Why is it So Hard for White People to Understand Racism?

Full disclosure: I am a Caucasian male.

A friend of mine who actually attends Missouri University as a graduate student has asked me to write about the events that have unfolded on campus in recent weeks.

The Guardian has an excellent timeline of the events, and I find it disturbing that white power structures consistently and continually dismiss African-Americans' complaints that they are being treated unfairly. Coincidentally, Occupy Wall Street was also continually derided by mainstream media as a bunch of kids who should just "suck it up and get a job" (let's see what you think when the economy crashes for a second time....), but I shall leave this aside for a moment because African-Americans are in a unique position to contest wholly legitimate disenfranchisement in a way few other groups can claim (others being, of course, LGBTQ individuals, as well as Muslims, who also continue to face historical discrimination by similar forces).

The historical oppression of African-Americans is, contrary to what Texan history textbooks will tell you, well-documented and catastrophic. The only other group that can even match that magnitude of oppression is the Palestinians at the hands of Israel; while the Israeli occupation has only lasted a few decades, Palestinians' very identity as a people has been all but annihilated, with the exception that Israel's invasion provides them with a sense of shared trauma (O'Malley). However, the New World has been importing slaves since the 1500s, and it has been only 150 years since slavery was abolished; African-Americans continually face state oppression at the hands of police and the justice system generally, while the rest of us continue to exclaim that we are a free society.

Why does it not bother us that a whole swath of people are required as sacrifices for the glorious Capitalist machine? How is it that we can stand to be so dismissive of the plight of people who live here, who--legally (in words, if not in action)--are supposed to enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other demographic? It should rouse us that our fellow citizens face oppression to such a degree that a previous President would have invaded a country to stop. Why do we see and say nothing?

When a Muslim American student asked Bernie Sanders what he would do to combat racism, he proceeded to give a two-minute crash course on racism. Sanders explains that capitalist bosses excuse pitiful wages by playing races against each other. "You think you've got trouble? You're better off than blacks who can't drink at a water fountain!" From this perspective, racism is a divide-and-conquer tactic that continues to be used by many Republican candidates in the current election cycle. This kind of racism is easy to spot, and is a baseline for casual racists to say that they aren't that bad.
On the other hand, this is also the kind of racism that is being experienced by many African-American staff, faculty, and students at Mizzou. But it isn't the only kind.

Since Martin Luther King first marched, legitimate grievance has been by turns ridiculed and dismissed by white power structures. "Things aren't that bad!" "You aren't slaves anymore, right? What's to complain about?"To this day this goes on, in a society that survives only by calling attention to the excesses and injustices against our own people so that we can do better and be better. OWS, Ferguson protests, and Black Lives Matter were all heavily derided by the ruling class as the tantrums of  spoiled hipsters, and rioting African-Americans (not true; they have continued to model MLK's nonviolence even when they have every excuse and every right to descend into violence for what our society continues to do to them). The treatment African-American protests and movements have historically received in the press is the driving factor in their resistance to the media. African-Americans' discipline and resolve in the face of intractable and universal hostility deserves to be commended, not ridiculed. The act of delegitimizing the grievances of a historically oppressed demographic is inherently racist and serves to entrench white interests against a just and fair society.

The most difficult kind of racism for most people to understand is how opportunity is systematically removed from people who are different (sex/gender/race). Let's start simple. Consider your last job interview. Did it go well? Yes? Good for you. Now, imagine your last five job interviews. How many
said no? Are you white? What if you were African-American? According to the Department of Labor, "Historically, Blacks have had persistently higher unemployment rates than the other major racial and ethnic groups. In addition, the increase in the black unemployment rate during the recession was larger than that for other races partly because workers with less education are particularly hard hit during recessions. Moreover, the unemployment rate for Blacks was slower to fall after the official end of the recession." If you can remember what it was like to be unemployed, you likely knew that someone would eventually say yes. But imagine that the systems built into society were designed to bar you from opportunity. Think about all of the African-Americans who are disproportionately targeted by police, who are denied adequate protection from the law, and then consider how, after a sentence is served, background checks by potential employers further disenfranchises them, cutting them off from society completely. In Being & Time, Martin Heidegger at one point calls his reader to consider all of the opportunities that society has denied to the individual without the individual ever realizing it. He writes,

