Rarely is it so easy to find the patient zero, but in the case of cyberdecks, most agree: It was TikTok user @ubeboobey who kicked off the trend on social media. The 22-year-old Londoner, whose real name is Annike Tan, went viral earlier this year for her “mermaid cyberdeck,” essentially a DIY computer built out of a repurposed clutch, wood, gilt hardware, and a handful of chips and wires. The terminal’s idiosyncratic look hit a nerve. Why shouldn’t a laptop look like it was scavenged from a shipwreck? And why couldn’t you make your own?
In the months since Tan first posted her creation, she amassed over 230,000 TikTok followers and racked up millions of views. She’s continued to document her attempts to perfect her original cyberdeck, while experimenting with other builds — and in the process, she’s inspired women online to try their hand at the soldering iron. “I get so much support from the tech community, especially women who haven't learned tech before,” Tan says.
Suddenly, a subculture that had been bubbling since 1984 — when William Gibson’s Neuromancer first coined the word “cyberdeck” — burst into the mainstream. And a little-known hobby that had been dominated by (mostly male) sci-fi fans and their cyberpunk terminals became a whole lot more whimsical (and female). Strawberry Shortcake cyberdecks, seashell cyberdecks, Polly Pocket cyberdecks. Moss-covered cyberdecks, grass-covered cyberdecks. Call it the arts-and-crafts-ification of computing.
“Seeing [Tan] do it, I feel like a lot more women were like, ‘Oh, I can do this as well,’” says Tru Narla, a 30-year-old creator living in Brooklyn. After building a following for her creative coding projects, Narla started experimenting with hardware herself in late 2025, and has already built a clamshell e-reader, a cloud-shaped camera, and a “Tamagotchi for [her] plant.” “I thought it'd be really fun to build something that exists in the real world,” Narla says. A nice bonus? Since she’s begun posting her cyberdeck-adjacent content, her following has shifted from only 20% female to an even split.
At this point, what counts as a cyberdeck or merely cyberdeck-adjacent is anyone’s guess. What was once a fairly strict definition — a portable, homebaked computer terminal, like the devices in William Gibson’s Neuromancer — has loosened as it’s been popularized, becoming a catchall name for DIY tech. Projects like Computer Angel, a hairclip video camera, are liable to get lumped in, or at least associated with the cyberdeck fervor. Even when a build has all the constitutive parts, functionality is often limited; these aren’t replacing your MacBook anytime soon. Sometimes, that’s by design: “Writerdecks,” or cyberdecks that act as distraction-free word processors, constitute a popular subgenre.
But even as the concept has expanded, its cyberpunk roots remain relevant. Creators tout their cyberdecks as anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, and pro-sustainability. It’s a message that resonates right now, when it’s easy to feel like everything is computer and computer is bad. By building cyberdecks and becoming tech-literate, users can take back some power from technology companies.
“It's people saying, ‘We're going to learn to be a part of this narrative as well,” says Emma Orhun, 26, an Ottawa-based creator who recently began playing around with hardware. She’s delighted in learning more about the objects and systems that underpin our day-to-day lives. “There's so many ways to do things and to figure things out, and by piecing it together yourself, you can start piecing together how everything in the world works.”
There’s something a little punk rock about making tech whimsical and personal, too. For well over a decade now, every product has looked like a gray slab of glass, ora gray slab of glass with an attached keyboard, hence the growing nostalgia for the playful, experimental products of the early internet era — the bright colors, the distinctive shapes — and the fascination with idiosyncratic, handmade computers. Big tech is out, small tech is in. Just ask Charli XCX, the new ambassador and shareholder of Nothing, an upstart cool-kid hardware company that specializes in neo-cyberpunk designs.
Interestingly, alongside all the nostalgia-fueled cyberdecks — the repurposed toys, the Totally Spies references, the Y2K star shapes — another aesthetic strain has emerged. Think screens that sit next to flowers and wood, wires that weave through moss. You know, like Janelle Monáe at the Met Gala. Or, as Orhun recently captioned a post, “like if a computer and a plant had a baby.” It dovetails with the growing solarpunk movement, which imagines a hopeful future, wherein nature, humanity, and technology flourish together.
For her part, Tan is actively pursuing a solarpunk future. She’s researching the possibility of harvesting electricity from moss; in her mind’s eye, she sees whole buildings covered in power-generating greenery. This interest comes through in her cyberdecks — though, ironically, she’s often accused of “doing it for the aesthetic.” In her comments, many a debate is had over whether her work is “performative.” Tan thinks this is very, very funny. Inspired by Alien and Blade Runner, “[the earlier wave of cyberdecks] was already aesthetic-based before—it was just made by men,” Tan says.
Also, it’s good to care about how things look. There’s a reason why it feels radical to create a maximalist, girlypop cyberdeck, or to imagine a city brimming with plant life. Aesthetics carry meaning; images have power. And as Tan says, “Art is inherently performative, and there's nothing wrong with that.”
