I got my first computer when I was six years old. For nearly a year, all I did was download pictures of the band Rebelde (RBD). I spent hours on end, day in and day out, right-clicking and saving every single image I could find. I only used the internet to build up my personal archive, which eventually grew to thousands of images. Apart from that, I only had a few games, such as Hercules and Prince of Persia (the 1998 version), and music, which I’d pirated or recorded from TV with my cell phone.
Just a few years later, my computer was flooded with a sea of tabs and notifications; social media had emerged and the possibilities were endless. Then, the seemingly wide-open space of the internet, gradually and perhaps counterintuitively became increasingly narrow. My time online has become more and more monitored, controlled by corporate algorithms of which I know almost nothing.
The nostalgia and optimism for the 2000s and 2010s are hard for me to shake, especially as the cyberspace of today seems almost unrecognizable from that initial utopia. So, when my friend sent me a post of a content creator building her own cyberdeck, the wheels started turning. I wondered if these DIY computers – usually consisting of a monitor, a processor, a keyboard, a mouse, a battery and a case – might represent a chance to regain, in one way or another, control over the technology that surrounds us.
Starting from one video, I was transported into an entire online ecosystem, where dozens of women demonstrate how they’ve built their own computers in the most interesting of designs: in a shell-shaped bag, with a Hello Kitty theme, a Strawberry Shortcake cyberdeck or with a solarpunk aesthetic. So far, the cyberdeck hashtag has garnered around four thousand posts on TikTok, and what began as rebellion against the simplistic and standardized design of tech products – generally designed by men – has led to a wider discussion about the political implications behind building your own computer.
The trend may seem new, but cyberdecks have been popular for several years within various online communities. The term ‘cyberdeck’ originates from William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer in which the author imagines the internet and virtual reality before their current level of development. The hackers in Gibson’s novella carry massive portable computers, known as ‘cyberdecks,’ which they use to access ‘the matrix’, a.k.a. the internet. The world of Neuromancer instantly brought to my Zoomer mind the ‘compowders’ from Totally Spies and all the cyberpunk anime with a similar aesthetic, such as Ghost in the Shell – I desperately wanted to build one.
There’s a dedicated subreddit on cyberdecks which has amassed 147,000 followers over time. Users share tips, post pictures of the computers they’ve built and discuss their experiences throughout the process. On the Cyberdeck café website, you’ll find a build guide and a Discord channel where you can interact with other members.
If you’re looking for a cosier internet or a more embodied online experience, one of the nicest things you can discover is that there are people who genuinely want to help you build that world: in Discord communities, even on Reddit (if you can look past the negative comments), and, more recently, on TikTok or YouTube.
Perhaps this is why a growing number of young women online are building their own cyberdecks – to take back control and nurture a more equal relationship to technology. To better understand the phenomenon, I spoke with one of the trend’s advocates, with a media artist from Los Angeles, and with the members of an organization offering a residency to teach people how to build a cyberdeck.
Whisper, a Los Angeles-based artist who has been modifying her computers since 2013, explains: ‘I think especially with Zoomers, it feels revolutionary in a way that a lot of people at once are becoming fed up with the sort of model of computing that’s been fed to them and are looking for another way. And it’s not surprising.’ Her 2023 build falls into the aesthetic conventions we associate with cyberdecks today. ‘I did this myself. To sort of want to change the outside form factor of a computer as a way of trying to change your relationship with the inside.’ For Whisper, the ‘inside’ is the software, which determines the way you interact with the object over time, and the patterns you create around it. These habits are hard to unlearn, so it’s only natural for people to begin with the aesthetic aspect. According to Whisper, users building their own computers is a big step in the right direction: it clears the way for a better understanding of the technology we use.
This is also what Ube Boobey tells me, one of the content creators who has taken the cyberdeck trend further. She started building her first DIY computer after seeing some images on Pinterest, being interested in creating a more fun device. She very quickly realized that she also needed to include a political aspect to this process. In a video on her page, Ube Boobey explains how these computers should be kept away from artificial intelligence and big corporations: ‘I think the beauty of this hobby is building a computer from a bunch of seemingly mismatched parts that you have at hand or that you find second-hand.’