"In the lostness in the They, the nearest, factical potentiality-of-being of Da-sein has already been decided upon--tasks, rules, standards, the urgency and scope of being-in-the-world, concerned and taking care of things. The They has always already taken the apprehension of these possibilities-of-being away from Da-sein. The They even conceals the way it has silently disburdened Da-sein of the explicit choice of these possibilities. It remains indefinite who is 'really' choosing." (Heidegger 268-269) (Note: "Dasein" is Heidegger's term for the Individual, and the "They" is Heidegger's term for society at large; all of the people that the individual does not know; the crowd)

In Discipline & Punish, Michel Foucault explains how the individual's choices and potential are robbed from him without his knowledge:

"...Although it is true that the its pyramid organization gives it a 'head', it is the apparatus as a whole that produces 'power' and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field. This enables the disciplinary power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and always alert, since by its very principle it leaves no zone of shade and constantly supervises the very individuals who are tasked with supervising; and absolutely 'discreet', for it functions permanently and largely in silence. Discipline makes possible operation of a relational power that sustains itself by its own mechanism...Thanks to the techniques of surveillance, the 'physics' of power, the hold over the body, operate according to the laws of optics and mechanics, according to a whole play of spaces, lines, screens, beams, degrees, and without recourse, in principle, at least, to excess, force or violence" (177).

The chain of power is vast and continuous, and its methodologies and modes of operation are widely consistent. Foucault's explanation of power can be verified, truly, without even trying. However, in the interest of time, I will stick to how this affects African-Americans specifically. Despite Affirmative Action and programs designed to help them succeed in society, many other forces competing with this aim succeed in stifling it. Private employers and government officials are more likely to believe implicitly that black bodies constitute a threat simply because that is what is presented to them by a constant and ever-present network of media entities who, taken together, resemble a conspiracy, but individually are not aware that they are perpetuating bias, and these falsehoods are further reinforced by overwhelmingly disproportionate arrest rates that reinforce this bias in a positive feedback loop. African-Americans are overpoliced (invisible to greater society) > African-Americans get arrested more often (visible to greater society) > African-Americans must be criminals (greater society's assumption). Racial bias, therefore, is a ubiquitous and discreet factor that cannot be overtly accounted for in the experience of African-Americans, and this is precisely where white people fail to recognize what is happening to their fellow citizens.

Except, of course, that they are affected by it too, only in radically different ways, and by only slightly lesser degree. Foucault wasn't talking specifically about 'white people' or 'black people'; he was talking about how power operates across all societies. White people may not disenfranchise each other by skin color, but they still employ these same mechanisms to discriminate against LGBTQ people and by religious identification. Furthermore, there is no greater example of Foucault's panopticon than that of the NSA, or, to a slightly lesser extent, the social media newsfeed. As an example, white parenting--specifically, white motherhood--is heavily policed: Is she eating right? Is she getting enough exercise? Can she drink while pregnant? Should she eat allergy-prone foods? Oh my god she just yelled at her child in the parking lot! Better get the hell out of there before someone calls DYFS! If her kid has special needs, both child and parent (specifically the mother) will be policed to a degree beyond even that by the school district and the local community, with a regimen involving endless paperwork, medication, therapy, and god knows what else in order to force both the child and the parent to conform to 'normal' standards (special education children are held to the same standard as general education students while taking the PARCC). The endless discipline of the perfect mother, the perfect child, the perfect body, the perfect sex life--truly,the list is infinite--is a woefully inadequate comparison to the degree to which African-Americans are so ruthlessly surveilled in the United States, but the only one that white people can immediately understand.

