Minimum Viable Person

The Minimum Viable Person plugin emerged from years of navigating the absurd theatre of tech culture — not just as a researcher studying algorithmic systems, but as someone who once worked behind the glossy curtain, designing decks, brand identities, and “vision slides” for tech startups and innovation labs. I’ve sat in meetings where phrases like “disrupting the future of human-centric AI synergy” were spoken without irony. I’ve spent late nights aligning pitch decks that said absolutely nothing — but said it very confidently.

These experiences, paired with my academic research into feminist technoscience, made the patterns painfully clear: beneath the sleek interfaces and breathless hype lies a recursive logic of exclusion — one that rewards charisma over ethics, disruption over care, and domination over nuance. 

As Legacy Russell writes, “The glitch is a form of refusal. It is an error that reveals, a break that opens” (2020, p. 11). This plugin is my refusal — a glitch performed through parody. Influenced by scholars like Rosa Menkman, Micha Cárdenas, and Wendy Chun, this project embraces failure-as-method and humor-as-critical-inquiry.

Why are the words “scale,” “optimize,” and “disrupt” always at the center of ‘innovation’?
Why do platforms promise ‘inclusivity’ while centralizing power in the hands of crypto bros, AI ‘godfathers,’ and Gary Vee-style hustle prophets?

These terms aren’t neutral. They encode hierarchies — of gender, race, and access — under the guise of neutrality. As Micha Cárdenas reminds us, “Code is not outside of politics… it is another articulation of power” (2022, p. 49). Language is infrastructure.