Why women around the world are building their own DIY computers.
In March of this year, TikTok creator Annike Tan started learning about cyberdecks from YouTube. Usually designed for a specific purpose, a cyberdeck is a custom-built mini computer, often in a maximalist, cyberpunk aesthetic that contrasts with the factory-made, minimalist look of traditional, mass-produced technology. For Tan, this was appealing: She and her partner had been trying to be less online, even switching to dumbphones for a few months in 2025. But both quickly realized many things still required use of the internet—QR codes to open digital menus, apps to navigate public transport—and eventually decided to switch back.
Frustrated with her overreliance on being so plugged in, Tan was inspired to build a device that could blend her need to disconnect with at least some of the technological advances she’d grown accustomed to. Originally a music business major at the SAE Institute in London, she says that while she doesn’t have formal training in engineering or coding, the knowledge she obtained from watching video tutorials online gave her the confidence to build a DIY, mermaid-themed computer out of a vintage clutch bag with a Raspberry Pi computing system, a tiny keyboard, and a mini screen.
“I thought, ‘That looks really fun,’” she says over a video call. “So I made my first cyberdeck and I loved it; I thought it was the cutest thing in the world. At the time I felt like a kid who had just built their first LEGO house.”
On the outside, Tan’s cyberdeck looks like a caramel-colored clutch, but inside, the tiny screen is framed by a faux stone border and decorated with gold trim, meant to evoke the feeling of being a “mermaid in Southeast Asia.” (This is a modification from her original design, which featured more wood and rattan, but which Tan felt represented too “Western” an interpretation of a mermaid.) The keyboard sits atop a clear acrylic sheet painted with nail polish to look like murky water, allowing Tan to easily access its computing system. Next to it is a broken compass in a bed of fake foliage, which also camouflages the on and off switch. During a more recent refurbishing, she also added a little shell next to the keyboard for SD card storage, and made adjustments to the design to allow the clutch to close with the keyboard and mouse tucked comfortably inside.
Known as Ube Boobey on social media, Tan posted a video of her cyberdeck to TikTok, where it went viral earlier this year. Some even credit her with kicking off the recent wave of cyberdeck content on TikTok, with an emphasis on videos spotlighting “girlier” builds. She is now one of hundreds of people, according to the very active cyberdeck community on Reddit, learning how to make their own tiny computers and posting about it online. Many of them are other women just getting started in electronics and coding.
Tan’s mermaid cyberdeck was designed to be an off-grid piece of technology—which means it doesn’t rely on having an internet connection. While it can’t read a QR code, the tiny computer is loaded with the top most searched Wikipedia articles; books on gardening, agriculture, health, education, and philosophy; an offline version of Google Maps; a few TED Talks; and Tan’s favorite music, including Thundercat and Erykah Badu. For Tan, it was trial and error using materials she had—a clutch bag from her closet, gold jewelry she already owned—and others she bought herself, including the Raspberry Pi system, keyboard, and screen. But ultimately, she feels that the process of building her mermaid cyberdeck was an “act of rebellion,” as she has made a piece of technology that is also a piece of art.
“From the moment you wake up to the minute you go to bed, you’re always accessible to anyone who has your contact,” she says. “People yearn for freedom. Building this cyberdeck was a fun way to have something be off-grid. It’s still technologically advanced enough where it can fill a lot of holes if you were to get rid of all of your other technology, but not down to the point where you’re completely analog.”
This is just one way that building cyberdecks is challenging mass-produced, Big Tech advances that, more often than not, feel imposed onto people without consent or consultation. In a world where artificial intelligence is being pushed in every industry, and data centers are being built without the knowledge or input of their neighbors, creating a device for under the radar, specific offline use—rather than one designed for overreliance, addiction, and overconsumption—is a clever way to fight back.
For many builders, cyberdecks are also an opportunity to repurpose electronic waste. According to the World Health Organization, there was an estimated 62 million tons of e-waste produced globally in 2022 alone, and only 22% of that waste was formally collected and recycled. Experts argue that much of this electronic waste can be repurposed into new builds—though there isn’t much data on the subject since currently, very little e-waste is collected for recycling, thus impeding proper disposal. Learning how to build a cyberdeck from old devices can teach people about the value of each of its parts, what makes a device run, and which parts can still be functional rather than thrown into a landfill.
“Making cyberdecks educates people’s minds about technology,” says Giovanna Aguiar, a cyberdeck builder based in São Paulo, Brazil, known as @gio.yaml on TikTok and Instagram. In May, Aguiar, a trained programmer, noticed a gap in the digital cyberdeck community: most tutorials were in English and many of the necessary components were cost-prohibitive for people living in Brazil. Now, Aguiar makes content in Portuguese that teaches people how to refurbish their electronic waste instead of buying new parts, in order to create something completely new. “From the moment you create a cyberdeck with an old laptop that isn’t turning on, for example, you start to understand that that laptop is just a group of parts,” she says. An old device’s webcam can be disconnected and used separately, as can its screen. “You start seeing old electronics as objects with potential, and long-term, I think that can change the world,” she continues. “For me, sustainability is very connected to cyberdecks.”