When Missouri University President Tim Wolfe declined to engage protesters, and issue placebo PR statements from his office, it sent a message to an assailed community of African-American students that the people to whom they give large amounts of their money, or go into debt for, couldn't care less about their experiences of both covert and overt discrimination. Nay, the fact that even faculty were not immune from racism drives home the scale of the problem at Mizzou. Do you know who was immune from racism? Football players. The revenue from sports is enormous. Mizzou coach Gary Pinkel alone makes $4 million a year, and because of this money, football players--a large percentage of them are African-American--are shielded from the experiences endured by their non-sports-affiliated peers. As recent player Kim English tweeted about how African-Americans were treated at local bars, as cited in an editorial in The Guardian, "If U were black at my alma mater, and ur name was not Maclin, Denmon, Pressey, English, Weatherspoon, Carroll, etc. You didn't feel welcome"

Unless an African-American is an ATM for the university, he or she will face discrimination.

Things are going to improve, however, at least for Mizzou students. Just yesterday, an African-American president was appointed in Wolfe's stead, to the delight of protesters, and a diversity chancellor position was created. How effective it will be in changing the culture there remains to be seen because, as I have previously demonstrated, racism is insidious and covert, and difficult to identify without taking into account entire systems and mechanisms of power, a conceptualization that is out of reach for many. (Coincidentally, this is also why disenfranchised workers misfired and elected Tea Party Republicans in 2012.)

Unless there is a history, an ongoing narrative associated with a group or individual's reality, it is difficult to even pick up on subtle modes of oppression and control, even as whites have historically embodied--and continue to embody--those modes. When the Palestinians and the Israelis talk about each other, the Palestinians' reference point is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, the humiliating and ubiquitous military checkpoints, economic embargoes, and incessant harassment at the hands of the IDF. The Israelis blame Palestinian terrorism for the disproportionate and continuous expansion of Israeli "security" policy and paraphernalia, and in recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians directly for the Holocaust.

The willingness for the oppressor to suppress the realities of his own action against others is indeed universal. The only answer, truly, is to continue to chip away at widely-accepted cultural narratives, and to support efforts that call attention to the misuse of power to discriminate and oppress others, especially when it comes to members of the majority who fail to recognize those modes of oppression. Demonstrate, as clearly as one can, how these modes and mechanisms of power operate and how they are used to maintain the current power structure while oppressing minorities in both obvious and subtle ways. And it is up to the majority to pay attention, to care that it is not living up to its own expectations. As long as there is one group or individual who is not being served in a way that is fair and just, the society cannot call itself "free." Every unjust society has been free for some, and hell for others. Only a just society is free for all.

Books:

The Two-State Delusion by Padraig O'Malley
Being & Time by Martin Heidegger
Discipline & Punish by Michel Foucault

The Art of Throwing Grenades in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

I have been playing Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, and now Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for over 15 years, and lately, I've been playing the Competitive matchmaking mode when my favorite clan server is empty. There are a plethora of combat tutorials on Youtube, as managing weapon spread is very important, but what is, I think, equally important, is how to stay out of combat and deter the enemy while completing the objectives. As such, a very important aspect of CS:GO is woefully under-addressed: How to effectively use smoke grenades and incendiaries/Molotov cocktails.

Now, I consider myself a fairly competent CS:GO player, but I am not the best. I am competent in combat, but I play conservatively whenever possible, while my teammates are often eager to rush at what I consider to be inopportune moments. If we have the bomb planted, and there is one Counter-Terrorist remaining, there is no reason why any of us should feel the need to run out there and risk being killed looking for him, especially when we are sitting on his goal. The same goes when we're CT, covering both bombsites and the last terrorist still hasn't moved with 10 seconds on the clock: The punishment for running down the clock is heavy for a terrorist team. They earn no money the next round if they fail to plant the bomb or eliminate the Counter-Terrorist team (I think the same goes for a Counter-Terrorist team that fails to rescue a hostage or eliminate the terrorist team on cs_ maps).

