Memes may dominate how we communicate online, but in the last few years, their rapid spread has also necessitated the birth of a parallel, shadow ecosystem, where the best ideas are paradoxically harder to find. Not everyone wants their ideas to go viral anymore. One friend writes a newsletter that he asks people not to share around. Another... See more

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... See more

“the dark forest” region of the web is becoming increasingly important as a space of online communication for users of all ages and political persuasions. In part, this is because it is less sociologically stressful than the clearnet zone, where one is subject to peer, employer, and state exposure.