against the dark forest

Going online today is not an invigorating walk through a green woodland—it’s rush-hour traffic alongside a freeway median of diseased trees, littered with the detritus of late capitalism. If we want to repair this damage, we must look to the wisdom of the forest and listen to ecologists like Simard when they tell us just how sustainable, interdepen... See more

This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest.

In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.

This very email is an example of this. This theory is being shared on a private channel sent to 500 people who I kno... See more

When we spoke with Ruby Justice Thelot, cyber-ethnographer and adjunct professor of design and media theory at NYU, he referenced his now-published piece co-written with Rue Yi for Folklore, The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet, when he told us: “It’s wonderful as a culture, as a species, to share reality. But I think we’re approa... See more