Issue #016 – INTERNET OPERATOR
Issue #016 of Start Select Reset is now out, and on the way to via snail mail to my supporters (£5/month+)
Buy SSRZ16: INTERNET OPERATOR
This zine contains the full essay transcript from the Permanently Moved audio recording, alongside an introduction and afterword written for the print edition.
36 pages. A5. Properly printed on heavy stock with thick covers. Hand-stamped twice, with copy number and FOG logo.
This is the remaining stock from the print run for my paid subscribers. Once they are gone, they are gone.
£18 + Shipping
CAVEAT EMPTOR: International orders are sent with full customs declarations as printed booklets. Shipping is included in the price; any local taxes, duties or customs handling charges imposed by your country are not.
FIGURE + OPERATOR + AUDIENCE + APPARATUS
=
ANIMATION
Online identity is best understood as animation. A digital identity is a figure brought to life through a configured relation among operator, audience, and apparatus; the person animates the figure while the platform operates them in turn.
The Internet Operator names the discipline of remaining answerable for that figure without becoming identical to it.
Production Notes
EU subscribers: I know I have contacted you all individually, but due to the absurd new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2025/40), EU shipping is currently paused. I’ve also removed it as an option from my Etsy store.
I will ‘keep them warm’ for you until either EU citizens trying to run micro businesses inside a common market revolt and resolve the issue, or you pass though London next and I can hand deliver them in person.
International subscribers: Last issue I was worried about US customs fees and tariff taxes etc but Royal Mail came though, and it seems like every single zine arrived world wide. I’ve sent this issue using the same method so hopefully the zine should be with you all shortly.
Shipping headaches aside.
Last issue I said that the end-to-end production run of both the podcast and the zine took 5x longer, and more effort, than I thought it would. But this time around came together a lot quicker. Perhaps 3x. As I get more practised, I expect that multiplier will keep coming down.
With the previous issue, a great deal of time was spent in Affinity, getting comfortable with the layout and basically learning what I was doing while laying out 36 pages of text.
This time around there was a lag in the writing of the episode and I got really stuck. I knew “something” wasn’t working in the text and I had to put it down for a bit, time as always is the best editor. Once I came back to it, the problem became much clearer, and I removed a whole line of thought, which I detail in the liner notes of the zine. Unlike the previous issue, where I was mostly figuring out how to make the thing, this time I knew how to make the zine, but not finish the essay lol.
I’m also increasingly getting a sense of what I want Start Select Reset to be. It may, for a few more issues at least, still have the transcript of the podcast as its spine. But having made two issues in this new format now, I think I’m ready to start switching things up, and challenging myself a bit more with the layout and design, doing more etc. Eventually, as I and the zine continue to grow, I want the print edition to become ‘the definitive’ physical form of the episode; something that works independently, is worth subscribing to, and is also worth keeping on a shelf.
Also, as an observation: shipping Internet Operator has revealed this whole small press zine is becoming a whole … er ‘operation’. haha.
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