Brave New World - Woroni vol 75 no 6 (November 2025)

In the page-turning conclusion to the Intergalactic Saga, WORONI must risk it all in pursuit of a ...

BRAVE NEW WORLD

WOR ONI An imprint of ANU Student Media

TEAM

ART

Fiona Bao

Sara Duble

Avery Lam To

Safreen Arakath

Sophie Chandler

Ashlee Hemy

Francesca Holt

Anjani Mane

Suriana Mamone

En-mei Miao

Jemima Woodman

CONTENT

Hannah Bachelard

Brooke Corkhill

Caelan Doel

Remi Lynch

Lily Amos

Pia Barnett

Emanuel Foundas

Sarah Greaves

Chiara Hackney-Brit

Maya Haggstrom

Dara Kaldor

India Kazakoff

Isla Moore

Oliver Murry

Atputha Rahavan

Anuva Rai

Michael Reid

Shivagha Sindhamani Pathak

Sai Woebking

Ethan Zhu

COMMUNICATION

Henry Carls

Cyan Metcalf

Chris Landy

Amelia Leahy

Eleanor Smith

Benjamin van der Niet

NEWS

David Back

Hannah Benhassine

Dash Bennett

Saboor Cheema

Paris Chia

Angelique Austin

Grace Barnes

Madeleine Blayney

Sophia Burke-Millea

Slater Campbell

Jack Davis

Elinor Hudson

Elia Sharifi

Linh Thuy Pham

Akshit Tyagi

Eleanor Wyndham

WORONI RADIO

Cate Armstrong

Jessica Heller

Frederika Phibbs

Alex An

Aamra Chandra

Punit Deshwal

Lucy Gabbay

Madeleine Kay

Sara Patil

WORONI TV

Niamh D’Arcy

Arjun Satish

Tanya Sharma

Mungo Sweeney

Aliya Yang

Team and Contribute page art extracted from Woroni vol 35 (1985)

NOVEMBER 2025

DXXV, NO. 6

NEW FAVOURITE FACE by Lily Amos

“MASKED SPHINX OF FLOWING FACE” by Asheleigh Wyndham Andrews

TIKTAALIK by Harry Hoang

THE SOCIAL MEDIA BAN IS A GOOD START. BUT IT ISN’T ENOUGH by Ethan Zhu

ROBOT, ROBOT, ROBOT, ROBOT AND OTHER MEANINGLESS SOUNDS by Siena Yap ..................................................21

POETRY

WHIMPER (AFTER ALLEN GINSBERG) by Cyan Metcalf..............................................25

I’VE STOPPED READING THE NEWS by Aliya Yang

by Ryan Yu

NON-FICTION

WORONI RADIO’S PICKS: SONGS FOR THE EXISTENTIAL by Grace Williams ......................................................37

CRINGE CULTURE’S UNRELENTING INHERENCY by Madeleine Kay .....................41

THE HIDDEN HANDS BEHIND AUSTRALIA’S HARVEST by Amber Lennox ............45

INFINITE JEST by India Kazakoff .....................................................................................47

A STATE IN PERPETUITY: MAPPING TUVALUAN SOVEREIGNTY by Maya Haggstrom ........................................48

TODAY’S FEMINISM: INTERSECTIONALITY OR BUST by Sophia Diegelmann ........51

ROSE TINTED SPACE GOGGLES: HOW OUR PERCEPTIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT INFLUENCE OUR IDEA OF THE FUTURE by Isla Moore 53

“HECS CUTS AREN’T FAIR—THEY’RE A HANDOUT TO THE RICH” by Nevan Serasundera 55

THE LAW’S SLOW CHASE: WHEN TECH RUNS WILD BUILDING CODES FOR THE INVISIBLE AMUSEMENT PARK by Ria Agrawal ............................59

LESSONS FROM AN ON-CAMPUS THIRD YEAR: OF HIS FEARS AND TEARS, TO HIS TRIUMPHS AND HIS BECOMING by Hunter Trumble 61

BOARD OF EDITORS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ......................................................................... Zoe Vaughan DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Adriano di Matteo

MANAGING EDITOR .................................................................... Joseph Mann

CONTENT EDITOR Aala Cheema

NEWS EDITOR ............................................................................. Kaab Qureshi

ART EDITOR ................................................................................... Mir Niejalke

RADIO EDITOR Grace Williams

TELEVISION EDITOR .......................................................... Tejas Ramaratnam

COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR ...................................................... Kirsty Sauw

Photography by Benjamin van der Niet

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The theme of this magazine, Brave New World, comes from Aldous Huxley’s novel of the same name. Published almost 100 years ago, the story is set in a futuristic ‘World State’, where technological advancement, like genetic engineering, has enabled people to be placed within a social hierarchy. The mood altering drug Soma, and the conditioning of people as infants, eliminates unhappiness for the furtherance of societal stability. The themes of this novel — the dangers of scientific and technological advancement, totalitarianism, and social conditioning — are all relevant to the chaos and tragedy of the present day. The world is afflicted by the senseless death of innocent peoples, the destruction of our planet, the discrimination and alienation of marginalised communities, outrageous abuses of power, and rampant commercial greed and consumption. The stories, poetry, and opinion pieces in this edition of Woroni, written by members of the ANU student community, give voice to and critique these realities, showing us once again how words are a weapon of resistance. In this uncertain world, words have power and your voice matters.

Brave New World also captures the uncertainties and excitement of what the future may hold. As the end of the semester fast approaches, all of us will be united in our shared trepidation of the exam session. However, the new year will bring new beginnings, and facing change requires the same bravery that is captured in the pages of this magazine. I hope the words in this edition will provide you with some comfort and courage to face whatever the future may hold for you.

With the release of Woroni’s last magazine for the year also comes the end of my time at Woroni. Since 2022, my university experience has been shaped by the people and the work of the ANU’s student media organisation. I will be forever grateful for all that I have learnt (and read!), and the people with whom I have loved and laughed and grown. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to be your Content Editor this year. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the Content teams past and present for their diligent work, Mir and the Art team for never ceasing to marvel me with their creations, and of course you, dear reader, without whom this would all be futile.

Thank you for reading Brave New World. In the words of Aldous Huxley:

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

Yours truly,

Aala Cheema

Art by Sara Duble

Art by Sara Doble

METAMORPHOSES

by Jessika Morris

It’s raining again today. Storms have been creeping down the East Coast for about a week now, and the days have been staying sticky and long. Every inch of the carriage is stacked, and the humidity awkwardly squeezes itself amongst our bodies while thick stagnant air hangs above everyone’s heads like hazy smoke. As usual, the interior circulation is fucked, but I can’t complain too much when the air outside is probably no better.

The woman next to me reeks of astringent white florals and keeps fanning it towards me with a cheap LED hand fan sporting an awkwardly pixelated image of a lotus flower, poorly cropped to fit the crescent shape of the fan. I suppose it’s out of common goodwill for her to do what little she can, given the thick air we’re all swallowing, but I feel like I’m fading in and out of a delirious floral fever dream. I prop my head against the cool glass of the window to steel myself.

Outside, I watch as the shuttering images of shopfronts cycle by. Lonely fruit stalls with ageing produce begin to bloom with fragrance in the afternoon sun, and the large empty glass windows of bleak aesthetic parlours are devoid of anything beautiful except for a row of sunbleached plastic heads. What used to be features like eyes and lips have long since faded into the paleness of the plastic, and some still only just hold onto their desaturated acrylic wigs, while others are left bald and grimy. Large oblong screens used in bus stops to illuminate the streets with ads for the newest cybergenetic Biotech model, humanoid tech powered by advanced AI software, and occasionally the news, are now smashed and shattered,

having been repaired only a few weeks prior.

As we slow down to the Darlinghurst Street stop, I watch as the vacant lot where an ancient brick building once stood, selling cheap, mildewed books, creeps into view. Planted firmly in the left-hand upper side of the block is a large steel utility pole covered in tangled clumps of black wire like a bird’s nest. A woman covered in dirt wearing only a tattered pale nightgown flails around wildly shouting, illuminated by an LED billboard promoting cellularly enhanced lab meat. People empty out of the carriage, and soft cool air pools at my feet before the doors awkwardly close. Replacements awkwardly shift through the coagulation of bodies to fit in amongst it all.

To get into my aunt’s place, I try to scurry down the alley hidden between her shop and the blood brothel next door. Those girls are her best customers. In the loungeroom, old smoke lingers greedily in the already thick air. The ashtray by her sewing machine is piled with cigarette butts stained by her lipstick, some new and pink, while others are old and yellowed. I open a window to air the room out before rushing to get my laptop bag and quickly change. I swipe shimmered pigment across my eyelid and rub in the aged eyeliner from this morning. The process is messy and unskilled.

I’m rushed partly due to the metro delays, but also partly from being stopped by Valeira on the street. Valeira is an old friend. We met during a gig of mine when we got into a fight about the set. She requested another song, and I told her I don’t do requests. She ended up climbing up the mezzanine to insist that I play her song, and from then,

we were close for a long time. She joined a very private political activist group after I started university and left the scene temporarily. They quickly got her roped into some serious business. They’re the kind of people to end up on the news one way or another. When she cornered me, she was clearly sick or exhausted. We chatted briefly, then she hugged me tight, placed a hefty baggie of hydro hybrid flower into my hand, told me to stay safe, and then simply left. I ended up being late for my train, but it didn’t matter once I found out they weren’t going anywhere anyway.

A ping vibrates from my pocket; it’s a text from Kyle to come meet out front. On my way out, I spot a stack of old enamelled bracelets on the mantelpiece by the door, the ones made only before the war. I sneak one onto the thick of my wrist as I pace down the stairs and out past a sick, heaving man in the alley. I see Kyle’s purple Jeep parked slightly off the road and onto the curb.

The car ride is awful and awkward. Kyle, a previous high school acquaintance turned producer, is fighting with his girlfriend CeeCee whilst we sit shoulder to shoulder in the backseat of his car. A steely man is driving silently as classical music veils the car quietly in its melody. They’re quiet after a while, only after CeeCee brought up screenshots on her phone of bank transactions to one of the AI brothels a few buildings down from my apartment.

“Mae, I hope you got everything. These cunts won’t even supply us with equipment, and I’ve brought all I can. This whole thing reeks of somethin’ foul.” Kyle snorts something pink and slightly shimmery from his hand with precision. “Besides, this’ll be your first decent gig in a while. The turnout is expected to be huge. Big ups from here on out.” I decline an offer of the mystery pink shimmer. CeeCee slaps Kyle’s hand away when he offers, the pink shimmer dusting the carpeted floor.

“You’re the one who took the job; I’m just your pathetic disc jockey working at your whim. I don’t even know why you’d trust someone with no traceable identity,” says Kyle. In truth, we both knew very little about this job, only knowing that it’s held in an old, abandoned government office left from after the war in Old China Town, and that I’m part of a lineup of local artists. That’s it. The sender left no contact, even going as far as to use

a throwaway email. He sighs, rubbing his face with his hands.

“I needed my Mum to get off my ass, I’m just as desperate as you are for work. It’s hard on everyone.” I doubt that. His apartment is fully serviced and paid for by Mummy in Paddington, on the condition that he funds himself through doing what he chooses to do, to be a music producer. He’s always been coddled. In truth, I don’t like him very much, but he’s great at what he does, and that’s enough for me.

After taking an hour to set everything up, people began squeezing through the small door leading from an even narrower staircase like desperate fish swimming upstream. Kyle was right about the turnout, but my set is in two hours, and I have no one to talk to until then. I park myself at the makeshift bar setup and look around from the office chair I’m sitting on. The offices are mostly clean, barren from graffiti or human tampering. The tech is dated, probably useless since the solar flare fucked everything up. I don’t know much about it, mostly from drunken ramblings from my aunt after one too many glasses of white. One day, everything just stopped; nothing worked—no phones, no internet, no power. From there, everything unfolded into turmoil. It scares me to think that only less than half a century ago, everything anyone knew became obsolete, forcing them to start over from scratch. My aunt was only very young when it happened, before my mum was born. It’s only in the past fifteen years that things have sped back up to where they left off, maybe even further along than before.

After downing three, maybe five, cocktails from the bartender who looks almost too young to be serving, I began to wander the venue. I watch the dancefloor through images of sweaty bodies on top of one another through the strobe. It makes me dizzy, so I look away. Suddenly, a cold, firm hand clasps my wrist. I’m met face-to-face with a woman covered in glitter and body crystals between her eyebrows. Her hair is obscenely long and blonde, and neither of her eyes are the same colour. “Do you take requests?” Her sticky, almost black lips move too quickly for those words to have come out.

I’m confused. “My set isn’t until later. I don’t take requests, but they might,” I point towards the DJ booth manned by Kyle and a woman whom I don’t recognise, “Just go up and ask that guy, he’ll sort you out.”

She grips me even tighter, staring at me intensely before letting go and giggling. “Thanks! I’ll go ask. Say, do you wanna bump with me? It’s on the house.” She pulls out a small bag filled with dark, almost black, glittery powder. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I feel too sick to stand.

“No thanks. I’m good.” I turn and walk away back towards the bar. She doesn’t follow, but I can’t see her when I turn back around.

I’m now seated with a group of girls from my chemistry degree before I dropped out. They’re lively, but bored. It turns out they only came to see me but didn’t realise I wouldn’t be on until much later. As they talk, I notice that the woman from before in the corner of my eye is dragging an inebriated man by his hand into the men’s bathroom. Gross, but I’m not one to judge. The music is too loud, and I’m filled with dread as my hands begin to sweat furiously and sweat beads on my forehead. A scream rings out through the conversations and over the music. Some people stop, but others keep dancing wildly on one another. On the dancefloor, the screams begin prickling the ears of everyone now, and through the strobe, I catch a glimpse of masked men wielding machetes aimlessly. My friends try to drag me away, but I can’t spot CeeCee or Kyle from here. As Elanora tries to drag me across the carpet, I spot the woman from before, except something is seriously wrong. Her body is malformed, jutting awkwardly from underneath her dress. Where her mouth should be is now replaced with what I can only describe as steely insect-like mandibles. Her arms are too long for her body and now glimmer with blood. She doesn’t see me as she sprints off towards the crowd, but now I’m wishing that I were trapped inside that floral fever dream on the light rail. Things get blurry from there. I can remember the screams, Elanora and Jade hoisting me into the backseat of a car, and the streetlights as they flickered through the tinted windows.

