‘Ever seen horse-eyes up close?’: Entropoetics in _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9’s The Interface Series

Abstract

Reddit provides an experimental environment for authors to post their stories progressively; in the case of user _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9, this progressive storytelling is both cohesive and fragmented, being posted sequentially over the space of two months, and being posted across a wide range of subreddits to gather the attention of a large audience. Those who followed the posts back to the user directory discovered a narrative framework emerging from the ostensibly unrelated autonomous posts, a framework centred around the horrifying Mother with Horse Eyes. This article argues that the fragmented/completeness of the narrative becomes both the form and the function of the text, allowing us to theorize a poetics of entropy. Beyond all other concerns, The Interface Series explores the philosophical problem of entropy, with philosophical, hermeneutic and literary repercussions.