A lot of people don't know that Serial experiments Lain is an Open source anime, (until 2028) meaning anyone and everyone as long as they're a fan can make stuff based on the IP.
Here's some bonus cool stuff I'm collecting from across the web, most of them are links to other places:
1. Lain wiki is the beginning of the journey :)
2. Lain drinking Game
3. Via makes music in the programming environment PureData. Check out their SEL inspired work
4. Layer 22 Fashion store with an accela keychain
5. Wired Sounds for Wired people website
6. LainOS is an OS based on Communication OS from the anime
7. JJ from the show is a real DJ and hosts parties on VRchat
8. The mebious website is pretty cool
9. The official merch website is super sick
10. Lain themed URL shortener
11. Lain is an inspiration to a LOT of electronic music producers, such as ARCA, Sewerslvt, tokyopill and Virtual Self( Porter Robinson ), who has made this cool website heavily inspired by serial experiments lain for his music video
12. Check out the 25th anniversary website! Use Wayback if you want to see it after it expires
13. Another more occultish fan website
14. Navi simulator website!
15. Lain Internet fanZines!
16. Occult Lain website on neocities (again)
17. Omnipresence is an old but still baller website! enable popups if you're using firefox
18. You can play a modified version of the Lain game online!
19. Lain skateboarding
20. Someone made a concept album based on the Schuman resonance...
21. The 20th anniversary blog where Konaka looks back on the show (It's in japanese)
22. Thoughts Experiments Lain is a goldmine of references, theories, articles and stuff. Most of my blog's references are from this website.
23. Visual experiments Lain artbook
24. The SEL DVD ROM simulation has 4 gb worth of exclusive fan content
25. A bitcrusher VST for my musician visitors!
26. SEL bootleg game and tutorial
27. The Techgnosis website has a lot of cool podcasts and talks related to the subject of technomysticism, hosted by the author Erik Davis himself
28. Club Cyberia XIV is a Final Fantasy and SEL inspired virtual nighclub
29. Lain inspired Electronic album
30. Another Lain inspired album
31. ANOTHER LAIN INSPIRED ALBUM
32. Evanglion and Lain inspired AV video
33. Try looking up for SEL skins on the Winamp web simulator, webamp! Play your favourite songs with an SEL themed player.
34. This is a github project that creates a bot meant to replicate Lain on discord
35. The nightmare of fabrication (Lain manga doujinshi) by Abe
36. Wired inspired DnB and breakcore mix
37. Opera GX browser's Lain mod, full of live wallpapers, background music, keyboard sounds and interactive themes!
38. A Lain Iwakura LoRa that you can use to create Lain AI art in Stable diffusion
39. Lain UFO plushies by Lita Mitchell
40. https://steamdeckrepo.com/post/n2Gax/copland_os_enterprise_intro_serial_experiments_lain (SEL steamdeck screen)
41. Lain gmod game
42. OmniDisplay's website
43. A History of the SEL fandom
44. Lain Iwakura ASCII style music player
45. Cool Lain Steam wallpaper
46. Lain plushies
47. Lain popup store in Nakano Broadway, Tokyo
48. Lain fan tribute website
49. Cool lain Net-Art
50. Extremely cool 3d Lain Live wallpaper
51. This EXE spams Lain dancing gifs all across your desktop in a spurt of harmless fun
52. VCR zone sells Custom SEL Casettes, Keyboards and More!
53. SEL mouse cursors!

List of great SEL video essays:


