The tech industry has always been built on a patriarchal imagination of technology.

The tech industry has always been built on a patriarchal imagination of technology. So it does not surprise me in the least that the cyberdeck movement is mostly being led by girls with a matriarchal reimagination of what technology can be and should be. Let's talk about it. If you don't spend time in girl world, cyberdecks are essentially these user-made computers that circumvent the traditional tech companies by having users just make their own piece of technology using upcycled, recycled, or man-made materials. So for example, you can buy a vintage Polly Pocket case, take out all the Polly Pocket accessories, suddenly you have the case for your computer. Get a little screen, a recycled keyboard, and a Raspberry Pi, which is essentially the operating system. You can vibe code the entire thing in Claude code and make your own little mini computer that importantly is completely disconnected from major tech. Women and girls especially are sick of the addictive, oftentimes toxic ecosystems that big tech is enforcing on them. You don't have Microsoft forcing the latest update of Copilot on you. You don't have Daddy Zuckerberg or Bezos trying to sell you something or install a new insecurity into your mind with every scroll. In a way, it's the analog trend without actually going analog, but it is disconnecting you from typical technology structures, which is the major motivating factor for why people want to go analog to begin with. Just look at the paired-back aesthetic for what is available with technology today relative to what women and girls are literally begging tech companies to make, which is not this very like paired-back, utilitarian aesthetic. They want pink, they want glitter, they want color. They want tech that feels playful and personal. And because the tech industry is overwhelmingly dominated by men and the ever-pressing need to drive ROI, and to do that, they churn out the simplest, cheapest form of products, which usually doesn't involve making anything embellished with glitter or jewels. Giving us a consumer landscape of hardware that feels, forgive my French, but like really f-ing ugly. The initial draw of the cyberdeck for girls seems to be the aesthetic lore of it. The aesthetic draw might bore girls in, but what is really capturing their imagination is that it can exist completely outside of the claws and the gaze of big tech. Girls are choosing to build cyberdecks because it means giving their most valuable resource, their attention, away from the patriarchal institution of big tech run by the bro-logarchs who are contemplating whether they deserve like basic human rights. Redirecting that attention towards more matriarchal uses of technology. Something that is decentralized, something that is horizontal in nature. Girls are teaching each other how to build cyberdecks, and most importantly, it can't really be monetized. This is pointing to a potential future where women are reimagining their entire relationships with technology, technology which has historically been used first and foremost to degrade, abuse, and hurt women. And for brands and businesses, the question won't be how do we sell cyberdecks to women and girls, that is like the antithesis of what this entire trend is. More useful question is why are women and girls going to these spaces to begin with, and what role do our brands have in either exacerbating the reason why they are leaving, how we might mitigate or alleviate those reasons in the future.