By Zack Quaintance — Today writer Zac Thompson stops by to talk about his new series at AfterShock Comics, I Breathed A Body (the fourth issue of which is out today!), and what results is a fascinating conversation that touches on fungi, social media, and a future ‘stuck in a cycle of bullshit’…

INTERVIEW: Zac Thompson talks I BREATHED A BODY

ZACK QUAINTANCE: So, the first thing I wanted to ask about was your own relationship to social media, and how that factored into the creation of this book? Fun seems like the wrong word, but there was a “fun” coincidence in that when I initially reached out about an interview, you were on a social media break…

I Breathed A Body #4 is out April 28, 2021. — **I Breathed A Body #4** is out April 28, 2021.

ZAC THOMPSON: My relationship to social media changed a lot over 2020 and 2021. Due to the research process for this book and Lonely Receiver, I found myself drowning in knowledge about the specific ways social media manipulates our behavior. This was during a pandemic where our lives were entirely online. So I burnt out on the fully “online life” really fast.

The commodification of our personal data is a sticking point for me, ethically. So I try not to divulge too much of my personal life online. Beyond that, I’m just so over our stupid attention economy. I worked in journalism for years. I was part of newsrooms where the goal of a piece was just to keep people engaged/mad. Hell, I personally wrote clickbait headlines that drove millions of clicks. So, now, I find the whole thing exhausting. As I’m sure most people do.

But the change I’ve made is to have all notifications for everything turned off. To limit my time on social media during the work day to thirty minutes and to push myself to take weekends/stretches where I’m entirely offline. It’s been incredibly centering.

Our brains are not wired to deal with this much information all the time. It’s overwhelming by design and I think these mega-corporations want us to believe our lives are meaningless without their services. The truth is, you tend to enjoy things more if you’re living in the moment rather than livestreaming it all on Instagram. Or maybe that’s just me.

QUAINTANCE: The characters in this book move within fictionalized upper echelons of the social media/tech/bio-tech business worlds, and I was curious about how much and what kind of research you did to make all that feel so real?

THOMPSON: I spent years as an editor/video producer at a large journalism website. This was during the whole “pivot to video” era. My job was unique in that I worked closely with Facebook to create short “news” videos with YouTube “influencers”. It was an eye-opening experience that was honestly really depressing. There is so much manipulation at play in these social media, journalism, and tech worlds that I found myself constantly existing in this strange intersection of needs. And even if they didn’t overtly say it, the whole goal of everyone at every company was manipulation. Either manipulating people with the content of a video, the strategic deployment of which Facebook pages to share videos on, when they were uploaded, who was featured in the video, how the metrics were reported…everything was a grift.

Most of this information is public now but back then we were told to keep it a secret that a “view” on Facebook was counted after 3 seconds of autoplay. Which is a really disingenuous way to log data or report performance, especially to when it came to advertisers.

“Even at the corporate level, social media is a space dominated by magical thinking and a separation from the ethics of what you’re doing.”

— Zac Thompson

Within that culture, I had performance reviews where my boss would give me insane goals like “write and produce a video that gets 10 million views”. My annual raise was contingent on hitting that metric. As if that was something I could engineer. Even at the corporate level, social media is a space dominated by magical thinking and a separation from the ethics of what you’re doing. It was a really frustrating experience. So I poured it all into this book.

Along with reading Anna Weiner’s incredible novel Uncanny Valley, or reading many of Cory Doctrow’s Twitter threads on Silicon Valley. Beyond that, through my previous job, I developed a few contacts with folks who worked in Silicon Valley at hyper growth companies that were willing to chat with me about the internal politics of it all.

QUAINTANCE: Every time I think I know where this book is going or what it’s most interested in saying, it just completely obliterates my understanding. Was there a theme, question, or other idea that guided you in the creation of this story? Something you kept at the forefront of your thinking as you developed this plot?