I don't like getting into combat if I don't have to, and I think my method of using grenades to buy time and cover my team is part of why I've been successful in the matches that I've played. I'll try my best to explain why I throw grenades where I do and what each grenade toss does for my team.

Smoke Grenades

Smoke grenades are often not used effectively. A smoke grenade is used to conceal movement from the enemy; run alongside smoke, never through it, as the enemy will see you (or your shadow) before you will be able to see the enemy. Running through smoke has essentially the same effect on visibility as a flashbang.

One very popular position for smoke grenades is on de_dust2, at Middle between CT spawn and B, shown here

Middle Doors between CT spawn (to the left) and Bombsite B (to the right)

This is effective because terrorists will watch (and snipe) CTs passing through the gap in the doors. Obscuring vision here is very effective, because it prevents the terrorist team from being able to determine how many CTs are guarding B and taking pot-shots at CTs moving from spawn to B.

One thing I like to do as a Terrorist is to toss smoke grenades on de_cache up at the overlook at bombsite B (Molotovs are also good, but don't last as long as smokes).

Bombsite B Overlook/Heaven

That spot is very effective for CTs defending the site, and if left alone, a CT can sit up there and easily take out a good portion of the team--or win altogether, as I will show in the next section.

Also on de_cache, the Terrorists can rush to bombsite A, which is a wide open, dangerous area. In the way back, near CT spawn, is a truck that CT snipers like to hide behind and potentially snipe incoming Terrorists.

De_Cache bombsite A "Main" Behind that smoke is a truck that provides cover for CT snipers

This allows the Terrorists to only have to worry about CTs to the right side and possibly one or two to the far left behind a forklift or a catwalk above that.

For the CT side, they have an excellent opportunity to use smoke grenades on cs_office when rescuing a hostage that spawns in the corner of a hallway behind the Terrorist spawn area. This area is particularly difficult for CTs to attack, and the smoke provides ample cover. A word of caution: Note where the hostage is before you toss the smoke, and use the minimap/radar to escape to safety!

I've got the hostage and can't see a damned thing. However, neither can they!

This is very good because the Terrorists are very unlikely to try to run through the smoke to try to shoot you, and if your teammates followed you, they can cover you as you make your escape. It's worth pointing out that there are three potential hostage spawns, and I'm not sure how likely it is that a hostage will spawn in that spot in a competitive match. It's still worth knowing this, I think (cs_office is one of my favorite maps).

One Last Note on Smoke Grenades

If a bombsite or hostage rescue point is heavily contested (this is especially true at bombsite B on de_season, which I couldn't get a screenshot of because it's no longer available in matchmaking), throwing smoke and planting the bomb (or defusing the bomb as a CT) is extremely effective in CS:GO. The enemy can't see you, and they are much more likely to concentrate on fighting through your teammates than trying to hit what they can't see. Again, note where you are before you toss that smoke!

Incendiary Grenades / Molotov Cocktails

Incendiaries are expensive ($400 for Molotovs, $600 for Incendiary Grenades), and I seem to be the only person who uses them.  I don't expect to actually hit anyone with them (though it's cool when I do), but they deal significant damage, and stop the enemy in their tracks, buying time for your team to join you at the area under attack.

One of the best places to use incendiary grenades as a CT is, again, on cs_office, this time as you and your team advance into Long Hall (connects to the rear hallway, where the hostage was in a previous image). This corridor is always occupied by Terrorist snipers, as it is a vital bottleneck in the map.

Long Hall on cs_office

What I have to do is peek out from an area just to the left of where I am, and lob my Incendiary grenade all the way to the rear. I have to be fast, or I will be killed, especially if there is more than one Terrorist in that area. If I pull it off, the Terrorists will retreat into the rear hallway, allowing my teammates and I to advance. From there, we can easily toss more grenades into that smaller hallway and slowly chip away at their team, eventually eliminating them or reaching a hostage. I have won almost every single round that I've done this in. This is the most effective use of an incendiary grenade in the entire game.

