Online Niche Communities

what Yancey Strickler calls  Dark Forests . According to him these are “spaces where depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments”.

As a consumer, you subscribe to one vision or another: what’s your version of hiking out doors? What type of vibe are you about? Purist? Gorpy? High intensity? Meditative? But in all cases, the branded subculture itself is the main thing, while the role of physical goods is diminished. Their job is not to drive value, but to add another layer of