The Hottest Anti-AI Gadget Is a Cyberdeck

Reece RogersGearApr 28, 2026 6:00 AMThe Hottest Anti-AI Gadget Is a CyberdeckOn TikTok, young women are going viral for crafting whimsical homemade computers inside purses.Animation: WIRED STAFF; Getty ImagesCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyUbe Boobey’s bedroom is slightly messy after a trip to Morocco, but her cyberdeck glistens among the clutter. The homemade computer is located inside a clamshell purse, covered in swirly gold accents and filled with pearls, with some makeup and fake moss tucked beneath the keyboard. The 22-year-old, who’s based in London and has worked as a model, designed it to look like a fantastical mermaid’s laptop that just washed ashore.The TikTok creator, whose real name is Annike Tan, unveiled her very first build in March with a video partially captioned “fuck it. cunty cyberdeck.” In that TikTok, she puts the hardware together and shows off the frilly details, like a custom mouse covered in gold jump rings. Since that post, over 32 million viewers have watched her videos about DIY tech projects; it’s one data point among many that highlights a renewed interest in cyberdecks, especially among women eager to share their creations online.Annike Tan started documenting her DIY builds on TikTok earlier this year. COURTESY OF ANNIKE TAN These cyberdecks are more than just a trendy craft project going viral on social media. The DIY gadget is, in part, a rejection of our current moment, dominated by the predictable flatness of generative AI and minimalist, mass-produced devices. “What we should do with cyberdecks is gatekeep them from AI and megacorp,” Tan says in a TikTok video with nearly 4 million views.The concept of a cyberdeck is decades old, but the idea has always had an antiestablishment bent. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, an influential sci-fi novel released in 1984, the protagonist is a data thief who uses his deck, which jacks into his brain, to hack big corporations: “He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix.”Author William Gibson was a major influence on the cyberpunk genre. Courtesy of Aaron Rapoport/Getty ImagesIn the years following the book's release, a bro-y community of hobbyists has dabbled with their own wires and screens to create homebrew devices, frequently for hacking purposes or on-the-go coding. Historically, decks have resembled a heavy-duty laptop, featuring a screen and small keyboard, often sleek, utilitarian, and housed in a Pelican briefcase to survive imagined, apocalyptic scenarios. One niche ham radio YouTuber, over a year ago, titled his tutorial video “DIY Doomsday Cyberdeck EMAIL/TEXT without INTERNET” and, of course, included the “prepper” hashtag.What sets Tan’s cyberdeck apart is its aesthetic. Inside her refurbished clamshell purse, hardware-wise, is a Raspberry Pi single-board computer with a small keyboard and screen. All fairly standard stuff—the cyberdeck’s feminine shell and crafty details are what subverts expectations. “I've not seen anyone do a hyper-femme one before,” she says. Tan felt an appreciation for the tactical aesthetic previously established by the cyberdeck community, but she wanted to craft a version that felt more authentic to her style. “I've always been very anti-minimalist,” she says. “In my life, I want color, and I…

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