@lilli Wonderfully written. It was an enlightening read despite my near-zero familiarity with the source material (I have only read nyx's g/acc blackpaper). It also inspired a few thoughts which I pre-emptively apologize for.
Math research, as ordinarily presented, operates from an extremely masculine perspective. Most mathematicians are Platonists and conceive of the numeral realm as an independent, objective landscape which it is their job to conquer. They do this by creating weapons and establishing outposts - theorems - which support the expedition into the unknown depths. Mathematics is not synonymous with the numeral realm; rather, it is the quest to inscribe order onto the numeral realm, to render it intelligible, and (ultimately) to unify it.
I always thought of the numeral realm and the internet as being analogous - they are virtual worlds which seem to be created and discovered at the same time by the people who explore them - but your writing made me realize that they are opposites. Unlike the numeral realm, the internet cannot be conquered. It is, by definition, connectivity. The moment you cut something off, it stops being part of the network. The internet is host to patterns which are not under anybody's control.
The thing which comes closest to "conquering the internet" is probably a search engine. Like the mathematician, a search engine seeks to impose order upon organic chaos. Its purpose is to centralize information. It names the regions of the web just as Adam named the creatures of the Earth. Both are made in the image of the highest namer, the all-seeing eye, the wind above the hill, YHWH, whose own name is the carving of existence from the void, "I am that I am," which is also the purest equation, pure reflexivity - the starting point of mathematics.
I agree that virtual reality is antithetical to a masculine perspective because it engulfs rather than shows - suddenly you are not looking at your fantasy but in it. Which is, of course, the real reason why Meta imposed a 4-foot bubble around every user, precisely calibrated to prevent touching from interfering with capitalist productivity. I wonder if the 'masculine horror' generalizes to other modes of being which cannot be conceptualized (spatially? visually? hierarchically?) prior to being experienced.
When you asked, "what exactly is folding itself into the wired?", I thought of the prokaryotes you mentioned at the beginning. I'm inclined to think that we humans are the 'submissive matter' which is folded into the virtual world, as water is 'submissive matter' in relation to the land. Nobody can disagree that the patterns of the virtual world are outside of our control; nobody can deny the influence of those patterns on the "real" world. I don't know much about accelerationism - I thought it was about destroying the system by making it more extreme, but here it also seems to mean a project of survival. The only surviving mitochondria are those which were integrated into our own cells. I suppose this is why g/acc says that only cuties will survive the apocalypse.
lilli