"Why does this exist? What's the point of network victim. it's a way to imagine things already explained in a more complicated way just for fun? No like new info? Just headcanoning extra explanations onto stuff that have none, or already have some? This isn't a theory, it's just headcanon using stuff already implied. Why have I seen people trying to use the network to explain things, if it's just for "fun"? I don't understand. We're trying to solve the lore, not headcanon extra things just for shits and giggles"
- Anonymous Gastropod
History, Motivations, Development
For a long time, I've had some disparate fixations and vague connections boiling in the back of my mind (FNaF3 minigames, reocurring theme of illusions, the space of FNaF World, the ball pit memory...). Dittophobia was the straw that broke the animatronic camel's back. Why gas? We already have illusion discs, so most assumed that was the mechanism for the Nightmares. Instead, Dittophobia decided to invent a brand new kind of illusion technology, to add to the pile. (Yes, it was likely planned since SL, but that's besides the point.) This was shortly after Ruin's release, where another totally unrelated form of illusion technology had just been introduced. This is what made me feel like I was really onto something, that I had picked up on a pattern that might actually be important.
I think most people have a vague sense that "The Flipside" is a spirit world of sorts, and even that it might be related to the VANNI Network. The concept of "the Network" is "in the air", so to speak; I've had several people tell me they had similar ideas in the back of their mind. However, I hadn't ever seen a "proper" theory of the spirit world, an actual model for how it works, and how it explains different features of the story. Just about 2 years beforehand, I had begun understanding the importance of memories, emotions, and soul-shattering in the lore, and it was very exciting. The thought of connecting all these ideas into a more complete, unified Theory of the Paranormal was very interesting to me.
My first draft of the initial Network post was very different from the final version (though it was never finished). I was trying to explain my ideas in the usual, straightforward way, going point-by-point and explaining exactly how it contributes to the overall theory. I really struggled to write this, because I felt as though this kind of explanation was not a good fit for the flavor of idea I was presenting. There was a massive conflict between the way the ideas existed in my mind, and the way I was writing them down, and it made the whole thing feel inauthentic, or like it was somehow missing the point. That's what lead me to try something different.
The term "Schizoanalysis" is taken from Deleuze and Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus". I won't pretend to have a completely solid understanding of what they mean by it, I've only read a few chapters. The post's style is most inspired by Nick Land. I pay homage to him immediately, actually.
"The story goes like this: Children's souls are captured by a technopsychotic singularity as digital delineation and psychocorporeal instantiation lock into harmonic traumatization take-off."
"The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off."
- Meltdown, by Nick Land
There's a couple more direct references here and there. My familiarity with Land is mostly second-hand, but he's clearly a fascinating (in)human being. I particularly like Ouroborista's article about him. I hoped to make FNaF lore interesting in a way similar to how Land makes politics interesting, through a blend of copycat CCRU aesthetics with a unique perspective on what it means to "solve" FNaF.
I also repeatedly reference Serial Expiriments Lain's concept of "the Wired". Lain's Wired is (mostly) synonymous with the internet, but more broadly, it's used to refer to the abstract network of human interactions. There is a decent amount of thematic overlap between FNaF and Lain. The word felt appropriate.
I pulled the term "meatspace" from an old post by n1x, "Hello From the Wired", but apparently it's been used since the 90's? Anyway, constantly describing the wired as being opposed to "reality" gives the impression that the wired isn't "real", so I've always thought this was a good way to put the two on a more equal footing, sidestepping arguments about what counts as "real".
This is all to say, the original Network post was a melding of some random patterns I'd noticed in FNaF with my vague understanding of a bunch of esoteric continental philosophy. What would Deleuze think of the Five Nights at Freddy's lore, I wonder.
The post got a pretty good reaction on Reddit, but what I wouldn't discover until later was its even bigger effect on the FNaF theories Discord (thanks to Cazlyn). It caused a stir, and though the role of BV was exaggerated, and most of the specific criticisms were just misinterpretations (understandably so), the general idea got across, and seems to have left an impact.
This is where the names "Network Theory" and "NetworkVictim" come from. I didn't coin them myself (though the word 'network' is used a few times in the post). I'm glad this is the name that caught on, because it does get to the heart of the theory quite well. Though I think "NetworkVictim" puts a bit too much emphasis on BV, it's still the name I tend to use on this website, just to clearly indicate that I'm talking about a FNaF theory, as opposed to "real-world" network theory. (Potoo was the one to coin the name "NetworkVictim", as they often point out.)
I would go on to write a follow up post, inspired by the original post's reaction. This one is just a larp, honestly, a clunky reference to Land's similarly titled introduction to Accelerationism. I could justify the larp with some allusion to hyperstition, or something, but that'd be silly. The real point was to show that the theory's reaction was being integrated into the theory itself (I hadn't appeared on the Discord yet, so there was some impact in directly referencing ideas which had only been discussed there), as well as explaining the broad goal of escaping from the "dusty scaffolding of pseudo-rigorous theory babble". I was (and still am) a bit tired with FNaF theorists' fixation with constantly shuffling and reorganizing their broad extrapolations from minor details, and arguing over slightly different interpretations of vague dialogue. I wanted to step back and make some larger connections, establishing a broad, high-level theory in a more loose, impressionistic way.
