Online which is a verb – a verb that can be seen on social platforms, is a common sight: “So and so is online”. This message displayed does not convey that someone is doing anything but that someone is only ON their device. Of course, if a user chooses not to, an incognito mode can be activated by a user to not show that someone is online, when they really are. and thus already an illusion presents itself. A person may be online but so too may be a thing: “the website is online”. From the outset it’s apparent that things and people may be online. Time spent offline coincides with online time and the two are always ongoing at once. Online may become offline and offline may become online; uploading and downloading respectively. But what can be made of the distinctions between the two and what consequent distinctions there? A term used in online subcultures is that of: “terminally online”. What kind of life exists for those who only exist online and not IRL? (in real life) Another useful term in this investigation is one used by the science fiction writer Philip k dick in his novels: the re-occurring term: “homeostatic”, which the writer uses to refer to many life-like or life-parallel processes. This analysis will show such homeostatic things and processes in relation to Online.

A process here does not necessarily mean a life, however, according to this analysis living beings of this investigation will dispose of and reproduce processes. things which only have a use in specific circumstances; identification, uniforms, proverbs or sayings are such things. Online memes are of this environ as well. Memes are used to display identity but they also have identities of their own. As a symbol they show a scene or a diagram of how life is to function much. The form of the meme is recognizable for anyone, it is a cartoon character or a television character, a funny image of any kind, however the content of the meme is customized to fit any scenario or to communicate any image. In a meme a popular video game character, through the memes use in various communities makes jokes or communicates unspoken concerns or prejudices from every subculture from hard drug addicts to day traders. This form that the meme takes is a body. Why is it that on the internet there still must be bodies? Isn't it that the first way of communicating in the early days of the internet was simple text? Why the desire to eliminate images and so called bodies of the internet? The anti-materialist scheme makes up the most fitting basis for a counter move against online bodies. Perhaps it is the case that over the internet even text makes up a materialism or something of that nature? Arguably words are more generic and abstract and more interpretive than images or other bodied media, however this all fades away by the notion that anything is material if it perhaps is not live. Aristotle had made this point in his teleology, in the sense that things only become real through thought. However, online there can be found an immensity of thought in things without their being live.

The presence of that which is ‘live’ now enters the frame. Memes are not live but only fractured moments of a live process. Is there a live core to the internet? Or is this live core IRL? ‘real life’ as a brief indication will show, has already been incorporating fractured moments. One today might disregard the virtual on account of its being dead: ‘how can one be obsessed with videos and images online when they're not real at all?’, which is fair, but by no means without a prior history in mankind's Promethean cosmic creation. Briefly and on this point in trans-humanist and a.i. discourse, there is the intuition that perhaps technological advancements will put an end to freedom. Surveillance capitalism, authoritarianism, techno fascism are so transparent that only science fiction can show these phenomena it seems. Perhaps a reversal is needed to illuminate this obvious cognitive bias, this rather survival like fear against technocracy. Simply put these homeostatic, aconscious, (a.i., virtual media, etc.), could bring about more freedom in some areas. Intelligence, the most questionable word in the configuration of artifical intelligence, after all seems to be indicative of a certain aspect of intelligence. intelligence of this kind is Promethean. Prometheus after all was able to create intelligence too and one perhaps better than himself (note that prometheus was cursed to see the future and so devised his own end). Man by this proposition is intelligent by way of prometheanism, or in other words by way of not just being intelligent but by creating intelligence.

On another point, in psychoanalysis, it is apparent too that our own conception of ourselves too is artificial in that i do not see myself as i really am, there have to be devices or somewhat mystical, artistic, Neo-religious acts needed to bring fourth my unconscious. So it is by way of artificiality in devices, mechanisms, processes that my own artificial conception of myself is realized.

Karl yungs basic distinction is between symbols and signs. In signs refer to actual material non virtual things whereas symbols do not. Yung uses religious imagery as an example of a symbol. In a virtual society though, symbols become more useful as the subjects will undoubtedly need to communicate online things and feeling. Not only that but symbols become more indicative of real things at this point.