The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

As I’ve noted before, as the public Web and social media become too crowded, the entertainers and creators who can grow an audience are building their careers in public, but the rest of us are collecting in smaller, more private spaces like group chats and personal servers.

Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of activity. As are other dark forests, like Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, text groups, Snapchat, WeChat, and on and on. This is where Facebook is pivoting with Groups (and trying to redefine what the word “privacy” means in the process).

On the positive side, the internet has allowed people to find their own tribe. But that comes at a cost: It is actively forcing us toward ever further extremes, removing us from the elements of mass culture, identity, and decision-making that we need.

These refugees have labored to build an informational and communicative infrastructure that isn’t so overwhelming, one that can be bootstrapped in private or semi-private spaces where a level of trust and good will is taken for granted, and conflict can be productive and encouraging instead of destructive and terrifying. As she puts it, “If the mem... See more

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 publis... See more