1. Loneliness in Internet culture
2. Explaining Lain iwakura: SITE-B (PSX game)
3. Sartre's Bad Faith in SEL
4. A great take on the "culture war"
5. SEL and the work of Marshall Mcluhan
6. Examining the dynamics of Eiri and Lain
7. Character design in SEL
8. An analysis of cult psychology in SEL
9. Parasocial relationships in Lain
10. Essay on the 9/11 episode clip
11. Relationship between Lain and breakcore
12. How SEL created "cracky chan", the internet's first influencer
13. Interview with Yoshitoshi abe, Lain's character designer
14. Individuation and syzygy in SEL
15. Skapbadoa's explanation of SEL
16. An essay on how SEL is part of the Japanese Post war identity crisis
17. How identity breaks down in SEL
18. Lain, Perfect blue and Unreality
19. How SEL nails sound mixing
20. Why is SEL not as famous as EVA?
21. Playstation Lain and interactive CD roms
22. The unique impact of Serial experiments Lain
23. AI, cosmic horror and SEL
24. Computers and internet in SEL
25. The subtle horror of Serial Experiments Lain
26. A throwback to the , erhm, not so great 25th anniversary
27. How Konaka, Ueda and Ryutaro made SEL possible
28. CCC video on AI, UFO's, Magic, CIA psyops and the internet's hallucinations
29. The Other You: An essay on SEL and Perfect Blue
30. One hour lecture on the Anti-Tech themes of SEL
31. Why lain is a cult classic
32. Autism encoding in lain
33. What is Denpa? Hyperreality and globalization
34. The MAL hack
35. Lain and the evolution of modern identity(from a queer perspective)
36. DungeonChill's video connecting the Lain anime and Game
37. God is a Girl Online: Tiqqun, Baudrillard and Feminine performance in the internet age
38. Neoliberalism, Social Darwinism and Biopolitical modernity
39. Xueqin Jiang's analysis of history from Bretton woods to Present Day

Essays on SEL and related:


1. The art of shadows in SEL
2. Philosophy, Alchemy and esoteric symbolism in SEL
3. Anomie, isolation and the Japanese consensus society
4. Analyzing Lain through a critical surveillance lens
5. "Man Computer Symbiosis" by J. LickLider
6. "Society of the psyop" by Trevor Paglen on eflux

Film/TV recommendations


The following shows and films are ones I think deal with topics in SEL or are pretty similar to SEL:
  • VideoDrome by David Cronenberg
  • Dennou Coil
  • Kairo by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Network (1976)
  • Black Mirror (mostly seasons 1 and 2)
  • Synecdoche by Charlie Kaufman
  • Suicide club by Shion Sono
  • Tetsuo the iron man
  • Paprika by Satoshi Kon
  • Ghost in the shell (movie and Standalone Complex)
  • Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis

    • Book recommendations


    The following books helped me really understand the nature of SEL and I recommend them to you as well if you're interested in these topics:
  • Darwin amongst the Machines by George Dyson
  • The four archtypes by Carl Jung
  • The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
  • Our Posthuman future by Francis Fukuyama
  • The end of history and the last man by Francis Fukuyama
  • Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Alternatively, you can read Ecstasy of communication instead since it deals with the angle of media much better than SS. America is also a great book that makes his critique much clearer)
  • Cyberia by Douglas Rushkoff ( I highly recommed this one)
  • TechGnosis by Erik Davis (Best recommendation for beginners)
  • God, Human , Animal Machine by Meghan O'giebhlyn
  • The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
  • Emergence by Steven Johnson
  • Philosophy and simulation by Manuel Delanda (Highly advanced but if you study Computer Science you may enjoy this )
  • Mind and nature, Gregory Bateson (Highly advanced but recommended if you study biology/evolution)
  • Underground by Haruki Murakami (Insight into Japanese society as it is through Aum Shinrikyo)
  • Metaman by Gregory Stock (Makes you kinda get how the Wired unkowingly became a living organism)
  • What kind of people should there be? by Jonathan Glover.
  • New Dark Ages by James Bridle
  • Debt: The first 5000 years by Dave Graeber
  • Fanged Noumena by Nick Land
  • The Cybernetic Hypothesis by Tiqqun
  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
  • Flatline constructs by Mark Fisher
  • Zeroes and Ones by Sadie Plant
  • A Hacker Manifesto by Mckenzie Wark
  • A Thousand Machines by Gerard runing
  • Mutant Neoliberalism by Wendy Brown
  • Governing by Debt and The Indebted Man by Maurizio Lazarrato
  • The Birth of Biopolitics, Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, the history of sexuality by Michel Foucault
  • "Postscript on the societies of Control" by Gilles Deleuze
  • Surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
  • Colossus: The rise and decline of US Imperialism by John Peterson
  • Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall Mcluhan
  • The Singularity is near by Ray KurzWeil
  • Redesigning humans by Gregory Stock
  • God and Golem by Norbert Wiener
  • Robot by Hans Moravec
  • Engines of Creation By Eric Drexler
  • Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
  • BioMedia by Thacker
  • The invisible doctrine: How neoliberalism controls your life by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson
  • When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz