WE WANT TO BE SUPERHEROES!
Ordinary mortals are implanting magnets and computer chips in their bodies — defying doctors’ warnings — in a quest to triumph over biology. But are their powers more than mere party tricks?
TALK about lighting up a room.
Mike Seeler does just that without reaching for matches or flicking a switch. In a dark corner of a Williamsburg bar, the 30-year-old construction worker runs a finger along his left forearm to set off a ring of red illumination emanating from under his skin. It looks like magic, but the light show is disturbingly real.
Seeler has a magnetic-sensitive circle of LED lights implanted just below the skin of his arm, as well as magnets in both of his ring fingers to control the lights. All three insertions were done via small incisions, followed by stitches, by a New York-based body piercer.
The Post reported last week on a Wisconsin vending-machine company offering grain-of-rice-size chip implants for employees, to be inserted in the webbing between the thumb and index finger and used to “make in-house purchases, open doors and unlock office equipment.” So far, about 50 of Three Square Market’s 85 workers have volunteered for the service. This mainstreaming of RF IDs( radio- frequency
identification chips) is exciting news for grinders — a subculture of mostly millennials and Gen Xers who “hack” their bodies with implants. “There is something empowering about changing your biological features,” Seeler tells The Post. “I feel like the magnets actually give me a sixth sense.”
Because they naturally respond to electricity, magnets implanted in the body vibrate when near power sources, including microwave ovens and specific points on automobiles. Many grinders enjoy feeling connected to the objects they use daily.
“You know when you take a bunch of clothes out of the dryer and you get a shock? Imagine that buzz in your body for as long as you keep your hand near that object,” says Alex Pearlman, a 30-year-old bioethicist living in London who previously had a finger magnet. “I was able to [feel] where various circuitry was. For example, I didn’t realize that there was circuitry behind certain parts of the steering wheel. You get a sensory buzz.”
Others enjoy using magnetic implants to become one with their kitchen appliances. “You feel your microwave when you heat up dinner,” says Rich Lee, a 39-year-old office manager in St. George, Utah. “You stand 3 to 8 inches away from the devices, and you can map out the shape of the force field. For me, it feels like somebody is blowing on my fingers.” He sees this as a good thing.
Lee has magnets implanted near the lobes of his ears — they serve as built-in speakers when stimulated by a magnetic coil worn around his neck, which is connected to an amplifier. He designed the audio setup on his own: “I was inspired by a device that was being used for cheating on tests — with magnets on the outsides of ears.”
It seems modest compared to Lee’s planned device, the Lovetron 9000. “It’s an implanted male vibrator,” he says. In short, the gizmo will likely employ a tiny motor, slipped over the pubic bone, to turn penises into flesh-and-
blood vibrators. “I’m a man of the future!” he crows. “I might put it in myself. I want to take a shot at that. But I’ll have an ER nurse friend of mine standing by just in case.”
Artist and dancer Moon Ribas, a 32-year-old who bounces between Brooklyn and Barcelona, Spain, has rigged herself up to experience sensations from earthquakes all over the world. “I have a type of magnet in my arm that uses Bluetooth and connects to my phone, which gets information from a server about our planet’s tremors,” she says. (The server is programmed to comb the Internet for seismographic information from around the world.)
Some hacks, however, are much more mundane. Adi Robertson, 28, uses her chip “to open my Twitter profile by running the back of my hand on the backs of friends’ Android phones.”
“It could be programmed for opening doors,” the Brooklyn writer admits, “but my building security is not compatible. For a while, I used it for map coordinates [essentially creating a Google Maps hyperlink]. That was cool, and I like the idea of experiencing something futuristic.” Not surprisingly, it’s tough to find legitimate physicians willing to implant foreign objects into patients’ bodies, so the work
usually gets engineered, often on the down-low, by professional body piercers such as the one who did magnets and lights for Seeler.
Dr. Ronald Ruden, an Upper East Side internist, thinks the whole movement is a bad idea. Considering that he is the personal physician to illusionist David Blaine — who has a habit of slamming ice picks through his hand in his shows — Ruden has seen more than his share of bodily abuses. “Put anything into your body, and it can cause an infection. If the magnet causes your finger to get infected and you ignore the infection, it can kill you,” he warns. “There is no reason to do this just so you can pull off parlor tricks. If somebody told me he was going to do this, I would suggest a psych evaluation.”
Pearlman discovered the pitfalls of taking such a medical risk when her body rejected her finger magnet. “After two weeks, it got pus-y and had a weird smell,” she recalls. She went to an emergency room to have the magnet removed. “The doctors rolled their eyes, and thought I was an idiot for doing this.”
Seeler has gotten the same reaction but isn’t bothered by it. “I don’t pay attention to doctors’ opinions on this. The few times I have interacted with doc- tors since getting modified, the attitude is, ‘stupid kid.’ [My only] concern is that if I needed an MRI, I would need to get stuff removed,” he says. “Your body is a lot more resilient than you would think.”
He sees the cyborging of humans as “enriching” for generations raised on “RoboCop” and “Terminator” movies: “This is part of fulfilling childhood fantasies. I feel like I [have] a little more than other people who don’t have [modifications]. One of the philosophical goals is to be . . . like a superhero, but I am just the beta version right now. I can do things that other people can’t do.
“I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I do feel like a superhero sometimes.”