I really enjoyed Lain as a work of speculative fiction, especially watching it in 2019 and being able to compare and contrast the portrayal of computer’s effects on society with what “actually” happened as we moved more and more of our lives onto the internet.
The “actual” story/plot (message?) only really came together after watching a long YouTube video (actually, I read the transcript / script as a blog post so it wasn’t as long for me to get through it). If I had had the patience I think I would have preferred rewatching until I “got” it, but there’s so much else out there to experience. Maybe some day I’ll sit down and do a “proper” rewatch.
A good part of the initial enjoyment for me was the vibes and letting the different scenes slowly add up onto each other in the back of my mind.
As others have said in this thread already, it’s not necessarily the most coherent nor meaningful story as it is conveyed. Being depressed can unironically help it make sense (though I would never ever recommend getting depressed just to better understand Lain or any story really, your mental wellbeing is more important!).
The shots of telephone lines with audio of power line hums and the weird purple/red splotches are probably some of my favorite bits, and they’re what I immediately think of whenever Lain gets brought up.
Ok but if it allows anubis to judge the soul of my bytes as being worthy of reaching a certain site I’m trying to access, then the program is not making any calculations that I don’t want it to.
Would the FSF prefer the challenge page wait for user interaction before starting that proof of work? Along with giving them user a “don’t ask again” checkbox for future challenges?