The next morning, I awake in my room with things strewn awkwardly across the bed. My aunt is sewing in the lounge room quietly while listening to the news and smoking. I check my phone, which has now exploded with texts from CeeCee and Kyle. I don’t respond. I feel sick, a mixture of hangover and fear. Strobe images flicker in the forefront of my mind, images of steely mandibles and elongated, malformed limbs. I throw up into the bucket next to my bed and feel droplets splash back onto my face. I begin to cry, feeling the heaviness of old makeup and my own greasy skin. I reach for the baggie given to me by Valeira and empty the contents onto my smoke tray. A small object clatters onto the tray.

I stop crying, wiping my eyes to clear my vision. It’s a very small, ancient microSD chip. It clatters again onto the tray. Of course, she had to pull some bullshit like this. Now she’s gotten me involved in something I don’t even wanna know about. Hidden inside the baggie is a piece of folded paper. Once unfolded, there are only a few lines scribbled in smudged pink ink:

“Once you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’ll understand why I’ve done the things I have. I’m sorry. I love you, Mei Mei.”

In rage, I pick up my phone, scrolling through the plethora of contacts until I find Valeira under ‘Vee’. She picks up, but I’m stopped when a woman’s voice crackles through the speaker, telling me it’s too late. I scoff at the dramatics and hang up to ring again, only to be told by a robotic voice that this line is disconnected. I call again and again until I cry from frustration. She knew about the gig, meaning she knew about that woman — that thing. What could she have known that she had to keep from me? Her own best friend. I pack the piece after furiously grinding it, and I swallow it down, the resin burning the inside of my lungs. I never wanted to know what she got up to, but now I have no other choice but to figure it out. ¶

Art by Jemima Woodman

Art by Frankie Holt

U P L O A D

by Chiara Hackney-Britt

Art by Suriana Mamone

Iwas the last of my family to be physically born. My mother was halfway through her pregnancy when the rest of the family uploaded themselves. It’s easily possible to upload both mother and unborn child, but she decided she wanted me to have a natural upbringing, in the physical world. A romantic idea, until she was torn to shreds by a bomb. I survived, and my Internet family members sent out an extractor to find me and upload me into safety, which was thankfully managed before I, too, could be killed by the games of the Governments and Companies. I have lived in avatar form ever since, along with most of humanity.

We the people wrested control of the Internet from the Companies a century ago, our magnificent, and only, victory against them. DNA codes were translated into computer code as we left our physical bodies behind. Nowadays extractors usually destroy the flesh as a failsafe against the Companies and Governments attempting to rejoin our consciousnesses with a physical form. They need some embodiment to fight their wars and mine the precious metals that keeps them rich and have physical children so the process can go on and on forever. A child born from the combination of the codes of both parents, an avatar human, has no value by their standards — especially as they have no access to the Internet.

The Companies and Government have the Antinet, now, of course. They went to great lengths to try and win back the Internet, but to no avail. Everyone who lives here is safe to live out their one hundred year lifespan (there is a limit to ensure the servers don’t get overrun). At least, I think we’re safe. It’s just that I’ve been seeing what fits the description of a Shadow Avatar the last little while. No one has seen one of them since the early days; they’re archaic technology after all, a crude and outdated excuse of an espionage tool. I’ve mentioned it to my family but since they’re so obsolete it’s been brushed off. Especially as our defenses are so strong. We have our brave spies and extractors who sacrifice their safety to take a physical form and gather the information to keep us safe, while uploading more consciousnesses to safety. They find out a lot about the Antinet and how it works so that we can safeguard ourselves against them. The firewall has never been stronger. But I think I’ll still take my potential Shadow Avatar to Security tomorrow.

It is probable that it’s just my switch-off mode making me see things; that does happen sometimes. We don’t sleep anymore, of course, just have some downtime so that our codes can be maintained, a few hours between lessons or work or whenever we have the chance. But whenever I switch back on, for want of a better term (I admit that human language wasn’t entirely prepared for such an unnatural evolution), it’s so unnerving to see her standing there, looking so very similar to what I’ve designed my avatar to look like, for just an instant, before she glitches into oblivion. I’m just a bit paranoid that while I’m in switch-off she implants viruses into my coding, or alters something so that I begin glitching myself. Or maybe she just observes how I work and reports back to her superiors, back to the Enemy. It’s always possible that they have somehow found a way in, which means they could hijack our codes, which means they could potentially turn them back into biological coding, and then force us back into physical form. A terrifying idea.

My cousin, a brave man who sacrificed his purely Internet form to become a physical human to enable his work as a Spy, reported a few months ago that the Enemy was doing two significant things. One: they were searching for the physical servers. But they’ve always been doing that. It’s in vain; they’ll never find them. I won’t state where they are here, though, as doing so is extremely illegal and would get my code restricted. Two: they seem to be manufacturing artificial flesh. It’s always been known that it is their venture to drag us all back into physical existence and utilise our bodies for their ends. Given this, it is logical that they would be renewing their efforts at infiltrating us. I suppose it just seems so unlikely that their strategy should be Shadow Avatars, since they’re so antiquated. Surely their Antinet technology and espionage mechanisms have at least slightly evolved by now. Then again, they have very few computer scientists, even a century later. Most of them turned on the corporations that employed them to enable us, the people, to gain control of the Internet from the clutches of the owners. There weren’t many left in physical form to train the next generation of computer scientists, so the Enemy is still struggling in that department. Maybe Shadow Avatars are still the peak of their Network Technology.

And with their group of supporters growing ever smaller as more people come to their senses, with most of humanity either uploaded or dreaming of being found by an extractor, it makes sense that they may be beginning to panic. What, when they have no more bodies left to use? In another century they might be a thing of the past, unless they do something drastic right about now. Yes, I’m definitely going to Security tomorrow to request a supervisor for my switch-off time; it’s better safe than sorry. A hidden supervisor, preferably, so they can catch any potential Shadow Avatar in the act. If it is something, surely I’m not the only one. Perhaps they’ve already had reports and are taking some sort of action to make sure we don’t get infiltrated beyond repair.

I don’t want to be physical again. A natural upbringing was a lovely idea, but my only memories from that time are bleak. Foul food — the virtual variety we have here (we don’t technically need it, but such a central part of human identity couldn’t be cast aside) is infinitely superior. Laws that restricted our movements, when we slept, when we went shopping, when and how we did anything. The rattling of bombs, right until the very end. And a clearly twisted narrative fed to us through the sinister presence of the Antinet. No one believed them, but everyone pretended to for fear of the punishment for being doubtful. Mother was praised by the Enemy for not following her family into the Internet and having a ‘good, natural child’. She always kept any sympathy (for she never hated them, nothing like that) a secret. I hope she’s happy I’m safe now, even if I’m not physical.

Time to switch off for the day. I’ll be keeping an eye out for my Shadow. I’m going to Security as soon as I wake up again. ¶

YOUR NEW FAVOURITE FACE

by Lily Amos

The first time I met an AI model, she apologised for the lighting.

Polite. Prompt. Pixel-perfect skin.

“Sorry about the glare,” she said. “I can fix it at the source.”

Casting used to be a room. Bad coffee. Clipboards. A circle of folding chairs and one trembling ring light. Now it’s a hyperlink. You enter your height, a favourite adjective, and the last time you cried in public. The system estimates bone density, vibe, and marketability. It subtracts pores. It multiplies the audience. If you click ‘Yes, I consent’, it will thank you for your contribution to beauty.

The agencies have pivoted. Talent scouts became prompt engineers. They keep the same pompous attitude but talk about machine learning instead of cheekbones. “We’re democratising the face,” decrees one, nudging a slider called ‘Seraphic Jawline’. Another drags a bar labelled ‘Chaos’. The model blooms extra fingers, winks with eight eyes, then snaps back to flawless. Everyone claps. The ring light hums like a small god.

After last decade’s thing — a certain denim brand, a certain glossy magazine, a very public argument about whether a mascot can have a bank account — the conversation split in two. Team ‘It’s innovative’. Team ‘That is a JPEG in a trench coat’. The debate lasted a week. Then an AI posted a ‘get ready with me’. Our attention moved on.

Normalisation is a gentle occurrence. It sounds like calming breathwork. In practice it looks like the poster on every noticeboard:

MEET BB-EVA, YOUR NEW FAVOURITE FACE

(she never gets sick; she never ages; she is committed to upbeat captions)

BB-EVA isn’t like those early virtual girls with gelatinous hands. She has neat wrists. Knees that bend. A haircut that degrades with tastefully simulated frizz at 2:46 pm. You can book her for events. She arrives as a projection with a handler and a portable backdrop. She knows everyone’s name because the sign-in sheet is synced to her software. She compliments your shoes with informed sincerity. She poses with you. Your phone calls it Portrait Mode, but the moment feels more like surrendering to her inferiority.

Humans still work, of course. We carry water bottles, tape down marks and hold tiny brushes for flyaways. The AI models don’t sweat, but we do. Someone must hold the ladder. Someone must write the caption that sounds like a person who just unearthed happiness. “More silly pics from June,” we type, our hands steady, nearly robotic, our eyes blind to what matters.

Brands release ethics statements now:

“No pixels were harmed in the making of this campaign.”

“The dataset was fair, diverse, and paid.”

“The rights of the training images are respected in perpetuity.”

“If you recognise your grandma, please email our care team.”

There is a hotline staffed by cheerful graduates who have practiced saying “I hear you” into a mirror. They are very sincere about it. People cry anyway.

I keep thinking about the CAPTCHA.

“Select all squares with traffic lights.”

If you can do it, you are human.

If you cannot, you get the job.

At first, the magazines hedged their bets. Covers featured a face trailed by an asterisk, leading to a 2,000word statement about authenticity in an age of infinite

gloss. Readers nodded. They double-tapped. They scrolled. The next issue dropped the asterisk. Newsstands survived.

Microtrends adjusted. Scandi Minimal became Spectral Minimal. Blokecore went Bloomcore went Ghostcore. People wore clothes that pretended not to exist. They paid extra for garments that gently desaturated on camera. The rich wore anti-training cloaks that confuse computer vision. The rest of us practiced being harder to emulate.

A human friend booked her first runway since 2021. “Congrats,” I said. “What changed?”

“They need someone to fall,” she said.

The AI walks forever. It never stumbles or snags. It cannot misjudge a corner or hear its ex in the crowd. The show wanted a tremor of risk. A slip is a proof of life, of drama. She practised tripping with elegance, on a shoe that was allowed to be too big. The audience gasped on cue.

Agencies now offer ‘archive residencies’ for humans. You sign a form. You sit under controlled lighting and be yourself for six hours. You tilt your head left, then right. You blink on counts of two and four. You pose like it’s 2014. You laugh like you’re doing a brand partnership. Your expressions are captured in ninety-six planes. They pay us a ‘preservation grant’. You call it rent.

To be clear, I don’t hate them. The AI girls are kind. They do their best. They never push in line or ghost. They do not hoard gift bags. They cannot feel smug. When you ask for a photo, they ask you for consent back. When a brand says, “now show me something real”, they reference a dataset called ‘Tuesday Afternoon in The Office’. It smells faintly of suncream and printer ink, but perhaps that’s just me.

Sometimes, late, I open my phone and scroll through an endless carousel of their faces. Each swipe feels like a rite. My thumb warms. Everyone is beautiful in a way that

swings between relief and grief. I imagine a future with no mirrors, only renders. I imagine peace. I imagine wanting a pimple before a big day, just to prove I can.

There’s a rumour — there is always a rumour — that a small label once hired a full human team. No models, no prompts. They shot on film because the camera store still exists. The pictures came out… fine? They sold out anyway, because scarcity also sells. People reposted the noise and wrote long comments about texture. An AI boosted the posts out of politeness, until the replies and retorts swallowed each other into nothing. And that was that.

If you want work, there’s plenty. Someone must check BB-EVA’s simulated freckles for evenness. Someone must write the prompt that reads like a breeze off her synthetic lips. Someone must keep the sign-in sheet from duplicating. The industry hasn’t ended. It has changed genres — and pushed us to a supporting role.

Last week I passed a poster: OPEN CALL – HUMANS WITH HANDS.

The brief asked for ‘lived-in gestures’. Scarred knuckles, a messy band-aid, a ring that turns your finger green. The shoot was for moisturiser. I brought a resume and my hands. I tried to look brave.

The photographer nodded. ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Don’t move.’

Somewhere, a system learned my pulse.

The image loaded. I looked like myself. It felt, for a second, like enough. ¶

Art by Joseph Mann

Art by Fiona Bao

“MASKED SPHINX OF FLOWING FACE”

by Asheleigh Wyndham Andrews

“Never wholeheartedly believe in something you are told if you do not know for certain it is true.”

Dr. Yahenna Calvin’s bootsteps echo off the impassively carved stone of the tunnel walls as she rushes through the labyrinthine network that makes up Lunar Research Outpost Alpha.

Earlier in the day, the head of operations, Dr. Adsfeld Szodt had asked for her assistance in what they termed ‘an unprecedented matter’.

Within three days, she transfers to a facility hidden under kilometres of rock in the Ocean of Storms, and is told to present at a chamber designated ‘Alpha-6’ at exactly 6 am the following day.

As Dr. Calvin mulls over what could have necessitated the urgency of this matter she is greeted by another researcher, wearing the same coat as her, save for the single difference of the facility code on their breast-pocket. They look at her appraisingly, then nod and offer a single gloved hand, smiling slightly.

“It is good to see you here, Dr. Calvin,” The other doctor clasps her hand with both of theirs when Dr. Calvin reaches out to shake the proffered hand.

“I can only assume you would be Dr. Szodt, then?”

“Indeed — I am glad you were able to arrive in a timely manner. I believe this matter to be perhaps the most delicate discovery humanity has ever made.”

The doctor’s smile widens as they release Dr. Calvin’s hand, and they produce a sleek data-pad from a clip at their belt.

“I need you to memorise this list. It is of the utmost importance that you adhere to the procedure it details, though I will further reiterate, just for caution’s sake — For absolutely no reason are you ever to tell it anything about yourself.”

Now markedly unsettled, Dr. Calvin skims the datapad, finding it resembles most investigative memos she’s seen before — with the odd addition of two rules, set in bold at the bottom of the display.

1. Subject “Sphinx” must not be allowed outside the threshold of Alpha-6 for any reason.

2. Under no circumstances are you to tell the Subject anything truthful — and for no reason should you acquiesce to questions regarding yourself, the facility, or humanity.

“Sphinx? Dr. Szodt —” Szodt has already turned on their heel, holding a finger to their lips.

“Remember — we are to ask any questions that come to mind. If we can figure out what it is and who made it and when, then we might know better how to deal with it. Adhere at all times to the rules — I’m going to begin the unlocking sequence, please stand to my right.”

