The Dark Forest and the Post-Individual

instead of seeking to maximize status — which some of us still do — more of us find ourselves seeking safety and context online instead.

In our conversation, Nadia mentioned the classic piece “Status as a service” by Eugene Wei that details how Twitter functions (or functioned) as a giant status-seeking engine. This piece, Nadia proposed, crystalized the era of the internet when people were optimizing for likes and cultural cache in a game that felt novel and exciting. Something ess... See more

What’s actually happening is even more incredible: the internet is a mesa verse. It’s concerned with what’s within ( mesa = ~within). The internet isn’t meant to give a graphical representation to our bodies. The internet is what allows what’s inside — our minds, our souls, our many selves — to interact with the insides of others.

Nadia described the Dark Forest as representing the next era of the internet — where we are now. Where instead of seeking to maximize status — which some of us still do — more of us find ourselves seeking safety and context online instead.