According to Whisper, the most important question is what you want to do with your cyberdeck once you’ve managed to fit all the components together. ‘Think about how you want to use the device before you think about how it looks. Think about what you want from a single-purpose machine. That’s where things start to open up.’ Whisper, for example, has built herself a special PC for home use, which is simply a small machine with limited memory. You can’t send messages on it, it doesn’t know what Instagram is. Whisper uses it exclusively for games and locally stored content. During the interview, the artist uses a ten-year-old ThinkPad which, likewise, doesn’t have Instagram but has specific functions for specific purposes.
All of this is part of how Whisper tries to counteract excessive consumption, a risk that comes with the cyberdeck trend. ‘Spending 400 bucks on Amazon to buy all of these parts to build your cyberdeck is not that punk,’ she tells me with a laugh. She encourages people to use old laptops, items that can be recycled, components destined for the rubbish tip. In the same vein, Ube Boobey explains on TikTok that she finds it counterintuitive to build cyberdecks only to sell them on online later. This would betray the very purpose of an object that reflects your own personality and helps you regain your autonomy online.
‘To me, that’s cyberpunk,’ says Whisper. ‘Laptops themselves can be cyberpunk. It’s not about the specs or having the newest machine. It’s about how you use it. You can recycle a ten-year-old laptop, turn it into a little terminal, paint it, give it a name, customize the desktop background, that’s enough. If you want to use a laptop like a hacker terminal, go for it.’
Time for women to get their place in tech
Ube Boobey uses her cyberdeck as a sort of mini archive, a microcosm of her interests, full of books she’s downloaded on medicine, agriculture, education and philosophy, offline Wikipedia, TED Talks, offline maps, her favourite music, Sudoku, Tetris and a few other games. She uses it about twice a week and believes it will never be ‘finished’, as she’s constantly updating it. Ube Boobey is just starting out in the world of tech and building a cyberdeck, so she’s learning every day.
The look of Ube Boobey’s cyberdeck is straight from a mermaid’s universe. It has stuck with me ever since I saw it in her first TikTok videos. Ube Boobey has decided that she wants her second cyberdeck to be set in a solarpunk future, where people live in harmony with nature and technology, not in opposition to them. However, the content creator explains to me that cyberdecks don’t need to be tied to a specific aesthetic, as she designs them in tune with what she likes at that moment and with her personality.
Since her first video, Ube Boobey has amassed over 200,000 followers, and her content has reached millions of people. The video in which she discusses the political implications behind cyberdecks has over 4 million views.
Ube Boobey’s popularity also attracts misogynistic comments from men. ‘I think there’s this quote and it says “an insecure man will be threatened by the presence of women in his space, even if the woman doesn’t take away from him or doesn’t threaten his position.” I think it’s the gatekeeping culture, as well as the fact that most cyberdecks – in every video that I watched on YouTube to learn about them – were made by men. And the aesthetic was very cyberpunk rugged, very utilitarian’, says Ube Boobey. She believes women building cyberdecks and showing them online have strayed from that standard. And, because they pursue a hobby considered traditionally masculine, the reaction to what they do ends up being ‘that’s not how it’s supposed to look’.
‘I had a lot of comments say like, “oh, why are you building this and making it aesthetic? That’s not the point”,’ says Ube Boobey. ‘And it’s funny because the cyberdeck videos that I watched on YouTube, they were all thinking about aesthetics as much as I did. The only difference is their aesthetics is masculine, and mine feminine. So, it’s funny when people say, oh, she built it and she made it aesthetic,’ she continues. Cyberdecks … ‘have always been built with aesthetics in mind. The difference is mine has pretty shells on it and that just enrages people. So yeah, I find that funny.’
Ube Boobey believes it’s time for women to express themselves artistically and reclaim their power and place in technology. The tech industry is dominated and owned by men, so often the devices they build follow the same masculine, patriarchal logic. ‘Now more women are getting into it. It’s just like a whole new movement and it’s really exciting. … It’s women like me who didn’t know anything about technology and kind of wished that they did’, says the content creator. And cyberdecks are ‘a great entry level project for a lot of people.’
Now that Ube Boobey already has two cyberdecks, she doesn’t want to build another one. She doesn’t need it. That’s a problem when a trend ends up leading to excessive consumption or being monetized, she explains. In saying this, Ube Boobey reminds me of another content creator who has already partnered with Claude, the AI assistant and model developed by the American company Anthropic, and used vibe coding to build her new cyberdeck.