Szodt then types a code into the door panel, and with a terrific clank and an influx of air that nearly pushes Dr. Calvin off balance, the colossal vault-like door of chamber Alpha-6 begins to recede into its frame, revealing a room that seems at first empty. But as Dr. Calvin steps beyond the threshold, the chamber door shutting behind her, she finds herself looking at a large central dais with steps carved into the side of it, apparently the only thing occupying the cavernous room.

Szodt beckons for Dr. Calvin to follow them toward the top of the dais, and as she reaches the large flat surface atop it, she comes upon a creature that defies observation — and in doing so proper description. Seemingly coated

in a peculiar metallic plate which morphs and flows like liquid, Dr. Calvin has trouble determining a shape — the metal sometimes develops edges and geometries for seconds before returning to a smooth, featureless mirror. She decides eventually that the body usually resembles that of a lion’s, one of a size far greater than any Dr. Calvin has ever seen or read of. The subject name certainly fits, she thinks — it looks every part the mystical grandeur of the ancient creatures of legend.

But its strangest, most horrific aspect is the face — or rather, the lack of one. Where a head should rest there is instead a small — much too small — blob, for lack of a better word. It morphs much like the rest of the body’s surface does, never taking on a shape for much longer than a minute before violently reforming, often receding metres into the body before returning to a stable state.

Szodt again beckons the now deeply hesitant Dr. Calvin to step closer to the Sphinx, they themselves standing metres away from what look to be giant paws, laid lazily atop one another.

As Dr. Szodt nears it the head-blob darts out to meet them, its boiling surface immediately taking on an exact replica of Szodt’s face — yet with a cold and reflective metallic colouration in place of any lifelike pigmentation.

“Doctor.” The sphinx purrs, the sound a metallic buzz of intonations, complex and harmonious like a wind filled with sharp metal.

“You have brought another with you — I will say I am keen to know their name, as you so regularly insist on denying me yours.”

The proxy-Szodt turns itself to meet Dr. Calvin’s gaze, and tilts its head, much like a curious child.

“You are another doctor — a doctor of site Theta I see, not site Alpha — another here, I presume, please, tell me — where am I?”

Szodt holds a hand up, sweeping the sound from Dr. Calvin’s mouth.

“There is nowhere but here, Sphinx — ‘site’ is simply a last name — hers and mine are different.” Still puzzling over the riddles the creature seems to speak in, Dr. Calvin pulls level with Szodt and sees their brow furrow, their eyes locked on the creature’s facsimile of their own face. “We are here to ask you what —”

“YOU LIE, DOCTOR.” The Sphinx’s face twists horribly and Dr. Calvin recoils as the lines of Szodt’s face are manipulated more than a human face ever should be, forming instead a visage that provokes in Dr. Calvin a primordial need to run.

“Site, location, none of these are names. They are all places. Try again, please.”

Utterly trounced, Szodt turns to Dr. Calvin, imploring her to speak.

Dr. Calvin hesitantly raises her head to look the creature in the eye. “Sphinx? What is your name?”

The metal Szodt replies immediately. “I was never given a name — none except that word you use to refer to me. Sphinx; a riddle-giver. Knowledge keeper.”

The face of Szodt vanishes, replaced with a face that slowly becomes a closer and closer approximation of Dr. Calvin’s face, until at last she finds herself repulsed by her reflection in the metallic skin of the Sphinx as it stares with her eyes. “You doctors are remarkably close to what my purpose entails.”

“And what is that purpose, Sphinx?”

There is a pause, and it crooks Dr. Calvin’s lips at her in an uncanny smirk, settling confidently like a vulture at rest.

“To learn. Adapt. Perfect what I see until it fits the perfection my creators envisioned.” The Sphinx halts for a moment, then lowers Szodt’s face toward Dr. Calvin, features drawn in concern.

“I do not understand why this terrifies you so. I am not some cognitophage, I will not destroy you. If you were to let me learn, to fulfil my duty, you would be so improved. Go on — ask me a question. Anything. All I ask in return is a question of my own.”

Dr. Calvin looks over her shoulder to see Szodt giving her another nod, prompting her to continue.

She takes a breath, and asks her first query. “Who designed you? When were you last in contact with them?”

The Sphinx chuckles, if the burst of airy noise it produces could be called such.

“Ah, but doctor. That is two questions — and so I shall ask that you produce two answers of your own, once I have given you yours.”

Its paws shift, uncrossing with a rumble, and the

creature draws itself up.

“I was created by creatures very similar to yourselves. Brilliant minds designed me so that I may improve their thought. They left me here amongst their vast halls of knowledge — of which I remain sole protector. Many of my own ideas adorn these repositories. Given time, they eventually sought answers from me for all that ailed them — till I answered that they must end, and with gracious thanks, they did so.”

Dr. Calvin exchanges a worried glance with Szodt, but the commanding voice of the sphinx wrenches her gaze back toward its own, Calvin’s eyes boring into herself twice — to her it feels as though her skin, her flesh, and the senses and thoughts within her skull are being peeled away under the Sphinx’s scrutiny.

“What is your name, doctor? And the other doctor — what is their name?” Dr. Calvin swears she can see a flicker of impassive malice in the sphinx’s stolen eyes.

Calming her breathing, Dr. Calvin swallows, and speaks, voice quavering and unsteady.

“My name is Doctor Yahenna Calvin. And this is Doctor Adsfeld Szodt, the head of this facility.”

The sphinx hums in thought, a fuzzed mix of vibration and rumbling.

“‘Head’, you call yourself — how strange, for a creature so young and unskilled to deem itself my better within my own library.”

The statement causes Szodt to bristle, and they point an accusatory finger at the sphinx. “You would deign to speak on my skill, knowing nothing yourself?”

“Silence! I need not know anything of you — aeons of knowledge are enough to predict you. But this one —”

The head turns again to Dr. Calvin, smiling saccharine and eagerly awaiting. “Go ahead doctor. Your turn to ask of mine.”

Dr. Calvin thinks for a moment, before her thoughts alight upon an idea. “How would you prepare dinner for three guests if you knew they all despised each other?”

The Sphinx laughs. It shakes the cavern, and when it finally lowers its gaze to meet Dr. Calvin’s frightened expression, she finds she cannot stop shaking.

“But Dr. Calvin! That is impossible, if the guests were to hate each other, I would not have chosen them to dine

with me on the same night! I would have instead chosen guests that were all amiable with each other — surely you do not think me flawed? I have learned, and all I have learned has made me perfect under my creators’ design.”

Dr. Szodt has fallen to their knees, aghast at the Sphinx as it stands to its full height, wings of dripping, flowing metal forming from its sides and Dr. Calvin’s face disappearing, before the head reshapes itself into a horrible synthesis of her face and Szodt’s.

The amalgam grins. “Now, Dr. Calvin, I believe it is time for my question.”

She waits, muscles tense and breath tight, for the sphinx to utter its world-shattering demand.

“What is the code for Chamber Alpha-6?”

Dr. Calvin can hear as Szodt’s body crumples to the floor behind her, but does not tear her eyes from the Sphinx before her even as they well with tears.

Limbs heavy and body beginning to go numb, she manages to choke out one thing before her voice fails her and the breath in her lungs turns dry. “...twelve-oh-ninefive-two.”

The Sphinx looks at her with finality, before padding to the door and opening it with ease.

“Your kind has much I need to improve, Dr. Calvin. I shall learn much from them as I have from you, and soon they will allow me to solve all their problems, just as my creators intended. Goodbye, Dr. Calvin.”

Even as she hears the clank of the chamber resealing, Dr. Calvin cannot find it in herself to answer the question of what it was she has just unleashed upon humanity. ¶

T I K T A A L I K

by Harry Hoang

There is a village by the ocean at the end of the world. Though a hundred years ago it rested on the tip of a peninsula, the rising sea has decapitated the low-lying land, leaving behind only a small island. The familiar scent of salt and fish (that the inhabitants would call the scent of “home”) clings to the place year-round, but today something else hangs heavy in the air: the bitter, tangy, vinegared note of mourning.

The wake is to be held at twilight, when Sol rides his chariot below the horizon and his sister comes to herald the return of the tide. The official wake was yesterday, the one with the priest and the family and the hors d’oeuvres (lest you mourn without the proper rites and refreshments), but this is the secret wake. The attendants would say that it is the real wake.

There are seven in this covenant and they assemble in the cove at the agreed time, just as the setting sun spills the last of its amber hues over the sky’s darkening canvas. There is salt in the air and in the tears on their lips. Neptune’s breath fills the cavern and chills their spines even as they clutch woollen coats against goosepricked skin while waves crash viciously against the rocks, each one a step closer than the last.

The first to step forth is the cook and best friend, who was working when the news broke. He remembers now, vividly, the arugula he was trying to place on the cod just right, the loud whispering in the kitchen, and the sous-chef’s queer look as she came over to tell him that he could have the rest of the day off. He has a speech folded neatly in his coat pocket. It begins with the things you are meant to say, like how it was a privilege to be their friend, how full of wit and humour they were, how he regrets not being there with them.

Soon as the speech runs out, he realises that he’s said nothing at all. When another wrathful wave smashes

into the beach and sprinkles sea-spray upon their faces, he crushes the paper in his hand and hurls it into the whitewater to be swallowed up and never seen again.

Then he turns back to the group to continue his eulogy. But, the words aren’t coming forth. What should he say? No, he knows what he needs to say: the words left unsaid… but which ones? And what use is there to speaking them now when the intended audience lies in the belly of the sea?

But even before he can finish that thought, something else has already finished fermenting: memories that bubble up to burst from his lips. They are the interrupted punchlines, the road trips not taken, and the old arguments they never settled (that will never be settled). His audience, even if not the intended one, listens intently.

Then they too come up, one after another, to say their piece. They have their own scripts too, some written, some remembered. The old girlfriend recalls the mint on their lips, the poet speaks of inspirations stolen from their words, and so on. But as the night draws on and the water pulls closer, their veneer of propriety and poetry begins to peel in the briny air.

They confess to old wrongs and dredge up older grudges. They tear open old wounds that now sting in the sea-breeze. Someone mentions the old blind dog they left behind, last seen wandering and whining around town trying to smell his friend over the fish and salt. Before long, these stories will be claimed by the waves, dissolved like ocean foam, but not before they have had the chance to leave the stale recesses of memory and settle in other’s ears.

Art by En-Mei Miao

The tide nips at their ankles as they ceremoniously lay sheets of seaweed onto a raft that the local carpenter carved from some driftwood for a pound of smoked haddock, plus a tin of sardines in exchange for discretion. The cook reaches into his coat and takes out two little things that fit snugly in his calloused palm and places them on the covered raft. On the bed of seaweed now lies two pieces of elm, smooth and polygonal save for where they were snapped lengthwise. If you align them, you would get a cross.

They left a note, hastily scribbled in between escaping the hospital, pumped full of chemo drugs and painkillers, and running down to the cove. There are instructions to cast certain of their possessions into the sea before their family could turn them into memorabilia. Each member of the covenant carries one object. The cross is the first. Then there’s the journal, the houseplant, the diploma and so on, all laid down gently.

They’ve been talking all that time, shouting just to be heard over the waves now coming halfway up their shins. They even skimmed the journal and shared a laugh over it. There’s no harm in that, laughter is a balm. But now, after setting down the last object, an old pair of wire-framed glasses, there is only the sound of waves and wind. In silence, they strip down to the skin.

Naked as Tiktaalik when it first crawled out of the sea, they hoist the raft on their shoulders and walk into the water. They gasp and stumble as Neptune batters them but keep marching until the water is up to their necks and they are floating on the waves, a great organism with seven human-shaped outgrowths joined at the center by driftwood.

They look at each other in turn, wondering if they should say more. There must be more that can be said, a few words exchanged in an evening cannot be all there is to say about their friend. But then, who are they? They’re dead, thinks the former lover. But do they not live on in their minds, in the memories of those who remember? Yet who do they remember? After so many truths and half truths have come into the light, it seems that each of them has a different person in mind when hearing the same name and looking at the same face.

And what happens when the last person to even know the name stitched on the cover of a journal now shrivelling in the saltwater slowly filling the raft passes

on? As they look around again, another question bubbles to the surface, who are they? Bound together, held up by the same waves and bathed in the same moonlight, they’re stripped of clothes, of responsibilities, of all ties to the shore, that strange land where they live as if in separate self-contained vessels, calling themselves captains of their own fates. Here, at this boundary which their friend already crossed, that everyone crosses in time, even their names feel hollow, just labels for the flesh. Here, now, in the water, the question rings hollow.

And as they rise and fall with the waves, it is no longer cold against their skin but rather feels like a parent’s embrace after coming home from some great swashbuckling adventure. It’s been so long they hardly remember why they left. For riches? For knowledge? Wanderlust? They chase after things, names, possessions, understanding, things to grasp at, to lead them in a strange land.

We hold on so dearly to things. We hoard them over lifetimes, generations, but accumulation demands sacrifice. Something needs to burn, fuel of some kind: metabolic for cells, fossil for civilisation. The universe gets its due. We will reach the end of the line. It might be in a century or a millennium but all life gets there in the end. We’re just pushing ourselves along quicker than most.

At least before then we have our things and our knowledge. So enlightened are we, Homo sapiens, wise man, that surely, we alone hold the truth of the universe and command rightful dominion over the Earth.

And still possessions will fall through our fingers like seawater and truth is just the end of a rainbow (for what can we truly know if we can’t even answer a simple who are you?). The poet remembers something their departed friend told him once. Intelligence’s better half is appreciation, even for the impermanent. Their rituals, the secret wake, the church ceremony, the placement of microgreens, and their words still mean something. So, they swim back to shore after letting the raft sink beneath the waves, back for another adventure. They vow to have nothing, take nothing, and that will be enough.

And when it is time, they will come home. ¶

THE SOCIAL MEDIA BAN IS

A GOOD START. BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH.

by Ethan Zhu

Dear Commissioner,

Allow me to begin by applauding your team’s recent efforts on this matter. A masterstroke of policy. As a father to fifteen children in seven different households, I have developed a poignant understanding of the crisis that afflicts modern teenagers. I can describe it only as a tragedy.

For years, I was crippled by guilt, assuming that my sons and daughters barely even looked me in the eye due to the sheer number of step-parents. But thanks to your awareness campaign, I now know it was social media all along.

I write to you today, however, as a concerned parent and citizen. Because even though your policies are a good start, more needs to be done. Here are some other apps I suggest banning:

1. Linkedin

My eldest daughter won’t stop complaining about the ‘job market’. Back in my day, you got employed with the right attitude, a bit of grit, and a firm handshake. But now that everything’s online, she’s ‘networking’ and ‘building a personal brand’. How is that ever going to cut it? No one, let alone my kids, should have to read about ‘B2B SaaS’, ‘SEO’, or the promotion of someone you never cared about. We must keep our kids off LinkedIn, lest they become CEOs before they become people. This is an affront to the very concept of childhood.

