Doomscroll: Yancey Strickler

Welcome to Doomscroll. My guest is Yancey Strickler. This is a long awaited episode and I’m glad to finally put it out into the world.

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Yancey Strickler is the author of “The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet”. Dark Forest spaces are gated digital communities, often curated around a specific niche or field of expertise. They are usually small in scale or invitation only. The Dark Forest represents a retreat from open social media and a shift into private spaces, where users may have complex and context-rich conversations. Its a core piece of internet lore that has profoundly shaped online culture over the past few years.

Early social media was all about connecting people. But today, private group chats, Discord servers and DM groups are reshaping our online life (and in some cases running the government 👊🔥🇺🇸). Dark Forests may function as; think tanks, conspiracies, vanguards, startups, academies, editorial boards, and more. Yancey joins me to discuss the new shape of online culture:

• Where is the “Dark Forest”?

• What is the “Post-Individual”?

• New 21st century institutions: cities, universities & guilds

• How creatives got psyop’d by the Department of Defense (real)

Yancey is a co-founder of Metalabel, a platform for profit sharing and artist collaborations, as well as a co-founder and previously the CEO of Kickstarter. He began his unconventional career as a music critic in downtown New York City. Yancey is also my good friend and a long time collaborator on many projects. We are co-authors, along with several others, of The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet.

Yancey and I have been in close conversation for the last few years. His insights into online culture and platform economies have inspired large parts of my own work and media analysis. This is a high level conversation with sweeping histories alongside new media and economic theories. These abstract conversations inform how we design online communities on a technical and social level. They help to determine what new outcomes may be possible. The full episode is out today:

Yancey Strickler: Dark Forest Theory of the Internet | Doomscroll

Yancey and I have spent several years discussing (in granular detail) the theory and practice of content moderation on big platforms. Today, the “terms of service” also necessarily set the parameters of debate and have profound downstream effects on political reality.

This week’s bonus episode is longer in length than the public episode. In the spirit of the Dark Forest, I wanted to keep this discussion private as we debate the pros and cons of gatekeeping.

Later on, we discuss Yancy’s background as a music critic, his early online record label and his unconventional path to becoming a co-founder of Kickstarter. Right now, the economics of creative writing and video content are transforming our news and political discourse. Yancey and I breakdown the incentives of platforms and forecast what comes next.

At the end of this episode, we discuss a new project called A-Corps. A-Corps are a lightweight co-operative model for creatives. (TLDR: your band can be an artist co-op.) It’s not software — it’s law. We get into the hard numbers around this and share some war stories about creative life without health insurance:

Doomscroll: Yancey Strickler II

If this episode resonates with you, join us in the Discord to continue the conversation:

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