Beyond the Screen: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Carder's Experience of Omnipotence, Alienation, and Existential Emptiness

[Professor]

Abstract: Behind digital circuits, hacking tools, and anonymous accounts lie living people experiencing unique and paradoxical experiences. This article offers an inside look, not at the technology, but at the inner world of someone engaged in carding. Through the lens of phenomenology — a philosophy that explores the structures of immediate experience — we will attempt to understand how the perception of the world, oneself, and others is transformed by someone who has turned digital space into a field for hidden warfare and prey. We will examine three key states: a sense of omnipotence, growing alienation, and existential emptiness, which form a unique cycle of existence "beyond the screen."

Introduction: A Monk in a Digital Cell​

Imagine a person in a darkened room. His world is reduced to the glow of his computer screens. His body is almost motionless, but his will, amplified by algorithms, extends for thousands of kilometers. He doesn't crack safes; he persuades systems to trust him. He doesn't handle other people's money; he watches the numbers change on a screen. His experience is one of pure, digitally mediated action. His reality is the interface. His identity is a set of credentials. This is where the phenomenological journey begins.

1. Omnipotence Phase: "I am a demon on the network"​

The first and most vivid experience is the feeling of expansion of power and freedom to an unprecedented scale.

• Transcending physical boundaries: Walls, distances, and national borders lose their meaning. With the click of a mouse, you can "touch" a bank account on the other side of the world. Space shrinks to a flat screen, where everything is equally close and accessible. This engenders a sense of digital divine filiation: "I'm here, but I can act anywhere."
• Subjugation of systems: Digital systems — banks, stores, payment gateways — are perceived not as social institutions, but as intellectual puzzles or stubborn mechanisms to be outwitted. A successful operation is a victory of personal intellect and will over impersonal but powerful code. This provides the narcissistic satisfaction of the genius who has outsmarted the machine.
• Anonymity as a superpower: The mask of an avatar and proxy grants a sense of impunity. Actions have no immediate social consequences in the "real" world. One can be anyone and do (almost) anything while remaining invisible. This is the highest form of freedom — freedom from one's own social role, from the past, from responsibility to the Other.

In this phase, the world appears as a gigantic, complex, but ultimately conquerable game. The emotional undercurrent is one of excitement, intellectual courage, and the cold joy of a hunter seeing a trap sprung. The digital victims (card holders) are abstract "bulls" or "suckers," pixels on a map, not people. Their suffering is invisible and therefore unreal.

2. The Alienation Phase: The Splitting of Worlds and the Disappearance of the “Other”​

However, omnipotence in virtual space has a downside: a deepening gap with the world beyond the screen.

• Alienation from the results of action: A carder never sees an elderly woman cry after discovering her pension has been stolen. He doesn't stand in line at the police station to file a report. He sees only a successful transaction — a balance change, an order confirmation. The harm he causes is completely dehumanized, reduced to statistics. This is ethical alienation: an action is separated from its human consequences.
• Alienation from one's own body: Long hours in a static position, unnatural screen light, disrupted sleep and eating cycles. The body becomes a burden, a biological machine requiring maintenance so that the mind can continue its digital activity. A quiet contempt for one's own physicality develops.
• Alienation from social connections: The capacity for empathy and deep trust is gradually lost. Everyone in the "real" world begins to be divided into two categories: potential threats (those who might discover the activity) and useful tools (drops, suppliers). Even among family or friends, a person continues to play a role, maintaining their secrecy. This gives rise to existential loneliness — the feeling of living in a parallel universe, invisible to those closest to them.
• Alienation from money: Money loses its material essence and emotional value. It's not a means to achieve life goals (home, education, travel), but simply a success counter, a number to be accumulated. It's often spent on ostentatious but empty purchases that merely fuel a sense of superiority but bring no genuine joy.

The world is splitting in two: the vibrant, controlled, and powerful digital world — and the flat, alien, and slow physical world. People become citizens of the digital space, but lose citizenship in the world of human relationships.

3. The Emptiness Phase: When Numbers Stop Meaning Anything[​

After a series of successful operations, after purchasing all the desired things, a crisis of meaning sets in.

• The thrill wears off: Systems are predictable, patterns are honed. The hunt becomes routine, a conveyor belt. The intellectual challenge that was the original driver disappears. All that remains is a mechanical repetition of actions to maintain the flow of money, which you no longer know how to spend.
• The collapse of the illusion of freedom: The realization dawns that anonymity isn't freedom, but a gilded cage. You're free to do whatever you want in the digital world, but only as long as you remain in the shadows. Any attempt to go public, to legitimize your funds or status is fraught with disaster. You become a hostage to your own secret.
• Existential vacuum: The question "why?" becomes unbearable. If the goal is money, and there is money but no happiness, then what is the point of risk and such a life? If the goal is power over systems, then what to do with this power? It brings no recognition, builds no relationships, leaves no trace in the real world except destructive. A sense of absurdity arises: intense, risky activity that leads to no genuine being.
• Paranoid isolation: The feeling that someone could come for you at any moment turns every rustle behind the door, every unfamiliar glance on the street, into a potential threat. Trust in the world disappears. It's not life, but a constant anticipation of the end game.

At this point, the pendulum swings from omnipotence to profound helplessness. People discover that, while they have power over digital systems, they have lost control over their own lives, their meaning and quality. They have money, but no life. There is only a simulacrum of existence in a data stream.

Conclusion: Return to the Threshold​

The carder's phenomenological experience is a tragic journey from the illusion of absolute freedom to the reality of absolute alienation. It is an experiment in constructing identity and meaning solely in a digital, instrumental field, ending in existential bankruptcy.

Understanding this inner journey is important not for justification, but for a compassionate recognition of the full depth of the problem. These are not simply "bad guys", but people trapped in their own digital grandeur. Their story is a warning for us all in an age when the boundary between the real and the digital is ever thinner.

A possible way out of this impasse lies not in continuing the game, but in a bold transition through the screen back into a world of slow, non-digital values: into genuine relationships, into creativity that does not harm, into caring for one's body and soul, into the search for meaning that cannot be reduced to a bank account. This is a difficult journey of recognizing one's vulnerability and humanity, but it is the only way out of the digital cell and back to life. And the first step is the realization that on the other side of the screen, no matter how powerful it may be, there is neither happiness nor home.