I Would Very Much Like To Be Excluded From This Lore

“The internet has broken the distance that a lot of artists used to have,” Charli xcx told The Observer ahead of the release of Brat . ​“What gets me interested in an artist is when they have – not really a backstory, it’s more like lore ...”

In that moment, she defined the common thread between 2024’s biggest pop successes. From Brat summer to Tay... See more

The common feature in the work of these emerging thinkers is the centrality of lore, as in folklore, the lore of a fictional extended universe, or more pertinently, the water-cooler lore of an organization, in the framing of the traditional concerns of management and organizational theory. Lore, you might say is the feedstock of both stories and wo... See more

A decade ago, lorecraft was largely limited to edgelords haunting online fora thinking up the next troll for lulz and electoral mayhem. Now lorecraft is being used to manage treasuries worth millions, launch complex commercial projects, and design automation deathstars for fun and profit.

Lore is something you witness, and attempt to shape as it emerges, if it emerges, not something you design and execute. You cannot, for instance, set out to write an origin myth. At least not one that will work as lore (though it may work as part of a grift). You can only recognize and institutionalize one. 

Sometimes online communities make wikis or YouTube explainers to keep track of certain storylines, but many seem to persist without ever being recorded. Shared memory is often maintained in ways that don’t translate to the readable archives produced by print-based textual tradition. On some level, this feels paradoxical, like the internet should ac... See more

If this hypothesis of lorecraft as an emerging managerial capability is correct, any organization — be it a traditional corporation, a DAO, or just a complex money-making coordination pattern passing through Twitter or TikTok like a wave — will thrive and do interesting things to the extent it has both interesting ideas and content — and skilled lo... See more

Lore is what actually plays the role in our lives that we pretend some idealized “truth” does.

The Internet and its extensions become a realm of imaginings, visions and fictionings of self. As we traverse the clarinet (the web available to us), we start seeing the digital ether littered with new species. Sure, for many these might be aesthetics, TikTok trends or waves of escapism. However, with individuals creating, embodying and manifesting... See more