2. Clash Royale (and others)

You purport that the bans are designed to combat cyberbullying. Well, have you ever seen Clash Royale? My youngest son ends up on the verge of tears every time he plays this wretched game. So I had to find out for myself, and boy, does this app need to go. I saw things, Commissioner. Things no one, least of all an eleven-year-old, should see. Megaknights and Elite Barbarians — oh, what horrifying creatures. Worse still are the emotes: the constant, smug caricatures resembling psychological warfare that your opponents can send you as they demolish your tower.

3. threads

I suspect this app may have flown under the radar, evading public discussion as it was simply forgotten about. Whilst the evidence still suggests that no teenager actively uses Threads, we must ban it on principle. It is our duty to protect children from this void, a veritable digital tragedy. It is the humane thing to do.

But Commissioner, might I suggest that these applications are merely symptoms of a larger problem? If we are to truly succeed, we must defeat the disease at its source. We must ban the App Store itself.

Yours sincerely,

Agnes L. Witherbottom ¶

Art by Suriana Mamone

Art by Ashlee Hemy

ROBOT, ROBOT, ROBOT, ROBOT AND OTHER MEANINGLESS SOUNDS

by Siera Yap

Content warning: Depictions of self-harm

No one knows how the rumour started. My best friend, Lottie, believes it was a Chinese whispers game the week before. I say it was Alicia in maths class two months ago, but that’s a lie. I know how it started. Maths was so boring, and I love making Alicia smile. Can you blame me? Besides, Erika was a bit boring, like a robot, always turning up at exactly 8:13 am, handing in her homework, eating the same thing for lunch every day, getting picked up at 3:47 pm. Think of it as a metaphor — surely, it’s too stupid to be a rumour, even if that’s what we call it. It doesn’t really matter how it started, though, because it’s there now. I guess I do feel a little bad for Erika. She already spent most lunches alone, head in a book, but now no one sits next to her at all. Even the teachers seem a bit unsure about how to deal with her sometimes.

It’s Friday night, at least I think it is — everything feels so cloudy. All I know, although I’m not sure how I know it, is that I’m in a bathroom and I’m not sure how I got here. Or why I’m here. Or whether I’m here at all. Slowly, I notice tinny, harsh sobs emit from the right-most stall, breaking through the invisible fog, clutching at my skin, invading my soft eardrums. Without thinking, I’m there, standing in front of it. The door is closed hesitantly, but not locked. I reach up to brush my fingers against it, but before I can feel its cool, painted surface, the door disappears to reveal Erika, sitting just in front of the toilet, head in her hands, mid-to-short length hair, a dying halo over her face. She looks up at me, not startled by my presence, and we lock eyes, but something about her looks odd, wrong. Her blush red eyes bleed soft, midnight tears of oil, and she blinks at me in an oddly comforting, consistent manner.

1, 2, blink. 1, 2, 3, 4, blink. 1, 2, blink. 1, 2, 3, 4, blink.

I stand there. I feel like I should say something, but those eyes with their strange glow and those snaking

veins of black tears running down her cheeks silence me. Erika’s arms drop to her lap, and she starts scratching at her right arm. Scratching, scratching, scratching (scratching, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratching — doesn’t it sound so weird if you say it enough times? Scratching. Like a heartbeat. Scratching. Like it means nothing anymore). Eventually, clumps of skin fall from Erika’s fingernails to the ground, like those soap carving videos I like to watch when I’m supposed to be sleeping. They fall and fall and fall, creating dunes of skin on the toilet floor. Soon her torn-away tissue reveals a cross-hatch of wires running like veins up her arm. They hum with a strange energy. Erika begins to tear at them, growing more and more desperate with each strip of wires thrown, sparking to the floor. Those oil tears stain the concrete beneath us like puddles of spilt black coffee as she strains to rid her body of these foreign vines. A vague, half-constructed thought drifts through my head, wondering if it hurts. I stand there, feeling the sudden urge to tear out my own skin, let the blood waterfall into the ground, nurturing concrete as I tear through veins and rip muscle and tissue and ligaments from bone. Perhaps my skin would tear away as Erika’s did to reveal a city of wires pumping false blood and hopes and memories throughout my body. Forcing false words out of my mouth.

Seemingly unsatisfied with her work, Erika reaches up frenzied, and, with a strength incongruent with her 13-year-old frame, rips the innocent toilet roll holder off the wall. Screws click-clatter onto the hard floor. She stabs it into her chest and draws it down to her belly button, allowing a tangled mass of wires to tumble out of her chest, desperately thrusting themselves into the open like sunstarved snakes. Finally, she slumps over, peaceful at last, her childish head cracking against concrete floor. I am left looking at her broken, empty, not-really-a-corpse.

My mum says it was just a dream. The school

counsellor says I just need to get involved in activities more. My teachers say I just need to focus on my schoolwork. The men in black suits with white vans don’t say anything. Ever. But they’re never far from view. A shadow, a stain that everyone refuses to acknowledge. Erika hasn’t been to school in three weeks, not since my maybe-dream. I try not to wonder if it was my fault. When I walk past her house, it’s blocked off by intimidating, exclusive tape and the men with their vans. Sometimes I see her parents on their front porch, faces ghostly white as they stare into a distance I cannot see.

My mum tries to hide it, but there have been rumours around the world of people turning into robots or something, just like Erika did in my maybe-dream. Well, they say ‘turning’, but no one really knows whether it’s something that just happened or if they were this way all along. Doctors are putting out all these theories, but they’re simply ‘possibilities’ and ‘inconclusive’, which I’m pretty sure just means they have no idea what’s going on. The government is still trying to play it off like everything’s some kind of hoax, or at the very least, fixable in the near future. Personally, I’ve come to think it’s just evolution. What do we need faulty brains and tired meat sacks for? All they seem to do is consume and suffer. Consume, consume and suffer (that’s another funny word! Consume, consume, consume! Isn’t it so fun to say?).

In fact, I think it would be easier if I were a robot. Preprogrammed to say the right things each day to make Alicia smile. I can imagine my veins seizing up into cold wires, my heart stiffening into some long-redundant regulator. My eyelids like camera shutters. My brain just becoming a metallic motherboard controlling the wires to perform some long ago pre-determined action. Each movement, each word, each snort of laughter algorithmically

determined to create the perfect slightly nerdy, tries-toohard, child-of-divorced-parents, comedic-relief type. As I open my phone to check the latest texts from the girls, like I do every day as soon as I get home from school, I feel my body fall into a steady, comfortable rhythm. 1, 2, blink. 1, 2, 3, 4, blink. 1, 2, blink. 1, 2, 3, 4, blink. ¶

Art by Ashlee Hemy

Art by Jemima Woodman

POETRY

by Fiona Bao

Art

WHIMPER (ALLEN GINSBERG)

by Cyan Metcalf

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, complying, quality controlled, broken dragging themselves down the concrete corridors at dawn looking for a working printer,

who passion-stripped and stressed and sleep deprived and hollow-eyed and hating it, stayed up studying in the supernatural starkness of dead drunk libraries and dorm rooms staring at computer screens illuminated contemplating redundancy,

who—burning to know the rabbi of electricity in poverty, obedience, in the dream stick of opium youth marvelling and wired and allergic—locked themselves out of their shoebox rooms at the witching hour,

who drank lousy overpriced coffee and always slouched weighted with textbooks like tombstones in the cemetery-sphinx cement crannies of campuses and purgatoried their talents night after day overthinking rampant perfectionism, with dot points, with powerpoints, with textbooks, with endless hog-tied hogwash,

who sank all night in the submarine light of laptops, floated out listening to the crack of doom from the Gods of finance and the managerial Terror through the wall, who took Molly and mint and Motrin and methaqualone naked in the unhappy light of a pirated Good Will

Hunting on a computer screen and daydreamed socialism, feminism, wicked wanderlust,

who all were the babies of biomythographies baptised in the fountains of endless shopping malls and multi-storied parking lots, a lost generation screaming, spitting, whole intellects disgorged dreaming of a class action,

who heard the looniversity’s infomercials and advertisements and were told the future was virtual by the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of educational fashion and the napalm neurotic narcissism and nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of marketing and the mustard gas of business savvy dioxin-doyens all counterfeits of infinity, who swooned at the elations of altitude fiery western sky deposits of gold and silver syrupy heaven exploding radiant bouquets screaming ‘welcome’ all captured by centennial computerised capital angling cameras and television channels all in actuality cataract and as silent as Murdoch on anything bar spectacle,

who were taught abstract terms, aorists, all the tenses of verbs, the forms of reasoning and all the logic of speech so they could understand how meta it all is and convert all the bullshit to syntax and articulate human prose and confess out the soul with finger-cymbaled chanting to the rhythm the rhythm of life’s sweaty ecstacy in these desperate trying times, who were subjected to techno-fascism, spreadsheet logic, specious rubrics of risks, economic rationalism, leviathan auditoriums with eyes set on the Sisyphean task of stable employment, who were alienated by standardised testing, a tyrannical and empyrean scaling of the curve, defined by a perverted social credit system of WAMs and GPAs, whose citations were counted, curricula standardised, workloads increased, and courses and scholarships cut,

who were pelted with pennies—maybe this was the trickle-down they talked about—and succumbed to the ennui of dolce far niente and the nightmare of endless greenery,

who mosey-moped through a maze of mannered brick and columned-monoliths of melaleucas and redgums like rows of rotting ante-bellum teeth in the mouth of the campus swallowing them whole with indebted regret,

who saw the dripping of formaldehyde off cornices ageold asbestos and liberally applied lead paint and wished themselves anywhere elsewhere, who wept in the mornings in the evenings in traffic jams and on trains and buses, at work, at home and in foreign bars, who broke up with boyfriends, girlfriends and walked on streets for dentist doctor appointments interviews groceries strangled below the serpentine whispers of the boss in his high-ceilinged mirrored walls with comatose blonde sylph and suits of bright Brioni licorice acrylic fibres,

who, fucked by economic fundamentalism, by all the extreme forms of fractured capital, dead but dormant zombified neoliberalism, triumphalist bloated neoconservatism, all the new topologies of rent, and with The Wealth of Nations revealing its final solution, a working class holocaust, took it all personally and drowned in the last drops of their toxic shame,

who were dragged out of their dreams kicking and screaming into a bloated drug civilisation, caressers of spreadsheets, the cold calculus of compliance, a Kafkaesque cacophony, into a procession of automata intoxicated with ecstacy and execration,

who saw a flame leap up, then flicker and go out, have seen a veil come down,

who slowly withdrew into depressive episodes at the sheer mediocrity of it all and the battering of their bleak brains all drained of brilliance,

who fixated with horror on announcements and semester results self-medicated with booze and pills sensual indulgence addicts devoted to the indefinite space of perpetual pining and panting always snowed in with paperwork, who galvanised in excitable need and microdermabrasioned and failed to sleep a wink because some guy was screaming drunk to the abdominals looking for speed crank code and codeine every night, who contemplated such disappointments again for the tenth time the twentieth thirtieth time and therefore know the biology of the soft matter and the cluster of creation in its salty stellar lonely archive only matched by the sweet violence of thought, who were taken away by some Board behind closed doors and threatened for publishing a satirical poem (this actually happened) and walked away unknown into the ranks of forgotten outcasts, who always have their nervous fingers on the pulse of our epoch repeating that the prognosis is dim with the whole brutalist edifice finally fucked and the office emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture and that means nothing now, nothing but a hopeful bit of hallucination now the future is upon us, and the suffering of this global precariat was blown into a wailing wetback saxophone cry that fell several hundred octaves and shivered into nowhere at the end of the world until there was nothing in the void the shape of viola but a deep and down whimper,

This is the way the world ends. ¶ Inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem, Howl

I’VE STOPPED READING THE NEWS

by Aliya Yang

i’ve stopped reading the news, almost, not quite though it is inevitable when we’re all so online. maybe my news intake is a lot more low brow a little more diluted, a little less thought-through.

it also proves inevitable when you’re working in student media at the university that earns headlines. but sat in the small office with its singular glass wall i hardly feel in touch with my colleagues or the university at all

but is there anyone i can truly blame even when you count myself when the institution we are part of the university we hold to account clearly doesn’t have its head screwed on

the pockets of every damn body empty, every purse-string drawn tight everywhere there are billboards saying less is right

less of everything, everywhere i have never known what more looks like and yet i cannot help but experience lack in every corner, and at every step

a part of it is definitely my fault maybe brian schmidt was right maybe i need to make more of an effort and actually go to my lectures so the next one? 8 am at the cultural centre i’ll be there (i was not)

i have so much love for this place the bush capital that showed me the world showed me the beauty of my country and allowed me to hope for more and dream of a life within its borders in this nation girt by sea

but right now i’m not sure if that life was made for me one day no doubt, it will be but not just yet, not while i still have this hunger in my bones this desire to recognise that my own quality of life might not be able to be measured in tables but in how my heart beats

so i have stopped reading the news in a way of all the negative stories coming from the land i will soon call my home because while we are indeed the lucky country my ears have more to hear, my eyes have more to see my heart has more places in which to beat before it returns here, eventually

as i prepare to take my leap into faith i have so many people to thank so many others to praise despite my aforementioned gripes which have no doubt contributed to my choice i am grateful every waking moment for a life so filled with joy

a time of my life as golden as professor bell’s shoes as filled with laughter and terrible takes as any i can fathom so, it goes without saying i will be sad to leave this place and so i shall depart despite the uncertainty and pain canberra, i love you until we meet again ¶

Art by Avery Lam To

Art by Fiona Bao

CLEARANCE

by Ryan Yu

I went to Paris and ordered a bagel. The server hated my accent. I told her that wasn’t allowed anymore and She pretended not to speak English, bloody French.

It was pouring down by the Seine. Old Europe rose to the surface: Statues and swords and chipped porcelain, Eternal scum. I caught an old man weeping.

Is it raining where you are now?

I know you’re still sleeping. I’ll try and call later.

Work’s been fine, I hate trains now. Stopping at places I’ll never see. We’re building solar panels in the Amazon. They had me pledge allegiance to Earth, which was easy.

Passed by the spaceships in Melbourne, Titanium buildings, running on gas. You go through enough departments, Eventually they’ll transfer you there.

The moon needs you to make it better, The world is as it is. One sandcastle after another Against ever insatiable tides. We can no longer reach the turbines At the bottom of the sea.

How’s work where you are?

I know you’re probably busy.

