Vice Interview: The Lioness

The “Lioness” leader of the all female hacker collective “The Pride” speaks to Vice for the first time. 

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai Aug 13th 2076 11.00am

We are here with a live encrypted chat feed with whom I am reliably informed is in fact the legendary “Lioness” leader of “The Pride” the all female hacker collective famous for their strong stance on human rights and personal freedom and identity.

But today we are here to discuss her new mental mod, Eternal.Sunshine(), that is blowing up Reddit and taking the tech world by storm.

First let me say I’m a huge fan! We have been trying to pin you down here at Vice for years. I'm pretty sure we have a lot in common.

Well thank you, but that remains to be seen. Lets not get ahead of ourselves, it's only a first date, it takes time to build trust, trust that can be easily broken. 

Ha, ok sure. So Lioness, calling a mental housekeeping app “Eternal Sunshine” more than a bit self deprecating, no? Reminds me of the guy who was competing with Huel all those years ago who called his product Soylent Green. Didn't work out great for him. 

I think the numbers I'm getting would show otherwise. Clearly a little bit of British style ironic humour has rubbed off on me over these years. Besides, I think that the cyber and hacker communities are a little more sophisticated than the health sector. It is a warning, this mod won’t solve all your problems and use it with care and respect. It clearly does not perform the same function as the tech in that film, we aren't erasing memories, just limiting overthinking. 

Yeah it's doing particularly great numbers in Oceania, we are eating up the dark and self deprecating humour you are so known for. So unpack it a little bit for us Lioness, what is it really doing?

Eternal Sunshine works directly with the mindstream in a similar way to mindfulness based approaches. It can be applied in a similar way, if you have intrusive or repetitive thoughts, those can be cleaned up and filed away to LongTerm, you can come back to them later, the memories and feelings aren't erased, just organised, put in a less disruptive place. 

That's cool, so it's mindfulness for those people that don't know how to meditate, right? 

Basically yes, I mean as far as I can tell. It empowers you to take control of your mindstream, it reduces anxiety, prevents harmful thoughts and honestly, just helps you “feel right.” you know?

Thats incredible, a real life superpower, must be helpful for someone on both the Red’s and PTDRC’s most wanted list. 

Oh little old me? Well I try and stay busy, yeah. What's a girl to do in such a big scary world? But, still only on two most wanted lists? No, that doesn't seem right to me, maybe check your phone?

Ummm ok? Whats this, arms sales records, to 21 African countries, including the use of banned autonomous weaponry. And its, woah, its from RP Security, an Oceania based private security firm. 

With links to Oceania heads of state too. Take your time, if it's too much stress for you I very much recommend downloading my mental mod, Eternal.Sunshine(), well before my accounts get shut down here in the UK, so yeah limited time offer! Trust me I know more than anyone that dealing with modern life stress is challenging. Take care Vice, enjoy my little gift to you from the Pride. We do not hunt alone.