From there, I retreated into the notes format, to explore the ideas in a more free-form style, and give myself more space and time to think things over thoroughly. They are (mostly) labeled "A Direct Approach", because I intended them to be a more straightforward, almost axiomatic dissection of the ideas. The original post was more sweeping and impressionistic, partly because I was still trying to get a good grasp on the concepts dancing around my mind. The notes are more focused, and I attempt to present a specific, well-tuned model of the theory. (Note 7 is an exception, as it is labelled "A Delusional Approach" instead, and follows more in the style of the original post.)
Next, there's the "Conformal Network Theory" document. I wrote this spontaneously one morning in a rush of overcaffeinated hyperfocus (there's a couple places where I apparently abandoned a sentence halfway through and forgot to come back to it). By that point, I felt I understood the ideas a lot better than when I had started, so I wanted to make a single document which put everything together in a straightforward way. I chose the "Conformal" title for a couple reasons... Mainly, since "Network Theory" is sort of a broad cloud of ideas, I wanted to separate out this particular version of the theory as a distinct thing. CNT is just one possible Network model, one concrete set of concepts floating in a larger cloud of network-y ideas.
Finally, there's the graphic...
I wanted to make a graphic version for a long time, because I feel that a visualization of "the network" can be helpful in understanding the ideas, and because I thought it would look cool. I was inspired mainly by Reddit user /u/Timecake's neurotyping diagrams, which I had recently looked back on while working on my introduction to neurotyping. Here's an example (open in new tab for full res).
I don't know how much more Network content will be produced. I may create more graphics at some point. There may be more notes, as I continue to think through some of the details. I've thought about making an edited video version of the original post, but I have almost no familiarity with any video editing software, so that's far-off. The theory isn't "finished", but I think it's gotten its main ideas across pretty well at this point. I'm at the point where, in order to make progress, I may need to overturn some of its fundamental assumptions, and create an entirely new theory (though it may still be considered a branch of Network Theory).
What comes next? Quantum Network Theory? Will someone else swoop in and make Network Theory 2.0? (That would be exciting!) Or is the future devoid of networkposting? I don't know, we'll see I guess.
Responding to the Allegations
Is Network Theory "overcomplicating" things?
I've been accused of this many times, but I would actually describe the theory as a simplification of the usual ideas, at least at its core. That's how unified theories tend to work, they move the complexity into the emergent consequences, rather than the fundamental behavior.
Newton's Law of Gravitation is "simpler" than Kepler's Laws, in the sense that it compresses and generalizes the information. But if you want to apply the law, to compute the consequences, Newton's law is arguably a bit more complicated. You aren't simply told that orbits are elliptical, you have to derive that. This is, broadly speaking, the reductionist tradition of Physics (arguably of science in general). It's the way I naturally tend to think of things, and it's the angle that Network Theory takes.
I have a habit of attempting to understand the universe of a story as though it has a perfectly constructed fundamental physics. I have lots of old Reddit posts about the structure of the Gravity Falls / Rick and Morty multiverse (which are probably not worth reading, by the way, since I was 14 years old at the time). I tend to extrapolate well beyond the intentions of the artists, in the pursuit of some grand theory of the workings of this or that story's universe (which almost certainly wasn't intended). It's easy to see why one would call this "overthinking", but it's my natural tendency, the normal way I engage with stories I'm particularly interested in.
In short, I have an intrinsic desire to understand all complexity as emergent from underlying simplicity, and a tendency to take fictional worlds just as seriously as the real one.
I'm also accused of being confusing, which is understandable, obviously. I have a habit of assuming other people know more than me, and I write as though the reader is already familiar with some ideas that they've likely never heard of. It makes for better writing, I think. Personally, I have trouble sitting through FNaF lore posts that go through and explain everything step-by-step, as though I haven't heard this stuff a million times. I don't have the patience for that, and I can always do my own research if I need to.
Do I actually "believe" Network Theory?
This is a tricky question, because, like I alluded to earlier, "Network Theory" is a sort of broad conglomerate of ideas. Roughly speaking, it has foundations and extrapolations.
The foundations are relatively simple. There exists a network of memalia, connected through agony-infused objects. Memalia are spaces, including dreams and memories. It's the spirit world, the Flipside, the collective dream, the wired, psychespace, whatever you want to call it. I have a decent degree of confidence that some version of this is canon, because I think it's a natural interpretation of some things we see in FNaF3, World, and the Frights. Something like the Network HAS to be right, because that's literally what we see in the games, books, and movie. The metaphorical devil is in the literal details, however, so I won't pretend to be confident in the specific model of the Network.
From the initial premise, I've extrapolated the theory in all sorts of directions. The Network is thermodynamically entangling, it's infested with a microbial agonism ecosystem, it's instantiating and reverberating and deterritorializing and so on. These ideas cover a greater range of uncertainty, and they tend to dip into fanfiction territory. They do exist to explain phenomena which are definitely present within the story. But the perspective with which I've approached the ideas would probably seem completely alien to Scott.
Ultimately, I think Scott and Steel Wool are using some version of Network Theory, but I doubt that they're thinking about it in the same way I am. The Network is an entirely empirical theory. It barely even makes sense to ask "what is the evidence", because the whole thing is deeply engaged in a feedback process of observation and explanation. What is the evidence for Newton's Laws? They fit the data, that's the evidence. Network Theory fits the data. Arguably, anyway. There are probably cases where it doesn't, and in those circumstances, I've simply made a mistake. There are other cases where we don't have much to go off of, so it's hard to say one way or another.
In some cases, I would say that if the Network is wrong, it's probably because I thought it through more thoroughly than Scott did.