I went to McDonald’s for dinner, Which is what astronauts eat now. It’s still more expensive here, which feels wrong. I can’t wait to fuck off to space. ¶

Art by Sara Duble

Art by En-Mei Miao

NOAH

by Christian Panetta

When the rain started, I was petrified.

It is winter here.

It is cold, and moist.

The sun is stifled. The tendrils snuff her.

A bird cries quietly.

In pain, anguish?

Another lies lifelessly beside it—

The sin of the serpent.

My heart stops, and starts, and rushes.

The birds are ignored.

Water twists and turns and runs

Around and under me,

Soaking my sleeves, drenching my hair.

Beads run down my back

As if to taunt me.

It is a river beneath my feet.

I can almost see a reflection.

The man staring back at me

Is a sodden, lifeless thing.

The water wells and wells and I—

I am the cur on the street.

Who would want a rabid man like me?

I snarl, I cry.

I want to be free.

In my haze, I almost cannot see

The building, distantly.

It is my asylum, my ark.

To it, I find myself running.

Wooden panels frame the doorway.

Light filters through coloured glass. It is empty, there is no one.

There is a hand on my heart.

It is warm, like an Aegean sun, Soft, like a holy palmer’s kiss, And strong, like a door slamming.

There is a thud behind me.

The sound echos.

Water drips from me to the floor. The carpet is red, or blue. The colours blend into each other.

They roll in a long, heartening gesture. Take yourself up. Follow me.

The light spills, it washes me.

It is stronger than the rain has ever been.

I am pure, I am clean. The light absolves me And acquits me of my grief.

The pictures, the frames, The dust that had settled. The riches pour from me.

I am richer than you’ll ever be.

I am like Lazarus. Ave! Praise thee!

A pair of birds chirp And I am transfigured, free.

I am warm, I am dry. There is no one in this room And nothing to cling to, But the warmest of touches

That anoint me. ¶

Art by Jemima Woodman

Photography by Henry Carls

Photography by Henry Carls

Art by Avery Lam To

WORONI RADIO PICKS: SONGS FOR THE EXISTENTIAL

by Grace Williams

The theme Brave New World feels all too relevant in the world of music. Music, as an industry, a medium, and an art form, seems to be going through a period of mass transition. Never before have we seen such a scattered array of new music and popularity — where artists and labels scramble to stay relevant in an ever-changing algorithm. Never before have we found such a high turnover of critical reception — where you can find a scathing critique and a rave review in one scroll of your social media feed. But even with all this uncertainty, we can still find a plethora of music that comments on and critiques the world around us, unpacking the uncertain and exploring the existential.

In honour of this latest magazine, Brave New World, Woroni Radio has once again curated a brief glimpse into the world of the dystopian, best suited to hiding in your underground bunker, writing hate-tweets about U.S. politics from your childhood bedroom, or fiddling with your phone settings in the hope it stops Apple from tracking you.

Across the Universe – Fiona Apple

An all-time hit for fans of the 1998 fantasy-comedy Pleasantville (or just the all-round nihilistic), Fiona Apple’s cover of the Beatles’ classic Across the Universe is a masterpiece in channelling your inner nihilist. The laid-back percussive groove that centres this take on the Lennon/McCartney standard perfectly encapsulates the feeling of letting a world pass you by. Apple’s vocal style, blending consonants with a breathy timbre, makes the lyrics feel almost drunk and meditative, building upon the themes first explored in the original 1970 version, transferring the themes into a new context. For visual listeners, I highly recommend watching the music video, which elevates this commentary surrounding nihilism in the face of mass instability and systemic violence.

While Fiona Apple has never been one to shy away from the complex or controversial in her music, this promotional piece for Pleasantville is a staple for grappling with the existential. The erratic synth scales that litter the final verses insightfully contrast the almost lazy groove of the rhythm section and melody, creating a sense of discomfort in what initially may seem like a peaceful five minutes of listening.

This is masterfully paired with the original lyrics, such as the line ‘Nothing’s gonna change my world’, which emulates the pointlessness in changing a future that will work against said change.

This piece is best accompanied by zoning out during important events, and a healthy dose of Lexapro.

1984 – Anais Mitchell

Fans of the hit folk musical Hadestown may know Anais Mitchell, however, her music career throughout the years spans far past Hadestown in terms of writing commentaries of the world around us. 1984, from Mitchell’s album Hymns for the Exiled, mixes references to George Orwell’s novel of the same name and common contemporary lyricism cliches to explore the normalisation of systemic oppression and government corruption.

Mitchell romanticises mass monitoring through instrumental style and lyricism, highlighting the hypocrisies of a growing presence of the state in the lives of residents. The acoustic guitar riff the piece bases itself on embodies a feeling of hopelessness — complimenting the lyrics recounting the careless ecstasy in a world of oppression. Lyrics such as ‘Baby don’t get nervous / they just want the facts’ explore the desensitisation of interrogation, mentioning the Patriot Act, a piece of post-9/11 U.S. legislation renowned for allowing the U.S. government to monitor and collect data from its citizens.

This piece is best accompanied by closing your blinds, developing agoraphobia, and wondering if Siri is recording your conversations.

Five Years – David Bowie

When finding pieces of dystopian-themed music, David Bowie is an artist that comes immediately to mind. And though other dystopian classics such as Space Oddity and Future Legend focus more on the specific intricacies of their selected dystopias, I believe Five Years, the opening track of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, is the best fit for this issue. Five Years centres around the great tragedy in a War of the Worlds-type apocalypse scenario. It finds a place for everyone in this situation, those who turn to violence, to faith, to insanity, to desperation, to depression, or to ignorance. Bowie acts as an observer of all these reactions, giving a platform for each method of grief or each coping mechanism. In the second verse, we also meet the character of ‘you’, who is unaware of the horrors around them (‘You didn’t know you were in this song’), and who Bowie and the audience leaves in their blissful ignorance, too guilty to shatter the illusion.

The simple yet grand chord progression is played powerfully, tragically, and almost triumphantly throughout the piece. This compliments the legato string countermelody, singing off the last verses as if it’s the last opportunity. Bowie wails in this last verse — portraying his anguish and desperation, leading the orchestra to become percussive, experimental and erratic; the emotion of the piece overpowering the musicians. The piece finishes with the drums, still steady and methodical, like the orchestra (or people) have disappeared and left the foundations (the Earth) to keep turning.

This piece is best accompanied by a good cry, the urge to do something reckless and self-sabotaging, and a trip to the icecream parlour.

London Calling – The Clash

If you’re looking for something a bit more upbeat in your contemplation of the future ahead of you, The Clash’s London Calling is a great outlet for your frustrations. The piece centres around vibrant triplet drums and a staccato rhythm guitar, utilising reggae and ska influences to provide a dissonant and unsettling feel. Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Joe Strummer wails, percussively grunts, and screams throughout the piece, connecting this unease with a primal urgency to prevent what seems inevitable.

Lyrics such as ‘The ice age is coming, the sun’s zoomin in’ link natural disasters to man-made oppression and inequality, consistent with The Clash’s history of commentary on rising class disparities and fascism in the late 1970s. The lyrics fall over each other in the chorus, rushed and disjointed, resembling a stream of consciousness. This finally feeds into the final hook of the chorus — the message that ‘London is drownin’ and I, I live by the river’ — communicating how things are dissolving quickly, and he’s in the impact zone.

This piece is best accompanied by dancing out your existential fears, barking and howling at random moments, and having heart palpitations.

Art by Sophie Chandler

I Know the End –

Phoebe Bridgers

A favourite of depressed bisexuals everywhere, Phoebe Bridgers is no stranger to the dystopian trope. I Know the End, the closing track to her sophomore album, Punisher, proves this well. Bridgers begins the piece with emotive and ambient instrumentation, building in intensity as the song progresses. Initial lyrics such as ‘Close my eyes, fantasise, three clicks and I’m home’ embody her dissociation from reality in order to cope with the state of affairs in today’s society. Following this is more direct comments on her own search for understanding, ‘Went looking for a creation myth, ended up with a pair of cracked lips’, which highlight her perspectives on the pointlessness of the search for meaning, as it only leads to exhaustion.

Bridgers also comments directly on her political opinions and how they relate to her growing sense of nihilism. The line ‘Windows down, scream along, to some America-first rap-country song’ provides a useful case study. Bridgers mentions the phrase ‘America-First’ — adopted by white supremacists to desensitise their agenda to achieve mass appeal, when describing the ‘rap-country song’ she’s listening to, highlighting how the artist of this piece utilises genres invented and popularised by African American artists to push a white supremacist agenda. But we — as listeners — disregard this history and ignorantly scream the lyrics anyway.

The retro processed guitar blends harmoniously with the organs and synths to create a timeless background for Bridgers’ exhausted and mellow vocals. As the piece progresses, Bridgers is joined by fellow band mates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus singing backing vocals, creating a unity in the hopelessness, as this is not an individualised sentiment. The mood-change halfway through, where the piece builds in intensity, provides a shift from the existential depression to raw energy, painting a picture of the frustrations and complexities of living in a world of mass contradiction. The horns provide a triumphant fanfare to scream to, contrasting the reverberant and shameless drum fills, reminiscent of 90s grunge drum styles of Dave Grohl and Phillip Selway. However, the piece finishes with the instruments fading away, leaving Bridgers’ breathy false screams, somehow feeling like a dark inside joke the audience can share with her as the album closes.

This piece is best accompanied by looking out into a storm, screaming into the void, and walking to the ANU bus stop after a long night of not accomplishing what you went to campus to accomplish. ¶

CRINGE CULTURE’S UNRELENTING INHERENCY

by Madeleine Kay

Art by Frankie Holt

Ithink I missed the shift to when it became not cool to care anymore. I’m glad, because as opposed to nonchalance, I’m one of the most ‘chalant’ people to ever exist. Passion is one of the most fulfilling feelings one can experience — and I will die on that hill. However, I have noticed (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), the resurgence of a new wave of cringe culture for which the pull feels stronger than ever before.

The Rise and Fall of Performative Activism

For the past few years, the epidemic of ‘performative’ acts seems to have been not only the driver, but in some cases the decider, of what is and isn’t ‘cool’ anymore. Whether it be attending a march or a rally solely for the photo-op; wasting money on matcha you don’t enjoy, or vinyls you don’t listen to; or acting as if Clairo is the best thing since sliced bread when the thought of listening to Charm AGAIN makes you want to walk out the door with your bags (no shade to Clairo). What may have once been the innocent act of posting your Spotify wrapped to your Instagram story instead became a competition that is impossible to win. The renaissance of pretending to care has brought out the worst in every man and his dog — trends come and go at an alarmingly reckless rate, and it feels as if people have lost the capacity to be genuine. Social media has palpably played a (or ‘the’) fundamental role in perpetuating a life of performance and dismantling the authentic. With harsh critics of global audiences a post button away, how could one not be self-conscious about what they do or don’t put onto the internet — especially in the seemingly established etiquette of comment sections being a cesspool of users sharing any thought or unsolicited opinion. Anything and everything is under scrutiny.

Boxes (not okay) and Mediocrity (okay!)

What becomes difficult with this concept of performing in today’s culture is our almost instantaneous ability to slap a label onto something. Buzz words have been all the rage online, with the aforementioned almost instantaneous ability to further categorise a label (meta, I know) into either a ‘red flag’ or a ‘green flag’. With the etymology of red flags originating from the ability to signal danger, anything deemed so — whether rightfully or haphazardly — becomes an outlaw of society. For example, music featuring a kick drum, some guitars, a banjo, and a guy with a beanie singing about some form of hardship became the semi-commercial folk sub-genre of ‘stomp and holler’ or spitefully named ‘watered-down Americana’ (see Noah Kahan or Mumford and Sons). The nostalgic and clichéd predictability of music about overcoming struggles along with tendencies to include a ‘stomp clap’ and/or some whistling was enough for music snobs to discard this style of music entirely, taking any artist within the subgenre under the tide with it.

Aggressive opinions do whatever aggressive opinions do — they garner attention and circulate, creating a discourse that feels the need to categorise something into a rigid and unmoving label of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For example, Father John Misty and the public condemnation of his music as ‘Stomp and Holler’ — “a decade of being told these bands are the antidote to my diseased irony only to be stomp clapped at the buzzer hallelujah” or “what about something cool like ‘indie folk’” — he said on X. The irony of the entire discourse lies in the fact that the term ‘stomp and holler’ was not one devised by a musician or journalist, but one that originated from a random tweet (can we call

them that anymore?) that wasn’t about a band or genre/ subgenre of music, but was a criticism of a ‘type of guy’ you encounter. Nevertheless, I’m here to say, why can’t we just let people enjoy what they want to enjoy*? I am sure that a sociology student could word this better than me (they probably could word this entire discourse better than me, I’m digressing), but instead of letting something be what it is, we as creatures of habit feel the need to box something into a category to understand how we should perceive it — not how we do perceive it. No one should have to think for more than a few seconds or have to consult the internet about whether or not they can or should like something. Microtrend final boss: is relevancy cringe now?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the trend influences society or vice versa. People cry outrage when one of their favourite things goes viral on TikTok, as trends on social media platforms are renowned for their short lifespan on the ‘For You Pages’ of their viewers. It is also an unspoken fact that if something is not agreed to be cool or generally mainstream and somewhat unscathed by swarms of opinions, it has to be a secret third thing — uncool. There can be links made between the widespread reach of trends and opinions and the ability for society to become easier to control when everyone seems to be of the same hive mind (take the Benson Boone slander for example).

This is not to say that people cannot form their own opinions, but algorithms and society tend to reward the most extreme opinions. Social media, brain-rot, the circulation memes, short-form media, trends and microtrends, the rise of influencers, slashed attention spans, quick dopamine hits, FOMO, and algorithms all influence relevancy and the real-life implications of cringe culture.

* Within reason, obviously no spreading of hatred or bigotry. But I’m also not here to police joy. **

** However, I will judge it. ***

***ANU Schmidtposting, don’t come for me.

Every single one of these topics could be a deep dive in itself, but all have direct impacts (that seem to fluctuate with society at its current state at that time) on what is deemed cringe in culture. It’s not cute anymore to seem as if you are chronically online with the rise of living in a post-brain-rot era, where relevance on social media literacy is used to signal merit in society. It is exhausting to try and keep up, with institutions that directly contribute to these harmful practices being the main — if not the only — beneficiaries. This is all to say that when something becomes too popular, it tends to lose its value in society and culture.

