“Twink Death- A Deepdive Into the Sociotechnical Relationship Between Ageing and Queerness Online" "Dissociative Worldma
Friday, 5 June 2026, 1pm to 3pm
Join us for the annual OII Pride Lecture, an opportunity to celebrate pride month and to promote the work of members of the LGBTQ+ community working in tech. This year’s lecture will feature talks by OII Lecturer Dr Ewan Soubutts and designer and researcher Lucas LaRochelle.
Please join us at the Schwarzman Centre or via Zoom.
1-2pm: “Twink Death” – A Deep-dive Into the Sociotechnical Relationship Between Ageing and Queerness Online
with Dr Ewan Soubutts
People’s relationship to ageing is often complex and situated in intimate social rituals that make our transfer into different life stages more manageable. Online personas and the way that we are perceived by others often force us to relinquish control of these rituals and succumb to labels placed on us through online discourse, that we may otherwise avoid. The pseudo-stereotype of “Twink Death” in internet meme culture is one such application of the imposition of such labels and a lens for this discussion. This talk explores our relationship between ageing online and labelling in predominantly queer spaces and our sense of control and autonomy over who we present ourselves as online.
2-3pm: Dissociative Worldmaking
with Lucas LaRochelle
This lecture-performance introduces the concept of ‘dissociative worldmaking’, a methodological and aesthetic framework to understand the interactions of queer/trans data with artificial intelligence. Grounded in my artistic practice—specifically the countermapping platform Queering the Map and its generative AI offspring QT.bot—I advocate for strategies of data opacity that resist the extractivism and standardization inherent to machine learning.
Weaving together auto-theoretical reflections on ketamine, heartbreak and data moderation with writings by Edouard Glissant, Lauren Berlant, and Hannah Baer, I reframe dissociation not as a pathology but as a generative strategy for processing the “too muchness” of an archive laden with both trauma and ecstasy. I argue that by embracing the failure of linear causality, machine learning can be appropriated to help us navigate the information overload of the present without resorting to reductionism. This lecture-performance proposes ‘dissociative worldmaking’ as an aesthetic strategy that loosens attachments to normative time and subjecthood, allowing for new forms of sense-making within a world in crisis.
3-4pm: Drinks reception
Join us for an opportunity to network over drinks and nibbles.
A variety of snacks and drinks will be available, if you have any dietary requirements please contact events@oii.ox.ac.uk
Dr Ewan Soubutts is a Departmental Lecturer at the OII, specialising in Human-Centered Computing and Digital Health. He also holds Honorary Research Fellow at positions at the UCL Interaction Centre and Bristol Interaction Group in the UK. Ewan studies the intersection of technology within and between age groups in society, looking at how people provide support that is mediated via digital communication tools like smart speakers and wellness apps, allowing for individual and collective understandings of technology adoption, digital health and care challenges (such as life transitions) and information acquisition over the internet.
Lucas LaRochelle is a designer and researcher whose work is concerned with queer and trans digital cultures, community-based archiving, and artificial intelligence. They are the founder of Queering The Map, a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space. They have lectured, facilitated, and exhibited internationally, recently at the Guggenheim Museum (USA), Ars Electronica (Austria), Museum of Design Atlanta (USA), among many other galleries, festivals and academic institutions.
Speaker(s): Dr Ewan Soubutts (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford), Lucas LaRochelle
Series: OII Pride Lectures
Department: Oxford Internet Institute (Department)
Organiser: Ellen Mobbs
Register here: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/events/oii-pride-lecture-2026/