I read this and all I felt was tired. Yes, glitch reveals that systems are not inevitable and impenetrable. Control is an illusion. Hurrah. Storms flatten houses. Rivers of gold ravage Pompeii. Nature subverts itself. Glitch is the trickster spirits and coyotes and spiders and monkey kings represent in endless mythologies. The devil Robert Johnson met on the Crossroads. We detect glitch and feel it as a resolutely involved presence, playmaker, and force in this stupid play. I remember a physicist researcher told me dark matter is like stumbling over something in pitch black. It’s Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare knew all about glitch. I guess we are all sacrificial casualties on the pyre of glitch. That’s why it all seems so absurd, so tragic, so funny, so meaningful, so useless. You know when Puck revealed at the end that it was all a dream.

Everything I know and have ever loved is because of people who devoted themselves to what counts as glitch studies, those who were at the behest of glitches, and audiences that produced movements motivated by glitches, commodified, repackaged or otherwise. I don’t mean to be hypocritical and shit on the whole parade, but. The author is personally fascinated by the magic of glitch. Is your fascination contagious? They say they “believe that ‘Glitchspeak’ can democratize society.” Hm.

I don’t really want to be involved anymore. Unfortunately my skin is materially and literally in the game, so. The domestication and commodification of glitch blah blah blah. Glitch studies blah blah blah. Glitch is destructive generativity blah blah blah. I’ve become disenchanted with and disengaged from the gain and the loss, the sun rise and set, the confusion and the clarity. Glitch, ravage your course. I’ll laugh at the funny parts and cry at the sad ones.