, the cliches, the worries and fascination.
When you read a good diskmag, you know what the scene is all about. You know what makes it so special. You know what distinguishes it from the general computer business, the industry, other computer art communities, games programming, science. It's like a drug that doesn't harm you. It's something that hooks you and makes you stick to it with full enthusiasm in spite of whatever your emotions might be like in the times you're not in a diskmag.
Diskmags and demos are done in calm, clean atmospheres. But when you let yourself get immersed into them, they cast a completely different spell upon you. Ratio to create emotion - that is the demo scene.