Another area where incendiaries are useful is in de_cache as a CT from the Overlook area smoked out in a previous image. Here, there is a CT watching the Terrorists' entry point after throwing fire down into it. It is recommended by a teammate once that I wait a few seconds before throwing it, because it really doesn't last long, maybe 10-15 seconds at most.

CT watching Bombsite B on de_cache from Overlook/Heaven. The checkered room to the left is still a viable entry point if they decide to retreat. Or, if they're faster than you or your team, they can push through the fire, either straight in or around and through the checkered room.

One final note on Incendiaries and Molotovs: As a Terrorist, if you think you're going to lose, it is very possible to save the round if you throw an incendiary on the Bomb, buying time and possibly even killing the CT who tries to defuse. However, a Terrorist guarding the bomb is likely to be sought out, and the time it takes to switch to and throw a Molotov on the bomb may be better spent shooting the enemy. I have only pulled this off a couple times, and it's deeply satisfying when it does happen.

Terrorist threw a Molotov on the bomb at bombsite B on de_mirage

Other Grenades

The other grenades--High Explosive/Frag, Flashbang, and Decoy grenades are nowhere near as effective as deterrents or as offensive tactics as the Incendiaries and Smoke Grenades are. The flashbang, even if tossed correctly, can be defended against by a skilled player simply by turning away from the grenade as it goes off, minimizing the flash effect. I have *never* been able to use flashbangs efficiently, and it's always a guess whether you have incapacitated your enemy. Decoys are easy to identify. As such, the probability that it will compel your enemy to move is minimal. The frag grenades only do approximately 57 damage, but they have to go off right next to the target, and are almost completely ineffective at a range greater than a few feet. Because of this, they are hardly worth the $300.

On Smoke Grenades in Counter-Strike 1.6

In Counter-Strike 1.6, because of its lower particle count, it is very possible to still see through the smoke with the game on high settings. Smoke grenades are thus much less effective in this version of Counter-Strike, and they should not be depended upon to the degree that they can be in CS:GO and CS:Source.

Serial Experiments Lain is the Most Accurate Cyberpunk Story I've Ever Come Across

Update - 6/7/2016

I have added links to Funimation's subtitled episodes on Youtube where appropriate.

End Update

Preface: It's been a very long time since I've written anything. I've deliberately avoided writing about politics because I didn't want to feed into the Trump Vacuum, and outside of that, there isn't too much that's going on that I really want to write about. So I decided that I would go in a completely different direction.


Not a lot of my readers are anime fans, but I felt like revisiting one of my first--and favorite--anime series and explaining what made this series so good. Serial Experiments Lain has been largely forgotten to anime history, and I felt it necessary to explore what it had to say about technology, and the ways it got the Internet right 17 years ago, at a time when so many cyberpunk/technologically-focused stories (like this, for example), got technology so wrong.

Serial Experiments Lain is a 13-episode series that centers around a young, socially isolated 14-year-old girl who receives an email from a classmate who committed suicide, urging her to follow in her footsteps and live in the "Wired" (the Internet). Intrigued by this email, Lain asks her father, who works at the Tachibana Labs computer company and is himself an early adopter/power user/tinkerer, who is excited to take her under his wing, to upgrade her computer. Lain uses a "NAVI", which is based on a variety of Apple products (the artists working on the series at the time loved Apple), but I find that the top-of-the-line model resembles more of a cyberdeck than a traditional desktop computer. It isn't long before we see Lain switching out parts, and her setup grows immensely throughout the series.

There are some important things to note in episode one: The shadows in the series are colored, and this is deliberate. The shadows represent the world of the Wired, underpinning Lain's "reality." The buzzing of the power lines in the beginning episodes eventually become distinct, though muffled speech, delineating Lain's ignorance of the Wired to her power over it. During her commute to school, we get a very eerie scene where the power lines start to bleed. Others have said that this represents Chisa's suicide, but I don't think that's accurate: It is foreshadowing the central theme of the series, that is the Wired and the "Real World" becoming one and the same, as we shall see.