Not being monetized by tech giants
According to Whisper, it’s not surprising that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are doing paid partnerships around the cyberdeck trend. ‘In a macro sense, I’m extremely AI sceptical. … I think the ways in which they are trying to engineer our dependency on this technology are problematic. And I think it will be much more expensive to do this in the future if they don’t figure something out on the back end.’
Whisper also reminds us not to forget about one key variable: the code. The only area where AI works reasonably well is in code writing, and the discussion around vibe coding is becoming increasingly complex. ‘I think there are people who have this blanket critique of AI that it’s all bad and all stupid, and you should just be writing good code. But a lot of those people come from the kind of privileged background of having built a lot of technical expertize or having been able to work professionally in technology where “just write good code” is like techno machismo, right?’, argues Whisper. Almost inevitably the companies would want to exploit the trend as a marketing lever and, for example, tell you that you can use vibe coding to create a cyberdeck.
Whisper tries, however, not to be overly moralizing, so as not to discourage women who are now entering this field. ‘More girls have more computing equipment that they can continue to explore with. This means sometimes you’ll buy some crap for a project and then not do the project. And then you will have stuff that’s, you know, a bug in your ear or a splinter in your mind. Like, oh, I got to figure out how to use that.’
Another pitfall for people just starting out on building a cyberdeck, explains Whisper, is the frustrating computing experience – a Raspberry Pi connected to a small screen can be very slow. They’re excellent as servers, though. ‘A year from now, a lot of people will actually realize “oh, these are terrible personal computers, but they’re outstanding servers.” And then they’ll realize that self-hosting and home labbing is the thing to do. And I’m looking forward to all of these Cyberdeck girlies becoming home lab girlies.’
Avoiding spaces that constantly monitor us
While we’re on the subject of tech giants: Meta announced on 8 May 2026 that it would be phasing out end-to-end encrypted messaging on Instagram, a privacy feature that users could previously utilize on the platform. The company claimed the feature wasn’t widely used and directed users towards WhatsApp. Encryption on Instagram was never a standard feature of the app’s messaging service, so it was much easier for the company to maintain that people simply weren’t using this tool. Yet, more and more users are presently looking for new ways to communicate and come together online, and movements such as the development of cyberdecks seem to offer an alternative to the technologies we’ve become accustomed to and the way we interact with them.
‘Meta’s version of the internet has always felt like land that’s merely being rented back to us. Even in organizing circles, so much communication happens on Signal, and there’s a reason for that. People are looking for spaces that feel more autonomous and less monitored. … I think this is part of a broader movement toward avoiding spaces that constantly surveil us. I often think about the difference between a public park and a privately owned public space,’ explains Whisper.
She cites the Plot project room as an example of autonomous space. Built by Alice Yuan Zhang, it features its own chat and communication systems, so that users no longer have to rely on Meta’s products to talk to one another. ‘I think there’s a kind of fundamental sameness to the way we interact across most social platforms. Instagram, for example, almost assumes you’re never going to have a meaningful conversation there, and as a result, you usually don’t.’ Once you remove profit from the equation, the artist estimates, once you stop collecting data to train AI models, a lot of different possibilities suddenly open up.
According to Whisper, the question becomes ‘how do you design a kind of cyber architecture that actually encourages people to be more present?’ Cyberdecks offer the chance to experiment with and customize something that might seem intimidating – a computer with all its underlying hardware and software. Once the cyberdeck trend has gained traction online, opportunities also emerge for artists keen to learn more about this technology.
One such opportunity is a residency offered by SOFTER, a feminist platform committed to rethinking existing structures and hierarchies of the digital culture. For each round of applications, two participants get to spend two weeks in their workshop in Copenhagen. ‘The final outcome is not only the cyberdeck itself but also a tutorial documenting how it was made. Sharing knowledge is a key part of the residency, because the goal is ultimately to make these processes more understandable and accessible for others,’ explains Nicole Jonasson, co-founder of SOFTER.
