“Casa Tomada” (House Taken Over) is a story written by the great Julio Cortázar. It tells the story of a couple of siblings who live alone in a large house that strangely begins to be “taken” by something immaterial and Ominous. It is never known what exactly it is that “takes” the house, it is only known that little by little the brothers “can not” enter certain rooms, not because they are closed or blocked, they simply “can not”. I am not going to tell the ending so that those who have not read it can look it up and read it on their own.
Cortázar wrote the story in the context of a dictatorship in his home country, Argentina. It is impossible not to see a parallel between the story and Cortázar’s situation then, living abroad, unable to return home because it has been “taken”.
Since all this “digital migration” started in several networks, I have not been able to stop thinking about “La Casa Tomada”, in how it seems that little by little the digital spaces we inhabited have been “taken” and now we “can not” to be in them anymore. There are several factors that are causing this: the shittification, the rise of reactionary ideas, the bots and AI, the increasingly intrusive advertising, all an abominable and amorphous amalgam that seems to engulf everything around us.
But let’s not kid ourselves, this didn’t start with Musk. The Internet has been taken over since Facebook and other social networks came out. It’s been slow and systematic, it’s just that now it’s become unbearable.
The Fediverse has become to a greater or lesser extent a refuge for those fleeing the maelstrom. It is far from perfect, paradises do not exist, but that does not imply that it is not worth fighting for.
After all, the Internet can’t really be dead as long as we are here. It has been “taken”, and sooner or later it will have to be taken back.
EDIT: More accurate English title of the story. PDF of the story in English. Wikipedia Page of Cortázar.
I took an interest in this post and story, which I read, and found that while I appreciate the sentiment, there’s actually a lot of misinformation in the post itself.
Casa Tomada*
Brother and sister*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Tomada
Cortázar was not living abroad in 1946 when this was written. He wasn’t in France until 1951. In 1946, he worked at a university as a professor of French literature in Mendoza, Argentina, and was being outed by political pressure - this is more specifically what the story is probably about.
Ok, I’ll grant you about the date, it was a big mistake and I should have been more cautious with that. The title and the “Brothers” thing though are rather misprints: the title… Well, yes, it’s "Casa Tomada, not “La Casa Tomada”, sorry; and about the brothers, well in Spanish (my mother tongue) saying “Hermanos” (brothers) is a way of referring to a group of brother and sister, there is no direct equivalent to the English “Siblings”, which was the word I wanted to use.
Now, Calling this “misinformation” is a bit exaggerated in my opinion, although I still appreciate the heads up and the interest you put in knowing more about the story and the author beyond what I have said, which after all was one of my goals.