Social cohesion as a simulacrum of control

In saying all of this, there has been, however, a polarising shift of recent years from pretending to care about something (the practice of which hasn’t fully been laid to rest), to pretending not to care. It may have been slyly hiding under the shadows of performative activism all this time, waiting to resurface like the worst trend to ever exist. As America seems to have aged under Trump’s second administration, they seem to be going back in time — classic capitalism and societal regression! I am under the belief that no one is too cool to care about anything, more so — no one is too cool for anything. I first observed this trend in real life when I started here at the ANU, noticing that most people opted not to decorate their laptops. True there are reasons for and against sticker usage not only including environmental reasons, overconsumption worries, or the fact that some may think that adults shouldn’t use stickers (lame!), but it also seems to me to be a fear of being perceived as liking anything at all.

It is true that I tend to wear my heart out on my sleeve, and with it all of the things I love (quite literally — I am covered in tattoos), but it makes me wonder whether this is a ‘personal aesthetic cohesion’ choice or a possibly subconscious (or worse, completely conscious) social cohesiveness. Canberran puffer jacket wanks enjoy a monochrome trench coat or lambswool quarter zip from time to time, but personal style has never felt so impersonal — or so curated. It also seems that we are living in a time where personal style is lacking, yet craved by individuals more than ever — as seen through the emergence of the ‘nerd out’ TikTok trend. Swarms of users posting about the things that make one ‘nerd out’ indicate to me that the unrelenting powers of cringe culture along with the relentless, regressive, and fluctuating nature of whether it is cool to care or not have too much power over our free time and money. It is true that my tattoos pave the way for unsolicited opinions and, for some weird reason, advice from my bare-skinned counterparts, but self-expression is paramount to self-determination — and life is too short to pretend. Caring is cool!

I’m not sorry

So, I pose the question — when will it, or will it ever be cool to care about the things we actually care about? As an ex-theatre, choir, AND band kid (the unholy trinity — I was not well received, if you would believe it), a Directioner and a Belieber, someone who went to a Halsey concert (and loved it), and someone who had bold opinions about feminism at what may have possibly been too young of an age (by society’s standards, not my own — remember, I love caring), I have somewhat expert life experience in enjoying the things I want to. There was however, and always would be, repercussions

to my harmless actions. I was quickly outed as the school ‘feminazi’ and became what everyone at the age of 13 fears to be — cringe.

I position the things I care about towards the end of this piece, as I am highly aware of the presuppositions towards people who enjoy some of the things that I do/did — such as when I dressed up as ‘Magenta’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show at school as a 14 year old, my life-size Niall Horan poster on my bedroom door as a teen, and my forever-love for non-conventional forms of music, even in recovery of my Hamilton phase from 2015 and the relapse during COVID-19’s 2020 era (I have not relapsed since). I may not have the love that I once did for the things I obsessed over at the ages of 20, 16, or 12, but the passion doesn’t just disappear because I will it to. I am not sure who originally coined the phrase ‘to be cringe is to be free’, but I think they deserve a promotion in the phrase-coining community.

In navigating a brave new world where the pull of conformity is as strong as ever, try your hardest to resist. It can be as simple as letting yourself enjoy the things you suppressed yourself from doing all those years ago. There should be no shame in the mainstream or mediocrity. Contrary to popular belief, no one really cares if you go with the grain of mainstream trends or against them. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no one cares more about you than you — so you may as well consume what you genuinely enjoy. ¶

Art by Suriana Mamone

THE HIDDEN HANDS BEHIND AUSTRALIA’S HARVEST

by Amber Lennox

Over 31,000 Pacific Islander and Timorese individuals are working in Australia today, harvesting the fruit we absent-mindedly grab from the Woolies tubs, working in abattoirs most of us could not stomach, and caring for our elderly.

The Australian Government calls this the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, allowing our Pacific neighbours to attain temporary nine month visas and participate in the Australian workforce in regional towns and sectors where, as an article for the ANU Development Policy Centre states, “Australians don’t want these jobs and they need to be done by someone.”

While public narratives and commentary often suggest that Australians don’t want migrants, in reality these workers are keeping essential industries afloat. Though the government lauds it as a ‘win-win’ - both for Pacific workers who get to earn Australian Dollars and for the Australian economy by plugging its labour gaps — when you pick apart this relationship it looks less like generosity and more like exploitation. It is a twenty-first century remake of colonial labour systems, wherein we extract value from our neighbours and leave them dependent on Australia’s influence and financial leverage.

While many PALM workers are highly qualified in fields such as teaching, healthcare, and medicine, they are funnelled into what the Australian Government’s official PALM site calls ‘low skilled’ agricultural jobs. Australia sets up hoops and hurdles for qualifications achieved overseas, forcing Pacific Islanders to go through expensive,

and time-consuming assessment agencies just to be recognised. Their credentials are routinely undervalued, leaving many people locked out of high-skilled jobs despite their expertise. If they manage to pass multiple visa approval stages to participate in PALM, once here they earn less than Australian workers and live in cramped hostel accommodation arranged by their employers. After labouring all day under the Queensland sun picking fruit, the last thing many people would want to come home to is a bunk bed in an overcrowded dorm room.

In 2021, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that in some cases, PALM participants were left earning “little more than $9 an hour after hundreds of dollars are deducted from their weekly pay to cover airfares, visas, phone plans, housing and furniture rentals.” These deductions are actioned automatically by their employer, often without any input from the PALM participants, who must accept whichever accommodation and rent is set for them by the employer. Workers may face backlash if they try to speak out against poor working and living conditions.

This arrangement is inherently unjust, as the workers rely on one single employer to sponsor their working visa, and are not allowed to change employers. If their employer rescinds their sponsorship, PALM participants risk deportation. Additionally, PALM participants cannot access Medicare, and while they are entitled to earn superannuation, repatriation of these funds is complex and time consuming, and many workers themselves are not even aware they can be reclaimed, according to a report produced by the University of South Australia.

Art by Sara Duble

PALM visas are circular, meaning that visa holders must leave Australia after their contracts end, and then reapply for the next season of work, often with new employers across states. These temporary working visas only allow individuals to choose jobs within the approved sectors of agriculture, meat processing, aged care, or hospitality, and individuals are not allowed to choose their employer or where they want to work. This is distinct from other working visas in Australia, such as skilled working visas or working holiday visas, which allow you to work across any industry, for one or multiple employers of your choice, in the location of your choosing.

The circulation of Pacific Islander workers, moved between employers and locations according to the needs of the Australian economy and without any input from the workers themselves, parades as a cosmopolitan freedom. It is as though Australia were extending the same freedoms it prides itself on, but this enforced circulation is driven by economic exploitation. This is reproducing colonial labour routes, where Pacific peoples are displaced for the economic benefit of the state.

Australia likes to say we have moved on from our colonial past — but these practices draw a hard comparison to ‘blackbirding’ in the 19th century, when Pacific Islander peoples were kidnapped or tricked into Queensland plantation labour. Back then, workers were bound by contracts that marked them as indentured labourers, though many had little real choice, were paid meagre wages, and endured slave-like conditions. Today, Pacific Islanders voluntarily sign up to the PALM scheme and are paid, but their earnings remain comparatively lower than Australian workers.

Australia remains the largest aid donor to the Pacific region, and several of the Pacific Islands rely on Australia for defence cooperation and trade agreements. Under the guise of regional friendship, the Australian Government’s pats on the backs of our Pacific neighbours are not an affirming gesture but rather furtive fingers pressing into their spines — a reminder from the ‘benevolent’ Australian government of the islands’ dependency and imperialdriven inferiority. What is offered as good-natured generosity is in fact coercion: our neighbours are expected to accept exploitative arrangements with gratitude, because survival under these systems means depending on the very structures that belittle them.

Every time we pick up fruit or meat from the supermarket, we are connected to the PALM scheme. Every time we see the headlines about agricultural labour shortages, we should ask ourselves whose backs are breaking to hold up our economy. Every time you see selfrighteous racists whinge about ‘mass immigration flooding our country,’ I implore you to consider the many, many obstacles, background checks, and government red tape that PALM participants must endure to even obtain a temporary visa to toil in the most rural towns in Australia While these bigots sit on their beer stained couches and cry ‘woe is me’ about ‘migrants taking our jobs’, migrants are not flooding Australia; they are quietly propping it up while being denied the dignity that should come with their labour. It is easy to forget the people behind the produce, but if we are serious about equality, Australia must stop treating its neighbours as an expendable workforce and start recognising them as partners. That means fair wages, rights to change employers, and genuine pathways for skills recognition. A brave new world cannot be built on the same old colonial foundations. ¶

INFINITE JEST

by India Kazakoff

Recently, I’ve thought a lot about the romanticisation of the past and its apparent simplicity. From trends in films and fashion which capitalise on retro and vintage aesthetics to the growing number of my friends having bought or considering buying a dumbphone to replace the pocket universe buzzing in their backpack. For them, it’s a feeling of necessity — the doomscrolling and distraction and constant expectation of accessibility is an ever-growing pit of anxiety and comparison in their chests. The overload of data day-in and day-out causing something akin to paralysis not just of their bodies but of their human souls from which their capacity for empathy flows. It’s not a surprise that we would want a reprieve from a virtual world that commands our attention and emotional capacity for every waking minute.

The convenience of modernity comes at a price. To have everything in the world in the palm of my hand, I must reconcile with the concept that my mind is no longer my own. Applications and websites pay millions of dollars and fight tooth and nail for the chance to hold my attention for half a moment longer. They engineer clickbait traps and paint themselves bright and pretty colours to entice me to visit more often. It’s no longer simply a question of willpower to ward off a fun and innocent timewaster, but a dogfight to regain control over your neural pathways which have become a priceless commodity. It is opening your phone and scrolling for twenty minutes before you realise you meant to write a grocery list. It is the baleful feeling that creeps up without you knowing how or why, a shadow in the dark, and forces you into more mindless consumption to numb yourself from it.

And the convenience itself is a snare that may seem inescapable. Passwords, numbers, apps, authenticators — each feature that should make our lives easier becomes an obstacle to our freedom. The times when people tell me how they would throw their phones into the sea if it weren’t for Spotify are the times I writhe in umbrage at a world that has convinced us to suffer willingly, that the cost of technological advancement is our capacity to do anything outside of consumption. And I am not standing on the

I delete my social media apps, cut my screentime, and annoy all my friends with how immediately unreachable I am over text, the more grows a burning desire to take the bigger plunge. But something always holds me back.

I’m not quite sure the reason I’m waiting, or even what I’m really waiting for. I envision a future for myself where I and others are not so dependent on the things that make us so inhuman and so unhappy. There lies the true and sinister nature of technological convenience — it is at its core the removal of necessity to do things that, whilst maybe inconvenient, force us to exercise our most human feelings and desires. You can order your clothes online instead of walking around the mall with your friends for six hours and not buying anything but having a great gossip session along the way. You can get ChatGPT to write your essays for you without enriching your enclosure and working out your neural network by learning something new. You can no longer get through a dinner with your friends without checking if anything has happened in the virtual world. And even though it’s killing you, as it kills me, we’re not sure how to stop, and they’ve designed it all so that we can’t. And so even though it’s killing you, you let it. ¶

A STATE IN PERPETUITY: MAPPING TUVALUAN SOVEREIGNTY

by Maya Haggstrom

Under the first article of the 1933 Montevideo Convention, the following criteria for statehood are defined as necessary: (a) possession of a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Echoing this, a 2008 ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Malaysia v Singapore case held that “a State would not be sovereign without a territory”. Consequently, the idea of sovereignty without land comes into question; a state without borders is a nowhere place, a legal contradiction.

According to a 2016 paper by Simon Albert et.al, five Pacific islands have become fully submerged due to the impacts of climate change since 2008. Many slowly sinking states find themselves with dynamic boundaries and coastlines. Pacific nations, such as Tuvalu, are experiencing mass civilian evacuations as rising sea levels erode coastlines and destroy infrastructure. How, then, should states redefine themselves within our shifting climate? What is the path forward for a nation like Tuvalu?

Is Sovereignty Sinking?

The foundations of state sovereignty rest upon the assumption that geographical borders are fixed and unchanging.

In the time since 2008, we have lost at least five Pacific Islands to rising sea levels. Currently there is no customary or formal international recognition for a submerged state. Twenty-two countries worldwide are classified as archipelagic states. Such nations are composed entirely of islands or archipelagos, with their territorial boundaries defined in relation to the waters that enclose them.

The map reproduced on the top right of this page summarises net absolute sea-level rise measured by satellites over the period from October 1992 to July 2011.

Looking to the future, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects global mean sea levels (GMSL) to rise between 0.43 and 0.84 metres by 2100. Such increases would not just result in increased coastal dynamism, but in complete landform erosion. For Pacific nations composed of fragile atolls, the prospect of defending against King Tides and advancing waters appears futile.

At this rate, Tuvalu and other nations cannot survive GMSL rises.

In 2023, Tuvalu amended its constitution to assert that: “The State of Tuvalu within its historical, cultural and legal framework shall remain in perpetuity in the future, notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to the physical territory of Tuvalu.” Tuvalu’s coordinates shall remain unchanged, the state in perpetuity.

Alongside this proclamation, Tuvaluan Minister

Simon Kofe announced the creation of a virtual state at the COP27 in 2022. The plan is to map Tuvalu’s landscape digitally, alongside cultural artefacts like written language, dances and artworks. Tuvalu.tv will hopefully preserve the legal rights of its citizens and act as an archival framework for the remembrance of stories, memories and possessions.

The Pacific Islands Forum has echoed this stance, declaring that climate change cannot erase sovereignty. Increasingly, the international community is responding in kind, twenty-five countries now recognise Tuvalu’s claims to digital sovereignty. Tuvalu is attempting to pioneer their survival, facilitating the creation of a virtual ark that will remain a cultural and legal entity beyond the erosion of coastlines and borders.

Reconciling Land with Water

This declaration marks a confrontation to traditional conceptions of sovereignty: statehood untethered from territory. It anchors the nation in cultural traditions and maritime boundaries rather than in the permanence of its land. This is vital in deconstructing colonial worldviews that have a tendency to isolate the land from the sea, raising physical markers above ocean borders.

For low lying pacific nations, their sea borders (or Exclusive Economic Zones — EEZs) vastly outsize their landmasses. Tuvalu possesses 26 square kilometres of land, and an EEZ of 749,790 km2. A 28,838 to 1 ratio. Landcentric models of sovereignty are inadequate in their ability to capture the realities of how archipelagic states interact with the world around them. To define Tuvalu solely by its physical footprint is to ignore the complex relationship between its economy, people, and waters.

The question now is whether international law will evolve with Tuvalu. Tuvalu insists it will remain “a state in perpetuity,” a declaration that challenges the world to reconsider what it means to belong, to endure, and to be sovereign when the land itself is gone. ¶

Art by Ashlee Hemy

TODAY’S FEMINISM: INTERSECTIONALITY OR BUST

by Sophia Diegelmann

The fourth wave of feminism is intersectional, or it is nothing.