Since the beginning of SOFTER, the platform’s members have identified the computer as both their biggest source of frustrations with technology and their greatest sense of empowerment. Today, Nicole envisions a future in which homemade cyberdecks and other self-built technologies become real alternatives to mass-produced corporate devices. ‘For me, it’s similar to cooking,’ say Nicole. ‘Imagine if you have only ever eaten at restaurants your entire life and suddenly realize you could learn to cook for yourself. At first, it might not be perfect, and it definitely takes more time and effort. But there’s pleasure in understanding the process. You can experiment, share knowledge, invite people over, and develop your own relationship to what you create. Technology could become something similar: more communal, creative and participatory instead of something we passively consume.’
But Nicole disagrees with the notion that the cyberdeck trend is women’s entry into the tech sector. ‘Women have always played a major role in shaping technology, including the development of computers and the internet itself. Many groundbreaking technological ideas have come from women approaching technology in unconventional, creative and experimental ways,’ she says.
What’s different today is visibility. Through social media and online platforms, people now have much more control over sharing their work and building communities around it. Ideas and aesthetics that may previously have been marginalized or attributed to other people, are now being shared online and made into a trend.
‘Cyberdecks open up a space where technology can feel personal, expressive, playful and emotional, not only functional. They create room for aesthetics, storytelling, customization, and experimentation, which have always belonged in technology even if mainstream tech culture often pretends otherwise,’ concludes Nicole.
Don’t know where to start?
After watching a few videos on cyberdecks, the algorithm assumed I had no other interests, so my feed and my For You Page (FYP) was stuffed with clips on how to build a computer at home. And it didn’t even bother me. I consider myself tech-illiterate in many ways and the tutorials could help me connect more with the technology I interact with every day. I asked Whisper and Ube Boobey what they’d recommend to a woman who’s just building her first cyberdeck and how you can do it safely, without getting electrocuted – yes, that’s my biggest fear.
They both mentioned YouTube and online tutorials, which can help you understand the mechanics behind it all. ‘Of course, there are always people who will tell you that you don’t know enough or that you’re approaching things for the wrong reasons,’ says Whisper. ‘But I always think about a quote from Olia Lialina, who wrote a great essay called Turing Complete User. She says that “there is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect,”’
People might be tempted to ask ChatGPT for help when building a cyberdeck. But if the trend brings back the nostalgia for the internet as it existed in the times of Web 1.0 or 2.0, why not channel it into communication with Discord communities, made up of people, not bots. There you can get to grips with Linux, Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Ube Boobey has been trying to teach herself from YouTube tutorials and online communities. We do a video call and she shows me the prototype of an MP3 player she’s currently working on. She’s been collecting fossils and she wants the device to look somewhat similar.
Ever since last year, via my little online bubble, I’ve been focussing on tech-related issues: what should we know about the processes behind technology or the structural inequalities it relies on? Digital creators such as Sihaam take a deep dive into cyberfeminism, give examples of websites that, unlike Meta or TikTok, aren’t subject to problematic algorithms, and ask questions about our role in cyberspace. According to the artist-owned co-op and media platform Death to Stock, a whole trend is already emerging amongst musicians, with DJs and performers writing code in real time or using visuals that showcase this process much more transparently. Ninajirachi’s album ‘I love my computer’ is all over TikTok. And the abrasive yet optimistic sound of recent hyperpop – represented by Ninajirachi, Underscores or Jane Remover – on the future of technology and ours, in general, seems to bring all these elements together. What’s more, the trend of repurposing and reusing old ‘technology’ as accessories – hair clips, necklaces or earrings – has already made it to the mainstream.
Whisper further explores the philosophy of recent tech trends: ‘I think there’s an ontological dimension to all of this. A lot of us grew up surrounded by hopeful visions of the future. Science fiction and, in a different way, neoliberalism taught us to believe that technology would continuously improve and, in turn, make the world better. But that idea was just as false then as it is now. At the same time, artists play a role in shaping collective imaginaries. So, it makes sense that we’re trying to create the aesthetics of the future we actually want to live in.’
Customizing computers and thinking more critically about how we use them feels really important. As Whisper insightfully says: ‘People building cyberdecks feel like natural fellow travellers in a more liberated computing movement. We’ve had many revolutions in physical space, and the internet has certainly driven some. But a revolution in cyberspace feels underexplored. Silicon Valley often reframes products as “revolutions”, but what we actually need are real revolutions.’
This article was first published by Romanian partner journal Scena9. Croatian partner journal Vox Feminae chose the piece for translation and publication under the Translation Relay project, an initiative to further exchange between Eurozine partners.
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
