Last night, rather than pick something on Criterion Channel for our Saturday movie, I found myself craving a nostalgia watch.
A specific nostalgia watch at that: Hackers (1995)
I remember renting it on VHS when it was released. I was the right age, very much into computers, was loving the electronic music on MuchMusic all the time, and (my internal world) was very trans and looking for evidence that there was a place for me.
While the New York of the movie was hardly explicit about the latter factor, it wasn't all that hard to make a connection between the imperfect world I had found online (trans women still seem to be well-represented among computer-touchers) and it was pretty easy for me to imagine myself in a much cooler and accepting milieu than the one I existed in.
Sure, it was all purely imaginary, but I really wanted to run off and join whatever that all was!
Reality eventually stepped in and I ...just didn't.
It's likely not an accident that whatever dream-world I had spun up for myself and my friends (who I'd paint some very creative interpretations of what I was doing with my computer and what I was going to do rsn) began to fade a year or two later as it became necessary to repress again fairly aggressively.
That I never did really have much in the way of the necessary skills (or natural aptitude) to do the sorts of thing that such people do was, of course, a pretty major factor. Computers speak something that looks and acts like math, and I spent a few of those years with math grades on the knife-edge.
I really was just seeking a legible place that I could see myself - my whole self - existing as the realities of "real" adulthood were coming into view. And the swirl of websites, chat rooms, and, yes a little bit of very cheesy Hollywood magic gave me something to hope for.
Was it silly? Absolutely!
Was it adolescent? You bet! That's what I was!
Was it realistic? Not even little for someone like me!
It took me more than 25 more years to find it, but in the end, I did find a place where I - the whole I - am welcomed and accepted and it's still in front of a screen.
Sure, that screen has a chonky Excel sheet with a costing analysis, Outlook, and Teams open, and there is no mid-90s electronic music to accompany (unless I want there to be), but it turns out that developing and reforming public policy is not a bad way to bide one's time.
January 25, 2026