One of the most interesting comparisons to make here is between Lain and The Matrix, specifically The Animatrix and the second film. In "Kid's Story," a teenager is contacted by Neo and commits suicide by jumping from his apartment building with the goal of reaching the Real World. A great deal of effort is made by Lain's classmates and another character to convince Lain to kill herself and enter the Wired. It's worth noting here that Lain came out in 1998, The Matrix came out in 1999, and The Animatrix after that. I have no doubt that the Wachowskis saw Serial Experiments Lain.

The Knights of the Eastern Calculus

In Layer 03, Lain receives a chip called a "Pachuke," and inquires at the rave about its function and manufacture. Taro, one of the kids who hangs out at the club, informs her that the chip was manufactured by the Knights and is extremely rare, bestowing powers and privileges to its user well beyond that of normal denizens of the Wired. The Knights are one of the most intriguing things about the series, as they are an anonymous group of hackers/renegades who seek to govern the Wired and are responsible for a deadly computer game. Few people know who the Knights are, and few people familiar with the series quite understand the brilliance of their existence in the series. Watching SEL in 2015, it is quite obvious that the Knights are analogous to another [A]nonymous hacker collective. SEL deserves some serious credit for its predictions, and its accuracy well beyond its time. In the series, the Knights have spliced a dungeoncrawling survival game not unlike many horror games seen today (think Slender: The Eight Pages) with a scientific experiment that sought to harness latent psychic energy from children called the Kensington Experiment, presided over by Professor Hodgson. The experiment was terminated because all of the children involved in the experiment died. Professor Hodgson explains to Lain that he sought to destroy all of the material involved in the experiment, but someone "dug it out of the trash" and incorporated it into the game (Episode 6)

This hybrid allowed other players to play as the monster, and any player who loses in the game dies in real life. The Knights are also able to use the technology in their game (called PHANTOMa) to kill other users. A housewife orders a Knights-manufactured PCI card and uses it to kill a person walking in the street wearing a headset and mobile wifi gear. Later, we find this same card, fried, in the garbage. In one scene, also in episode 6, after Lain discovers what the Knights did, she verbally abuses them by calling them trolls. They retaliate by--I think--uploading malware to her computer that causes her coolants to fail and her system to explode, which would have killed her had she not left her room. On top of all that, the Knights are also propping up a second suicide-turned-digital-consciousness named Masami Eiri.


Masami Eiri was an employee at Tachibana Labs, and he was tasked with creating IPv7 (Protocol 7; we are currently on IPv6). He included bizarre conspiracy theories involving psychic research and electromagnetic fields into his construction of the protocol, and aimed to insert himself into the Wired as its god. He wanted to move all of humanity from the Real World into the Wired, and allow people to communicate seamlessly, "without devices." The best comparison I can make for this is to the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion, which was also aimed at merging human consciousnesses beyond that of the flesh, albeit for religious reasons. When Eiri's managers discovered this, they fired him immediately, and he killed himself by running in front of a train. His consciousness lived on in the Wired, where he did become a god, thanks to his believers: The Knights. Eiri also claims responsibility for creating Lain. Eiri himself became god, basically, by using memes perpetuated by the Knights (think, for example, 4Chan or Reddit), and he lives on simply because people believe in him (similar to American Gods, where belief gives power). This is the same reason why aliens appear in the series: Because urban legends (Roswell, mentioned in episode 9, for example) become "fact" through collective belief in conspiracy theories (TVTropes.org notes that the alien who appears as Lain's avatar in Alice's room in Episode 11 is wearing a Freddy Krueger sweater). Episode 9 opens with the line, "For now, conjecture has become fact, and rumor has become history." While I am aware that The X-Files also heavily dealt with conspiracy theories around the same period, it did not address the way that these theories proliferated in real life through the Internet the way Lain did. In fact, I would argue that the very reason why they are discussed at all in SEL is because of how the Internet gave them a way to propagate freely in the underbelly of the Web, treating them as an artifact of belief, instead of addressing the possibility outright that aliens could be real. It's less "The truth is out there" and more "The expansion of the Internet has created a seedbed for all kind of crazy stuff!" Again, this series came out in 1998, and this is 2015, when conspiracy theories thrive on the Internet and have leaked into real political discourse.