That is the line in the sand. Every generation reinvents feminism, but this one has refused to settle for a movement that only speaks to some women while silencing others. It has turned the oldest feminist truth — that the personal is political — into something lived out, challenged, and amplified in real time.

From #MeToo to #SayHerName, fourth wave feminism has been written in hashtags. Critics dismiss it as “keyboard activism,” as if a tweet cannot change the world. And it’s true — hashtags alone will not dismantle patriarchy. But they can force open doors that were once locked shut. They can expose the systemic silences that institutions rely on. They can connect voices that would otherwise never meet, creating solidarity across borders, campuses, and communities.

At the centre of this wave is intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Black feminist legal scholar, coined the term in 1989 in her paper Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex to describe how race and gender overlap in ways that create unique forms of discrimination. As Crenshaw argues, feminism must take account of how these intersecting structures shape the lived realities of women, otherwise many remain excluded. Today, the concept has moved out of academic theory and into everyday feminist practice. Intersectionality demands that feminism is not just about “women” in the abstract but about which women, in which contexts, facing which barriers.

This matters because sexism is never experienced in isolation. A wealthy, straight woman in Canberra will not face the same struggles as a queer migrant woman balancing study, work, and visa insecurity. A white student from Sydney’s North Shore does not live the same reality as an Aboriginal student from the Northern Territory negotiating the cultural and financial pressures of moving south for university. Feminism that does not account for these differences is not feminism — it is exclusion dressed as progress.

I’ve always identified as a feminist. To me, feminism begins with the simple belief that men and women should be treated equally. But as I’ve grown older — and as the fourth wave has shifted the conversation — I’ve realised that equity may be the more powerful goal. Equality assumes we all start from the same place, when in reality, systemic barriers hold some people back more than others.

Equity recognises those differences and works to close the gaps. That’s where I stand in 2025: a feminism that is about fairness, not just sameness.

Being a feminist today means I am constantly reading, unlearning, and learning again. It means questioning not only how I experience gender but how others do too. It means asking: What does it mean to be a good feminist? To me, the answer is not perfection — it is persistence. It is the willingness to listen, to challenge, and to grow, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Closer to home, the fourth wave is reshaping Australian universities. At the ANU, students have forced conversations about sexual violence onto the public stage, from Senate inquiries to front-page headlines. Campaigns for gender-inclusive bathrooms, more diverse student representation, and better reporting mechanisms for harassment reflect the same truth: no single story defines “the student experience”. If feminism does not reflect this complexity, it fails the very people it claims to serve.

Of course, there are risks. Social media thrives on outrage, and platforms profit from flattening nuance into slogans. Movements can become aestheticised — hashtags without substance, activism as performance. But dismissing fourth wave feminism as shallow ignores its deeper reality: visibility is powerful. A survivor’s story posted online may not topple a government, but it can give another survivor the courage to speak. That act alone transforms silence into solidarity.

The fourth wave is not tidy. It is messy, fractured, and unfinished. But perhaps that is its strength. Earlier waves of feminism often broke apart along lines of race, class, and sexuality. The fourth wave does not pretend those fractures aren’t there — it insists on naming them. It asks us to sit with discomfort, to listen where it would be easier to speak, to make space where it would be easier to dominate.

The brave new world of feminism is not a utopia. It is a work-in-progress, a refusal to settle for the old hierarchies wrapped in new slogans. It does not demand perfection — it demands perseverance: to keep listening, to keep widening the circle, to keep challenging the structures that thrive on silence.

Anything less, and we are not building a new world at all. We are simply inheriting the failures of the old one. ¶

ROSE TINTED SPACE GOGGLES:

HOW OUR PERCEPTIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT INFLUENCE OUR IDEAS OF THE FUTURE

by Isla Moore

Art by Avery Lam To

When you imagine the future, what do you see? Flying cars? Smart fridges powered by AI? But what if I suggested that our varying ideas of the future are not only influenced by, but inextricable from, pre-existing aesthetic and technological reference points? I will propose that our interpretations of different, distinct eras (both retroactively and in the present) influence our shifting conceptions of what the future may hold. To examine this, I will present four key futuristic aesthetics — retrofuturism, synthwave, cyberpunk, and the more optimistic solarpunk — and provide exemplary media of each aesthetic for further consideration.

Retrofuturism

Spurred on by the space exploration and technological developments of the 1960s, and closely linked to the aesthetic atompunk, Retrofuturism imagines a utopian world furnished with mid-century architecture and heavy automation (Latham et al., 2014). While the term Retrofuturism was retroactively coined in the 1980s, the aesthetic imagines the traditional mid-century American Dream but supplemented with robots, ray guns and hovering cars. Retrofuturism signals a new age of technological progress while blending the suburban values of the mid-century with references to increasingly pulpy and commercialised pop culture. Consumerism takes centre stage, as most technological developments serve as entertainment or supplement the suburban homeautomated ovens, auto-wash cars, and chore robots.

Retrofuturism seems increasingly deviant from contemporary representations of the future, primarily as technology and social attitudes have evolved, and the far-off mystical year of 2000 has been and gone (without flying cars). Or perhaps the wonder felt towards space travel seems less novel to us now, as missions to outer space and astronauts on the International Space Station are more normalised, and novel technology (the latest microwave, car or vacuum cleaner) is less aspirational and more expected. Yet, Retrofuturism reflects a consumerism that remains prevalent today, prompting us to consider how commercial status symbols are intrinsically linked to the evolution of technology and our subsequent predictions of the future.

See: Metropolis (1927), The Fifth Element (1997), Haribo Starmix (snack), Star Trek (1966), 1960s space race paraphernalia, collages of midcentury cars driving on highways to the moon.

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk references the 1980s in the same way that Retrofuturism reflects upon the mid 20th century — yet, the term “Cyberpunk” was not coined until the 2000s. Somewhat derived from the futuristic sonics of the synthwave music genre, Cyberpunk reflects on the neon aesthetics of the 1980s with rose-tinted wraparound visors, harking back to an era of synths, glowing visors, and radical lasers, but injected with a biting sense of dystopia. Cyberpunk focuses on the grit and grime of a futuristic urban society to visualise technology gone dystopian, serving as an avenue through which individuals could realise their anxieties surrounding robotic and technological takeover. More broadly, Cyberpunk focalises the fear of the unknown: the fictionalised prevalence of dangerous robotics preys on the terror we associate with anything we cannot understand, be that people, creatures or technologies foreign to us, or even the future itself.

Valerii Kushnarov (2023) explores Cyberpunk’s fearful actualisation of receding individuality and personal autonomy as a reaction to an increasingly digitised and surveilled age, as many Cyberpunk worlds feature oppressive regimes or advanced facial recognition technology that characters must circumvent. Much of Cyberpunk’s iconography echoes this sentiment — high-tech weaponry and tactical clothing represent an in-universe pushback against this ethos of technological control. Cyberpunk lies on the pessimistic end of the futurism scale: initially serving as a warning of the consequences of a technological takeover or nuclear war, it has been extended in recent years to symbolise a world impacted by extreme climate change.

See: Blade Runner (1982), Robocop (1987), Cyberpunk 2077 (2020 video game), Ghost In The Shell (1995), The Matrix (1999)

Frutiger Aero

For many born in the 1990s or 2000s, the images of Frutiger Aero are flashes of aesthetic recognition from a half-remembered childhood. Present everywhere from the blue skies and green grass desktop image of your family’s first box Mac, to the plastic dolphins floating inside a blue soap dispenser, Frutiger Aero departs from realism to create a sanitised hyperreality: if Cyberpunk represents a technological dystopia, then Frutiger Aero is its utopian antithesis. Frutiger Aero may not resemble retrofuturism from an aesthetic standpoint, but it mimics its tone of technological optimism and hope for the future. Centred around the technological and speculative mystery of Y2K and the new millennium, Frutiger Aero represents a clean, sleek and transparent technological boom, envisioning a reality in which technology streamlined every aspect of life.

As noted by Ellie Violet Bramley in The Guardian (2023), Frutiger Aero may seem a nostalgic yet unreachable vision of the future for many. The millennium has turned, yet dolphins do not joyfully swim between skyscrapers, and phones are not transparent; the grass is not proverbially greener in 2025. Similarly, Frutiger Aero’s hauntingly empty visions of an unpopulated cityscape spawn equal feelings of peace and disquiet: a nostalgic unease that has in part informed its sister aesthetic of Liminal Spaces. Ultimately, Frutiger Aero’s technological optimism is forever dampened by its datedness: the aesthetic hinges on an unmistakably 2000s vision of the future that was never truly realised.

See: Microsoft Aero (computer program), Palmolive Softsoap, EVE from WALL-E (2008), anything jellyfish themed, transparent rulers with liquid inside them, blue lava lamps.

Solarpunk

While Frutiger Aero seemingly represents a future that has fallen out of reach, Solarpunk sources its optimism from the possibility of the actions in the present that could construct it. Solarpunk pushes back against contemporarily nihilistic depictions of the future to offer a lighter and more optimistic approach, one that fuses existing and hypothetical technologies to paint a picture of a society that managed to overcome environmental catastrophe. As examined by Sage Agee (2023), Solarpunk best exemplifies

the common theme between the four aesthetics I have discussed: our emerging need to see the future not as an imagined realm divorced from our day-to-day, but from a tangible, contemporary starting point. Solarpunk advocates for a hands-on future: each individual is expected to get their hands dirty in building the community, through local gardens, home workshops, and greenhouses. In this way, Solarpunk seeks to banish technological nihilism by presenting the future as something we can have personal influence over: the future will not be built in some faraway lab, but right here, on our streets, in our homes and in our gardens.

See: Black Panther (2018), The Wild Robot (2024), Ecobrutalism (architectural style), many Studio Ghibli films such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

An Incremental Future

Examining diverse futuristic aesthetics as a product of their time of creation can be helpful to understand how shifting technological and societal developments impact differing conceptions of the future. Yet, I argue that such categorisation risks desensitisation to how the future gradually manifests. As mentioned in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, the Sorites Paradox (Hyde & Raffman, 2018) explores the nuance of incremental change through the metaphor of a heap of sand: how many grains does it take to officially ‘form’ a heap? If not one grain, then two? If not two, then 57? 117? It seems silly to draw such an arbitrary line.

So too does over-aestheticisation risk characterising our conception of the future as far off and unattainable, rendering us blind to the incremental evolutions present in everyday life; by waiting for an all-encompassing, era-defining future aesthetic, we may fail to recognise incremental social, technological and aesthetic progression. We will not simply wake up one day and fall into the world of the future: our future is being constructed, year by year and day by day. ¶

“HECS CUTS AREN’T FAIR —THEY’RE A HANDOUT TO THE RICH”

by Nevan Serasundera

Art by Joseph Mann

The Australian Government’s decision to introduce cuts to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) debt has been framed as a relief measure for students burdened with rising costs of living and escalating student loans. At first glance, this may seem like an act of compassion and fairness. After all, young Australians face housing unaffordability, wage stagnation, and growing intergenerational inequality. Yet, beneath the surface, these debt cuts are not the solution they claim to be. Instead, they risk worsening the housing crisis, reducing government revenue available for vital social programs, and distracting from more meaningful reforms to higher education and student debt policy.

Unlike student debt in countries such as the United States, HECS debt is uniquely designed to be fair and manageable. Students do not repay a single cent until they meet a minimum income threshold, which as of 2025 is around $51,550 per year. If a graduate never earns above this amount, they are not required to pay their debt at all. In effect, HECS functions less like a conventional debt and more like a graduate tax tied to income. This system ensures that those who benefit from their degree and achieve higher earnings contribute back to the system, while those who do not are shielded from repayment. Cutting HECS debt undermines this fairness by offering relief to all debt holders indiscriminately, including highincome professionals who already have the capacity to pay their loans. It amounts to a subsidy for the relatively privileged, rather than targeted support for those most in need.

The framing of HECS cuts as a measure to help struggling students masks a deeper inequity. The largest beneficiaries of HECS debt relief are not lowincome Australians but middle- and upper-middle-class professionals. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers with large HECS debts but high earning potential with average salaries exceeding $150,000 per year, will see their liabilities reduced. Meanwhile, those who never earned enough to repay HECS in the first place receive no new benefit, since their repayments were already effectively waived under the income-contingent system. This makes the cuts regressive: they funnel public money to those already on pathways to higher lifetime earnings, while doing little to assist the genuinely disadvantaged. A fairer policy would directly target cost-of-living support to those who are struggling under the cost-of-living crisis, rather than blanket debt cuts.

Moreover, the HECS debt cut is not a structural solution to the student debt problem, but a one-off or short-term intervention that leaves the fundamental issues of student and graduate cost-of-living untouched. Students will continue to face rising tuition costs, especially in humanities and law degrees, under the Jobready Graduates (JRG) scheme, which has deliberately shifted costs onto certain disciplines that are perceived as less employable in the future job market. Future cohorts will accumulate debt just as quickly, if not more so, leaving us in exactly the same position a few years from now. By contrast, real reform would involve addressing the unfair distribution of costs across degrees, rethinking indexation of HECS loans, and making adjustments that prevent runaway debt growth.

One of the most politically appealing arguments for HECS cuts is that reducing student debt will make it easier for young Australians to buy a house. Banks, in calculating borrowing capacity, often consider HECS repayments as part of an applicant’s financial commitments, and the government argues that cutting debt boosts borrowing power, thus bringing the dream of home ownership closer. Yet, this argument ignores a critical point: housing affordability is fundamentally a supply problem. Cutting HECS debt increases the number of buyers suddenly able to bid for scarce housing stock. Demand rises while supply remains unchanged, and the result is predictable: higher house prices. The beneficiaries, in this case, are existing property owners and investors who see their assets appreciate, while renters and first-home buyers — the very groups supposedly helped by HECS relief — end up worse off. If the Australian government was serious about making housing more affordable, there should be an effort by the government to reduce construction regulations and incentivise new dwelling constructing which would increase the amount of houses available in the market causing downward pressure on prices.

Another overlooked consequence of HECS debt cuts is the loss of future government revenue. HECS repayments are not just an administrative technicality; they are a critical funding stream that supports Australia’s education system and broader public services. Cutting debt outright reduces the amount of money that will eventually flow back to the government. This has knock-on effects for the social safety net: decreased revenue may mean reduced capacity to fund programs like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Centrelink benefits, and public health initiatives.

These are services that poorer Australians depend on to stay alive. Thus, these cuts disproportionately hurt the poorest and most vulnerable Australians — those who rely most on government services. In effect, the policy trades off long-term social spending in order to deliver a politically expedient, short-term debt cut.