THOMPSON: Yes. In a way, I’m happy to hear you say that because so much of this book was this overwhelming leviathan of ideas. I felt like if you’re going to dive into Influencer culture and the worship of these new social media Gods - you really have to show how much of this is tied into corporate monopolies, tech companies, and Silicon Valley. So I wanted to write something that showed how interconnected this stuff is and how pulling at one thread means pulling at them all. Much like a mycelial network of mushrooms… it’s all connected. The book even talks about this in the opening pages, taking a name and deriving it into a number of different permutations. So you’ve got Mycena the company, MyCee pages the app, MycenaNet, Mylo, the list goes on...

It was all with the intent to show there is a huge corporate hegemony that exists just beneath our lives online. These giant billion dollar companies make decisions with immediate effect on our personal lives. They do this with legions of “influencers” in their employ, who are in turn corporate mouthpieces for hire. Regular people are stuck in the middle trading their data for access to all this bullshit. All of this is happening with virtually no oversight. So, in the end, where does that leave us?

Self-destruction. That was the theme that I kept coming back to. All the violence (spiritual or otherwise) in this book is self-inflicted. It’s all about how we’re stuck in these systems that are destroying us, pushing us to lose our individual privacy (or agency), and keeping us angry and distracted. Social media has made us more focused on culture war bullshit than actually enacting real change. We’re destroying ourselves and others rather than the systems that are failing us. We need to think about these corporate structures holistically and consider their impact on society broadly. Think of how many kids go online and see Jake Paul as a personality worth admiring. Just this month he was accused of sexual assault and a New York Times piece came out last week looking into his predatory business practices. Then he went on to have a live stream boxing match that absolutely smashed viewership records. That’s pretty fucked.

In my opinion, we’re stuck in this cycle of bullshit unless future generations figure out how to exist offline. Which is becoming harder and harder by the day.

QUAINTANCE: Without spoiling, I think I can say this week's penultimate issue goes to some fantastical and grandiose places toward the end. I loved the imagery, the combined aesthetic that almost felt like fantasy meets body horror meets fungi meets post-modern furniture design (or something). How did you, Andy MacDonald, and Triona Farrell collaborate on the look of what happens at the end of issue #4?

THOMPSON: I likened the structure of the book to a mushroom trip. So, when talking about issue #4 that was where I felt like things had to peak. You had to fully descend into the “fantastique” as Clive Barker calls it. Because at its core, this book is actually more dark fantasy than science fiction. So this marked the turn, the place where there was no going back and pushing us into this fantastical space where reality and dreams collide.

Funnily enough, I spent time with Andy [MacDonald] asking him to essentially keep the first half of this issue rigid and grid-like. Basically using the form of the pages against the content of the story in a way that created friction. So as Bramwell’s insane ritual begins, it feels measured and controlled. But as the issue nears its conclusion things break apart and become really fluid and seamless. Andy is this monster that can do absolutely anything I throw at him. So issue #4 was really an effort in seeing how much we could use his versatility to compliment the form of the narrative.

Triona [Farrell] is a legend. She kills it on every page of this book. She’s sincerely our secret weapon. When it came to coloring this issue she knew exactly what I wanted to achieve and towards the end she really let loose. Her colors are layered and surreal, evoking that element of the fantastique that really needs to be seen to be believed. There’s a panel of Anne looking at a purple skyline in this issue that made the hair on my arms stand up the first time I saw it.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s letters. This issue marks an evolution in the narrative voice that he worked seamlessly into the dream-like imagery. Hass is another person I can just go to with an insane idea and see if he’s down to make it work on the page. So within all this playful insanity, the words you're reading start to react and change thanks to Anne’s expanding consciousness.

QUAINTANCE: Finally, how many reference pictures of fungi did you send your collaborators during the making of this book?

THOMPSON: Far too many. My phone is fucking full of wild shroom pics that I took while out foraging. I’ve promised to myself to make an online album before the book wraps.

Check out I Breathed A Body now!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.