The Rise of Feminine Cyberdecks: A Creative Rebellion Against Big Tech
When I contact CC, the self-proclaimed “open source villain,” for an interview, I’m pretty sure she’s emailing me back from a mermaid pink purse.
“I’m having so much fun,” she tells me of her shell cyberdeck. “It’s a Tamagotchi. It’s also an e-reader. It’s connected to my vault and my servers, so it has access to all the data on my server, which has all my PDFs, my books, my notes, and everything… It’s also connected to my local AI setup at home.”
A New Wave in DIY Computing
CC has no background in software engineering or computer science, but she’s good enough at building unconventional cyberdecks—tiny DIY computers—to document the process on her Bimbo Tech blog so other women can follow her lead, even if they don’t yet know what RAM is.
The idea of the cyberdeck originated in William Gibson’s 1984 science fiction novel “Neuromancer,” and when credit card-sized computers like the Raspberry Pi hit the market in the 2010s, hardware enthusiasts began building and sharing their own cyberdecks in niche online communities. But in recent months, these communities have exploded in popularity thanks to women on social media teaching each other how to build artistic, hyper-feminine computers by documenting their building processes.
“I have a running joke that there’s this underlying misogyny in tech — because every time they release a professional model or an elite model… I’m always like, let me guess, it’s black or silver,” CC said. “It will never be rosy.”
Cyberdecks as Art and Empowerment
The process of customizing and designing a cyberdeck has become an art form in itself. On Instagram and TikTok, you can find a wood and foam cyberdeck that runs Game Boy Color games; a desert-inspired MP3 player built inside a 3D-printed fossil; a Barbie dollhouse that opens to reveal a working mini-computer; or a duck figurine that can be used to record voice notes.
CC’s cyberdeck during the construction processImage credits:CC / Bimbo Tech
“I don’t want Meta AI glasses. I want to hack books in a little ornate case,” creator Sarahbelle Kim said on TikTok. “No one can watch you there. You can get basic pieces at a thrift store or on eBay and just customize them.”
There’s obviously an aesthetic motivation for the rise of girly cyberdecks: why not use a Hello Kitty purse to check your emails? It’s fun for its own sake. But the women who build these extravagant, dazzling cyberdecks aren’t there just for the sparkle. This trend is peaking at a time when people feel powerless against the pervasive homogeneity of big tech.
Taking Back Control Through Creativity
“I think it’s such a refreshing thing for people who have been sold these devices like Apple’s… If you try to jailbreak it, if you try to do anything on that phone that you paid $1,000 for and you own, it’s out of warranty,” CC said. “So I love seeing people take the power back into their hands, take the control back into their hands, which obviously always means creativity when you empower people to get out of the black box.”
Maro Vardanyan doesn’t work with hardware as a blockchain developer, but she has always loved collecting and tinkering with old computer parts.
“A few months ago, I started as a hobby creating art pieces, jewelry and handbags with old recycled or upcycled computers that I had,” she said. “When I saw everyone making cyberdecks, I was like, wait, why am I just making cyberdecks when I can actually preserve the parts of something that’s portable, that’s mobile?”
Image credits:Maro Vardanian
Vardanyan took a different approach in building cyberdecks, choosing instead to emphasize the historical relationship between fiber art and technology. Vardanyan refers to her work as “crocheting with computers” or “macramé motherboards,” deliberately nodding to the role of weaving – a practice often seen as domestic, women’s work – in the early history of computing.
Before silicon processors, some early computers ran on magnetic core memory, made of copper wires precisely threaded to encode the 1s and 0s of binary code. So that NASA could build the Apollo guidance computer, for example, expert textile workers were tasked with meticulously weaving threads in painstakingly complex patterns, which powered the spacecraft that landed the first man on the moon.
Image credits:Maro Vardanian
“The original processor was hand-woven by seamstresses, not by engineers or anyone else,” she said. “I feel like hand weaving, and even the meeting of fashion and technology… It’s come so full circle.”
Vardanyan began weaving pink Raspberry Pis to make handbags and corsets, then posted photos of her work in progress on X.
“Of course, when macramé went viral, all the men were like, ‘That’s such a waste of Raspberry Pi’… or ‘What about the rain?’” she said. “And then I have to say, ‘Actually, it’s kept in an acrylic case.’ And then they say, “This is so performative, and the GPIO will waste power!” And I’m like, ‘Actually, I’m using a live wire, so it will move and fully function.’
The Silent Resistance
CC has also encountered condescending men on the Internet who balk at the idea that someone could use a Raspberry Pi on something as frivolous as a shell handheld computer during a RAM shortage.
“This guy on Reddit said to me, ‘You built your first computer a month ago, calm down.’ Mind you, I’ve been building PCs for years,” CC said. “So, long story short, he ends up apologizing and buying me the circuit board for my next cyberdeck.”
From CC’s mermaid hand computer to Vardanyan’s Raspberry Pi corset, these cyberdecks are a direct rejection of Silicon Valley culture, and not just in their blatant adoption of the color pink. They are intentionally impractical and ineffective, which seems sacrilegious in a culture so obsessed with optimization that unregulated injections of Chinese peptides are all the rage. It’s a radical act to embrace hacky, DIY tech experiences in order to forge a closer relationship with devices that seem so abstract despite their omnipresence.
“Ten years ago, I walked into a conference, there were three girls and people were literally like, ‘Were you hired for the marketing team?’ “, Vardanyan said. “I can’t even tell you how amazing it is to see so many girls all over my social media and Instagram getting into hardware, getting into software, and then educating. [each other] and it is certainly this energy that we lack at all levels of society.
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