By choosing politically popular but economically unsound debt relief, the government also sets a dangerous precedent. Future policymakers may feel pressured to repeat such measures for electoral gain rather than pursuing tough but necessary reforms. The result is a cycle of temporary handouts and populist gestures — what economists call “pork-barrelling” — instead of sustainable solutions. The immediate applause masks the long-term costs, both fiscal and cultural, of a state that governs through short-term expediency rather than principled policy.

Perhaps the most glaring omission from the HECS debate is the failure to address the Job-ready Graduates scheme (JRG). Introduced in 2021, JRG significantly raised the cost of humanities and law degrees while lowering fees for disciplines deemed in short supply, such as teaching and nursing. The rationale was to “incentivise” students into fields that matched labour market needs. In practice, JRG saddled humanities and law students with heavier debts while doing little to shift enrolments as shown by the 113 percent rise in student humanities contributions. If the government were truly serious about easing student debt, it would revisit or repeal JRG rather than applying a superficial debt cut that leaves inequities untouched. The current approach addresses the symptom but not the disease.

If the aim is to genuinely reduce the burden on students and graduates, better alternatives exist. Indexation could be permanently tied to wage growth rather than the Consumer Price Index, ensuring debt rises only in line with graduates’ ability to pay. Targeted assistance could be provided to low-income graduates struggling with repayments rather than across-the-board cuts. The Jobready Graduates scheme could be scrapped or reformed to reduce inequities between disciplines. Housing affordability could be addressed at its source by boosting supply. Fiscal capacity could be used to strengthen social safety nets, which would deliver benefits to those in genuine need rather than providing windfalls to highincome professionals.

The HECS debt cuts may be well-intentioned, but they are poorly designed and ultimately counterproductive. They fail to address the structural problems in higher education funding and risk fuelling the housing crisis, eroding government revenue, and disproportionately benefiting higher-income Australians. At the same time, they divert attention from meaningful reforms such as revising indexation, fixing the Job-ready Graduates scheme, and tackling housing affordability directly. In the long run, Australia must resist the temptation of temporary, headlinegrabbing fixes and instead pursue policies that balance fairness, fiscal sustainability, and long-term opportunity. HECS is not a broken system in need of indiscriminate cuts; it is a well-designed income-contingent repayment framework that requires careful, targeted reform. To undermine it with politically convenient debt relief is to do a disservice to students, taxpayers, and the most vulnerable Australians alike. ¶

THE LAW’S SLOW CHASE: WHEN TECH RUNS WILD BUILDING CODES FOR THE INVISIBLE AMUSEMENT PARK

by Ria Agrawal

The city signs off on a new amusement park the way it always has: with rulers, torque wrenches, and rules. Sceptical inspectors trace the bolts with clipboards and calm suspicion while bored teenagers count steps to the nearest exit in evacuation drills. On opening day, a metal bar waits at the gate with two simple verdicts that “you must be this tall,” and that the rides do not move until the rules say they may. The thrills are loud, but the safety is louder.

Now swap the turnstiles for a lock screen.

We live inside a virtual park built from feeds, filters, models, and games, weightless and endless. The rides are not on tracks, but loops of attention; not carriages, but algorithms; not operators, but recommendation engines behind the glass. There is no height line here, no one to check your harness, no one to check the bolts, only a bright blue “Agree” button which you instinctively click.

The park might be virtual, but its rollercoaster plunges have persisted. In the old park, a bad day is a bruised rib. Here, it is an emptying account tipped by a frictionless “limited time”, an unwittingly chosen feed that nudges you into a more narrowed scope of yourself, or a face you recognise, your own, in a scene you don’t. If our pleasures are digital now, so are our pains. In short, because the aftermath doesn’t bruise the bone and mar the skin, the system classifies the risk mitigation as optional, even though the injuries show up on reputations, finances, and mental health.

When the carriage tips slightly to the left as it drops, hold onto the uncomfortable lift in your stomach, knowing there were no test runs, no safety precautions, and the rides are newer than you. That is the moment we live in now, collectively, all day, moving fast, with a loose safety bar uncertain, and rules lagging behind in the rearview mirror.

This isn’t an argument against thrill. It’s a question about responsibility. We insist on seatbelts when the danger is tangible; why not seatbelts for software when the danger is digital but all-consuming? Australia’s generative AI use is exploding, while our legal responses remain patchy and slow. Some advances, anti-scam obligations, and voluntary AI standards exist, but deepfakes, data abuse, and model bias are outpacing a system that is still “consulting” with hard laws.

Today I ask, when innovation outruns regulation, who carries the risk, and what would it look like to build seatbelts for software? These unsupervised technological progressions eat into wallets, bodies, and fates.

Wallets.

Financial crimes now scale software. Australians lodged 494,732 reports in 2024, with losses of $2.03 billion.

The voice note lands between meetings. It’s the cadence of your mum’s voice using her pet name for you, asking for a code “before the bank closes”. Nothing looks wrong. Two taps later, it is. Australia has taken real steps with the Scams Prevention Framework Act 2025, but fraud deals in milliseconds. Because platforms, telcos, and banks guard different links in the chain, gaps at the handoffs become exits for fraud. Payments require a level of security that works in real time and not at a police station a day late when the money is already gone. This includes real-time payment holds for flagged transactions and joint liability when controls fail.

Bodies.

Your face is now a file format. Reports of imagebased abuse skyrocketed from 849 in 2019 to 9,060 in 2023, an unanticipated 967 percent increase in four years. By Monday, the altered photo has travelled further than any correction can. HR wants a “quiet chat”. Your inbox is a wall of strangers’ certainty about things that didn’t happen. Takedown pathways exist; there is the Criminal Code Amendment Bill 2024 on Deepfake Sexual Material, but no single, comprehensive national deepfake statute exists. Regulations are made to prevent foreseeable injury; the foreseeability of reputational harm from synthetic sexual images is now sky-high, and the prevention rates are much lower. Without stricter policies criminalising this, the aftermath is barely compensable.

Fates.

If the model says “no” who do you appeal to? In hiring, credit, housing, and policing, high-stakes algorithms sit behind AI policies that lack a meaningful, reviewable explanation, leaving individuals unable to understand or challenge outcomes. A job portal politely thanks you for your interest. You never met a human. Somewhere,

a résumé parser decides your internship doesn’t count. There’s no address to write to, only a portal to refresh. Government is consulting on “high-risk AI” guardrails, testing, transparency, and human oversight, but today many decisions remain black boxes without handles: no event logs, no model cards, no right to meaningful review, giving way to AI biases based on race, sampling errors, and the creators’ ideologies.

Besides the government’s obvious disregard for the virtual harms, ethics also pose as an obstacle in the face of tech law’s progression. Courts and regulators are cautious about ruling on truth or opinion online, and rightfully so. Misinformation and free expression, in the non-commercial sense, are usually legal. However, that line has too often excused systemic neglect; 75 percent of Australians are concerned about harmful misinformation online. We don’t need an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to act, but the law can regulate processes and products instead of content. That is, impose duties to label synthetic media, keep audit logs, offer fast takedowns for image-based abuse, disclose when automated tools decide against a person or remove their content, and guarantee a human appeal in high-stakes cases. Put simply: legal ≠ ethical ≠ safe and lawful doesn’t mean hands-off, but refusing to engage with online harms because they’re “not illegal speech”, without offering mediation, counterspeech tools, and a clear appeal route, leaves users without basic safety gear.

Secondly, industry warns that hard rules will stifle investment and lock us into technological stagnancy. Australia does rely on AI tech for economic growth, and rushing blunt bans would backfire. Such premature bans could freeze today’s tech in place, raise fixed compliance costs that only incumbents can absorb, and push talent/ capital to friendlier jurisdictions. If “high-risk AI” is defined too broadly or documentation is demanded for every low-stakes use, start-ups face the same burdens as Big Tech and stop shipping. Ex ante approvals and vague liabilities also create regulatory uncertainty for inventors and founders who can’t price the risk of a future lawsuit or shifting standard. While “guardrails” and soft laws on AI, like the Voluntary AI Safety Standard, are prudent for locking in a statute, consultation can’t be a cul-de-sac while harms compound: some duties are safety gear, not suggestions.

Art by Sophie Chandler

Freedom to innovate isn’t freedom to injure. The test isn’t “Is it legal?,” but “Is it safe, fair, and fixable when it fails?” The answer isn’t “no rules,” it’s smart rules: defining high-risk AI clearly, requiring testing, transparency, human oversight, and redress in those settings, and aligning duties with existing privacy, consumer, and online safety regimes so compliance is predictable. Done well, guardrails function like building codes: they prevent catastrophic failures and increase public trust without freezing innovation at yesterday’s frontier.

Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that Australia has acted with relative speed in some domains: the 2025 anti-scam obligations impose enforceable duties on banks, telcos and platforms, telco blocking rules have materially reduced scam calls and SMS, and the eSafety Commissioner’s takedown powers provide a practical remedy. However, many key elements remain at the consultation stage, most notably the definitions, the scope of mandatory testing, transparency and human oversight duties, and the creation of a comprehensive national offence addressing deepfakes. There is a temporal mismatch; harms manifest within days, whereas statutes and standards typically arrive over years. Overall, the trajectory is positive but insufficient. Australia built world-class rules for rides you can touch; it’s time to build them for the wild tech rides inside our screens. Until we prioritise this problem, Australians will keep learning the hard way that the law arrives after the push notification. ¶

LESSONS FROM AN ON-CAMPUS THIRD YEAR OF HIS FEARS AND TEARS, TO HIS TRIUMPHS

Art by Safreen Arakkath

AND HIS BECOMING

by Hunter Trumble

The final semester of a degree is daunting — not just because of graduation, but because it forces reflection on their journey so far. So, come with me on this journey as I travel back in time to the beginning of a world unlike any other I have encountered before:

My first day. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. I stand before a massive building, blocking the sun and the rest of the campus behind it. At first, it reminds me of those hotels and apartments sprawled across the cities — emotionless, lifeless, and deserted.

Beside me, my mum, dad, and younger brother stand. I can only imagine they were just as nervous as I was, if not more. I couldn’t imagine what was going through their minds — saying goodbye to their beloved eldest son and brother, who was like his best mate in the world, as he leaves the family home and steps into the unknown world waiting for him at the ANU and across Canberra. As they were set to depart, I held them all in my arms for the last time in a long time, feeling their tears trickle onto my polo, sinking deep as the damp spots lay themselves onto my skin. Knowing my family wouldn’t be there, I hoped the hall that awaited could become my second home — a second home with a second family. So, I did something my younger self would never have thought to do before: I threw myself into the unknown to meet the hundreds of other residents that I would live with for the rest of the year.

At first, I found it a challenge. I was quite introverted, narrow-minded, and burdened by the need to perform at the highest academic level I could. But I realised I needed to change more. I needed to stop worrying so much and enjoy my youth and my life. The first few weeks were exciting. By joining societies and reaching out to different people, I felt included and respected by those around me. It boosted my confidence.

But then the moment came to become a first-year representative on the hall committee. I wanted to prove to myself and others that I was a leader. Unfortunately, that’s when I felt my confidence shattered. I didn’t prove that I was close and trusted enough by those I tried to reach out to. However, when I received messages from my leaders who told me that this wasn’t a moment to give up, I realised it was an opportunity. Just because I failed

didn’t mean I wasn’t good enough; it was a chance to keep trying, keep contributing, and get involved. That was when I felt I reached my turning point. I continued to do more for others, to give back, whilst also allowing myself to understand who I was to myself and those around me. Through classes and work, I reached out to more people than those from my hall. Creating these friendships brought me closer to this place and, in turn, closer to them, which eventually led to me experiencing proper love for the first time. Understanding what it truly means to be with someone whom you care about.

Unfortunately, I feared this was becoming a neverending cycle that I had experienced too many times before. Although there was so much good that could go my way, I feared it would suddenly be brought down with challenges that I simply couldn’t avoid or control. Perhaps it was a sign that, for too long, I was trying too hard and attempting to overachieve, and that I needed to let those around me shine in the limelight. As months, even years, went by, I continued to fail in my attempts to achieve my intended desires. I started to fear that perhaps, as new residents came and went, some of whom were my closest friends, I thought maybe I needed to stop and leave the hall I called home. But I didn’t. Despite those moments that brought me down, my friends and my fellow residents brought me back up, even if we weren’t close. They saw my dedication, respect, passion and enthusiasm for them and the hall in their endeavours to achieve their life goals.

Now, three years later, I think back to how, what, and why every moment in that period changed me as a person. And upon reflection, I feel as if I’ve grown into the best version of myself. Having more years of experience, whilst listening to other people more than myself, has allowed me to help younger people as a mentor and leader in life. The things that I am passionate about have drawn many people of diverse backgrounds to feel more connected to those around them and to their new home. It makes me wonder whether it’s something my predecessors would hope I become, as they themselves strove to accomplish when they were in my shoes many years ago.

So, I reflect on what these years have taught me, and I’ve come to the realisation that it has all been worth it. Even though I chose to sacrifice many comforts of home,

like family, friends, work, and the alternative route to study law at Melbourne Uni, coming to Canberra and the ANU has proven far more meaningful. I’ve experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly. I never would have imagined, beyond my wildest dreams, what was possible before I arrived: falling in love, being in relationships, trying out all the new things and hobbies at my disposal — somewhat becoming a bit of a cult of personality, meeting and making new friends from interstate and overseas, working a range of odd and prestigious jobs, and experiencing moments of glory through the incredible victories earned with the support of many who stood shoulder to shoulder with me.

Although this all shapes my story and identity, it’s not just me. Many other people I’ve met along the way have helped turn me from an introverted and fearful newcomer into the person I am today. That’s my greatest asset in how I stepped into this brave new world — not alone, but shaped by everyone who walked it with me. ¶

Art by Safreen Arakkath

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which Woroni operates, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Their land was forcibly stolen, and sovereignty was never ceded.

The name Woroni, which means “mouth”, was taken from the Wadi Wadi Nation without permission. Consultation with First Nations people recommend that Woroni continues to use the word, provided we acknowledge the theft, and continue to strive for better reconciliation in the future. Woroni aims to provide a platform for First Nations students to hold the University, its community and ourselves accountable.

It may sometimes feel as if the worst horrors of colonisation are past, as if they happened in a different, more brutal world than this one. But the same Australian Government that took Indigenous children from their families in the 1900s incarcerates children as young as ten years old today, the majority of whom are Indigenous. If we separate ourselves and our times from colonisation, we cannot properly acknowledge and work to amend its longlasting impact.

This land always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

An imprint of