Electronic waste is growing every day, with the United Nations estimating that by 2030, the volume of e-waste will rise by 32%, to 82 million tons. As a result of non-compliant waste management, e-waste continues releasing toxic and persistent substances into the environment every year. Hazardous materials like lead, mercury, and cadmium leak when discarded in landfills, poisoning water supplies. And even properly recycled e-waste often still harms the environment and the people in it: Around 75% of collected e-waste is shipped to “backyard recyclers” in the Global South where people and landscapes bear the brunt, according to EcoWatch.
For Matthew Lubari, co-founder and executive director of Community Creativity for Development, a youth-led organization that teaches young people in South Sudan how to reuse and recycle electronic waste, learning how to repair a device or reuse its parts for a new build is a great way to reduce e-waste.
“Recycling electronic waste is a way of fighting back against Big Tech, because every time they develop new technologies, consumers are abandoning old stuff,” Lubari says. He points to how Big Tech companies like Microsoft intentionally discontinue software updates, forcing consumers to buy newer devices. “There is a need for more awareness regarding that, so waste can be reduced. There’s a need for more promotion of repair, reuse, and upcycling. We shouldn’t jump into recycling before repairing, reusing, and upcycling.”
More generally, the tradition of repairing devices and electronics is making a comeback in industrialized countries where, for the last twenty years, the custom has been to throw away devices after they’ve broken. For many years, buying a new piece of technology was the cheapest, easiest option. But now, counter to the tech industry’s profit-driven approach, consumers are seeking repair cafes, organizers are lobbying for right to repair legislation—and the girls are making cyberdecks.
In addition to environmental impact, cyberdeck builders also cite growing concerns over online mass surveillance and sexual violence, as people—mostly men—increasingly use AI tools to create nonconsensual sexual images; join harmful, misogynistic communities where they teach each other abuse tactics; and utilize AI-powered surveillance to stalk women. For Aguiar, who got into tech as a child by taking apart any piece of technology she could find, this alarming trend is also why it’s so important that cyberdecks are getting more women interested in tech.
“Maybe if women had been in the tech field since the beginning, issues like surveillance and digital stalking could’ve been avoided,” Aguiar says. “When you have a more diverse team, there’s a higher chance someone will raise a problem that would probably go unnoticed by a more homogenous group.”
This is starting to happen in the rebuilding and repurposing space. Building cyberdecks, many off-grid, can allow women and girls to feel safe, because it allows them to disconnect from the online spaces where abusers most often reach them. For Afsaneh Rigot, founder and researcher at De|Center, an organization based across the US and Africa that works to reduce the mass-scale harms of existing and emerging technologies, creating access to technological tools—away from surveillance and gendered violence—makes a lot of sense as a path of resistance.
“For women and girls, it can be such a liberating feeling to be able to create your own modes of technology and communication,” Rigot says. “We’re seeing it with cyberdecks, but even with general tools, technologies, and devices, people are now navigating these systems of control and surveillance in their own ways.” Rigot teaches young people in marginalized communities how to protect themselves through workarounds and tools that increase privacy. For her, cyberdecks are a natural expansion and continuation of strategies people have used to “try and maintain their autonomy and privacy.” It’s about seeking less dependence on technology made to maximize the profits of Big Tech companies, instead of benefitting the people who use it. The easier it is to build the technology, Rigot says, the bigger the threat to these corporate models.
Unlike mass-produced technology, cyberdecks also have an element of exaggerated aesthetics that stand in stark contrast with the greys and blacks of laptops and cellphones most people use. Tan’s mermaid cyberdeck is only one example of how these homemade computers are aesthetically defying the boring, non-technicolor devices of Big Tech. There are cyberdecks made out of jewelry boxes, eyeshadow palettes, and clutch bags, bringing a camp-y, feminine vibe to technology that has been aesthetically sober and functionally masculine for decades.
“Because technology has been so minimalist and so sad in the recent decades, the pendulum’s slowly swinging the other way,” Tan says. “And this is being pioneered by women. People want something that represents them. The physical things, the tangible things that we own should be a reflection of the user, and how can that happen when everything is made in a factory?”
Aguiar believes this particular aspect of building cyberdecks can motivate women to learn skills they’re not usually encouraged to learn in a male-dominated field—something that can change tech in the long term. And she’s right: Tan’s decision to build a cyberdeck became a gateway to building other projects without any formal coding experience or education.
“Through cyberdecks, you can motivate girls to understand a little more about building technology without them necessarily working in the field, because the point is that it’s fun,” Aguiar says. “It is something you can decorate with your personality, it becomes a hobby, and oftentimes you discover this is what you want to do. It’s about looking at this and being like, ‘I can do this.’”
The popularity of cyberdecks on TikTok and Instagram, particularly through content created by women, reveals a hunger for technology that serves our daily lives, but doesn’t dominate every single second of them, nor threaten our safety, our privacy, or our environment. Technology doesn’t have to enhance patriarchal rule or even create more profit for corporations—and in the right hands, it can even make cute, functional devices out of upcycled clutch bags.