Who are the Men in Black (not Will Smith and TLJ)?

The Men in Black are two mysterious figures who at first have an ominous presence as they stalk Lain from a black car, but they are not there to hurt her. At first, she suspects that they are working for the Knights, but the Men in Black are there simply to spy on her for an unnamed employer. They suspect that Lain is the Lain of the Wired (the "evil" one), and  later, when they take her in, they discover that she is, and reveal that they do not want the Wired and the Real World to merge. However, they are ordered to back off by their employer, and only resurface after Lain publishes the list of Knights members, whom they assassinate. In Layer 12, the Men in Black are betrayed by their employer and killed by an avatar of Lain (ostensibly with the same technology as the Knights with PHANTOMa). It turns out that their employer was in contact with Eiri, which may be why Lain killed them.

What happened to Alice, and why does Lain have three personalities? 

Alice is Lain's best friend, and her story arc is both depressing and slightly unclear. But first, we must explain Lain's three personalities. Lain in the real world is socially isolated, quiet, and generally passive. She discovers, as people recognize her in the club in episode 2, that there already exists a Lain in the Wired. This version of her is evil, and has spread embarrassing information about Alice, specifically, that she has been sleeping with one of her teachers. This is devastating to her (obviously), and is a major impetus for Lain's actions later in the series. It's worth noting that this is something SEL gets exactly right: That information on the Internet (The "Wired" in the show) can be found and used against people in the real world, with real consequences. On the Wired, Lain (the persona that the Real Lain has adopted for herself on the Wired) is assertive, belligerent, and quick to verbally attack other users, which reflects current reality: Many socially isolated people adopt a more forceful personality on the Internet.

It is also possible that Eiri had dummy copies of Lain on the Wired without her knowledge. "You wanted to pass off these dupes as me!?" (Episode 8)

In episode 12, when Lain is about to give in to Eiri and Chisa's demand that she forfeit her physical form and live in the Wired as a disembodied consciousness, Alice shows her the value of a physical body by letting Lain feel her heart beat. In fact, it is Alice who comes to her aid at the end of the series and saves her from making the same mistake Eiri and Chisa made. Here, Lain also discovers how much she had hurt Alice, and this is what causes her to hit RESET.

 So what does Lain do? How does she become a god?

In order to save Alice from the consequences of what the Evil Lain did, she erases everyone else's memory of Alice's sexual indiscretion, but does not erase Alice's own memory of her humiliation. Lain decides--after seeing the pain that her actions caused her only friend--to erase everyone's memories of herself, effectively erasing her own existence. The power she gained in the Wired and her need for a physical body (she did not kill herself) allows her to become what Eiri could not, and instead of fulfilling her stated purpose (according to Eiri), she reestablishes the barrier between the Wired and the Real World. Many of the people she knew and loved could almost remember her. Alice, seen with her fiancee, struggles and fails to remember that Lain was her best friend. 

Is Lain a computer program? What happened to Mika? And why is her family fake?

Eiri claims--late in the series--that he is responsible for creating Lain. She is, in his words, "an executable program with a body." Her entire life is a plant, and this knowledge is what pushes her over the edge. However, Eiri also says that all other people are "applications," so he is not exactly to be trusted. Considering Mika's fate, it may be more accurate to say that the Knights are responsible for Lain's existence, not Eiri.

Mika was a disaffected, "mature" teen who had very little interest in Lain. Because of her marked disinterest, the Knights manipulated her surroundings, telling her to "Fulfill the prophecy!!!" and drove her insane. There are theories on the Internet (on our Internet) that say that the Knights wiped her mind, but I think this goes a bit far. It is sufficient to say that she had a severe mental breakdown and was incapacitated for the rest of the series.

