RebelZva – Anarchy Guru

I was thirteen in 2013, a feral little gremlin with black nail polish and a growing hatred for authority. My parents (trying to keep me off the streets and out of trouble) finally caved and ordered me a CyberPowerPC Fang III Black Mamba prebuilt for Christmas. They thought it would “keep me busy.” They had no idea they just handed their daughter the keys to the revolution.

Specs (for the history books):

•  Intel i7-4770K

•  GTX 780 Ti

•  16GB RAM

•  liquid-cooled with blue LEDs that made the whole case look like a rave

•  Windows 8 (yes, I suffered)

The day it arrived I dragged that 60-pound beast up to my room like I’d stolen it. Plugged it in. Hit the power button. The fans screamed, the LEDs glowed electric blue, and I actually started crying because for the first time I had something that was 100% mine, no parental controls, no “bedtime,” no rules.

First game? Skyrim on ultra, 200+ mods, running at 120 FPS while my parents yelled downstairs about dinner. I didn’t eat. I stayed up till 4 a.m. riding dragons and murdering emperors.

That machine taught me everything:

•  how to torrent

•  how to mod until the game broke in beautiful ways

•  how to sneak onto the darknet at 14

•  how to stream to 8 viewers at 3 a.m. while wearing cat ears and screaming about capitalism

•  how to build glitch art that made teachers clutch pearls

It survived spilled Mountain Dew, one very dramatic breakup with a boy who didn’t understand why I loved pixels more than him, and three moves before I finally retired it in 2020.

Thirteen years later it still sits in my closet like a retired war criminal. I fire it up once a year just to hear that old boot chime and remember the angry little 13-year-old who learned that if the real world sucks, you can always build a better one in code.

So yeah. My parents thought they were buying me a toy. They accidentally bought me a weapon.

Thanks, Mom and Dad. You created a monster.

ride fast. die last. never log out. — RebelZva (forever grateful to the glowing blue box that raised a rebel) 🖤💙🖱️🔥