Her mother at one point--who expresses the same disinterest as Mika and yet suffers no consequences--remarks to her husband/Lain's father that "We don't have much time" (or something to that effect) as the two of them initiate intimacy. 

The bizarre thing about her family being faked is that when we see them again in episode 13, they are still together, only with Lain missing. This is bizarre because, after Lain hits the reset button, Masami Eiri is still employed, the Men in Black are construction workers, Chisa (the suicide from the beginning, and the one who originally sends Lain down the rabbit hole) is still alive. and other characters are similarly changed. The only explanation for this is that her parents would have fallen in love anyway, making at least some of the prophecy less impactful. 

Further Questions

I only have one major question: If Eiri is truly responsible for creating Lain, why does he not realize that Lain is supposed to overtake him as god? Or, as the title of episode 12 suggests, Eiri is so consumed by his own ego that he still thinks he can be god? Even in the denouement, Masami Eiri suffers delusions of grandeur...

Final Thoughts and Analysis

SEL  was released in 1998, and I find it amazing, watching it 17 years later, how prescient it was. A lot of what is happening now is seen in the series, from Anonymous, Reddit/4Chan, TOR/the "Dark Web," doxxing, conspiracy theories (though they've been around for a lot longer than the Internet, their swift proliferation is what makes SEL so relevant), and the consequences of the collapse of the barrier between the Real World and the Wired. Transhumanists are considering the implications of uploading human consciousness to a computer network, and we are on the verge of VR. We are working on accessing the Internet without any devices. These are topics that are explored on shows like Black Mirror today, but Serial Experiments Lain discussed them way back in 1998. I would also like to point out that the main character is a girl, whereas in 2015, most people who are computer experts (those who work in Silicon Valley) are men. At the time SEL was made, women were much more involved with computers. I love that Lain focuses primarily on tech-savvy girls.

SEL is a perfect expression of the anxieties felt at the dawn of the Internet age, during the dial-up era, and remains a landmark achievement in cyberpunk and science fiction generally.

Update 6/7/2016

"This afternoon, the firewall of the Information Bureau's Information Control Center was cracked by some unnamed renegade party. As a result, the Information Network System of the Wired is in total disarray. And furthermore, be advised that although it is actually a live broadcast and is being sent out at this very moment, it is quite possible that it may arrive tomorrow, right now, or perhaps yesterday."

As I talk to my friends about Lain, because they recently watched it for the first time, or haven't seen it in a long time, I keep thinking about how great it is. It eats at my brain the way that only Neon Genesis Evangelion could, and while Evangelion was excellent, very little of it had to do with the real world; all of the religious references kind of went nowhere, and somewhere along the way in my mind, SEL's unwavering allegiance to reality--to such a degree that few other science fiction stories ever match--causes me to fall in love with it over and over again. I keep thinking about that one character in episode 7, who was wandering the busy street with his backpack and VR gear. We can do that now. Yes, VR has been a thing for a long time (think Star Trek's Holodeck), but few have ever imagined how it might work in reality. I am stunned by the fact that SEL came out 17 years ago, and almost everything it ever said about technology and society is actually true.

I can hardly believe that the series ever got made in the first place. It had a shoestring budget, there is no official merchandise (except for a Japan-only one-shot manga and a Japan-only PSX adventure game), and the animation doesn't look too good (and that's putting it nicely). 

And yet it is the best anime I have ever seen. I first saw it when I was in high school, and it was, if I remember correctly, the first anime series I ever purchased (my first anime purchases were AKIRA, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, and Serial Experiments Lain). Lain is the only anime I own on Blu Ray, and I purchased it soon after I watched it again for this essay. My only complaint with the Blu Ray is that there aren't enough extras about Lain: No interviews, concept art, etc. I had to dig up an interview with the creator in a French magazine (that interview and others can be found here) to try to figure out where it came from, and I still don't know. 

The only thing I do know is that I want to watch it yet again.