While my personal library contains more than a few books on the media and digital culture, I always cherish a small cache taken up in the infamous economy of the community on rue Valence in San Francisco, where I lived in the first aughts. Published independently or by small imprints and often written collectively or under pseudonyms on subjects such as cybersex and gender, these books capture the experience of the early social internet in mainly conversational prose. They are fascinating in their strange specificity and their seriousness – reflecting an apparent desire to legitimize through the act of physical publication which was then a rather emerging thing to do: spend time online.
I imagine a future in which another young stumble on my copy of The anthology of the black forest of the Internet: how to create, live and survive the internet (2024), a temporal book capsule the size of a palm of a collection published by the writer and entrepreneur Yancey Strickler. A collection of texts produced over five years by a group of authors, the book loose the conceptual work of the last company of Strickler: the platform: the platform MetalabelNebulously presented as a “new space to publish and collect creative work”. (In the blink of an eye to the music industry in which Strickler has formerly worked as a journalist and as a basic principle of the platform, the “liberation” process allows Publish and sell their works essentially while retaining control of their content and profits.) The book was launched for the first time in July in a limited edition of 777 copies. The revealing number contains various religious with gentle consonance and spiritual The meanings but in the field of game mean good luck in the form of cold and hard money.
This is where we find Strickler in the opening salvo from which the book takes its name, “The Dark Forest Theory of Internet”, a text originally sent as a newsletter to a private audience of around 500 readers in 2017. In it, it identifies as well as “dark forests” as mainly free spaces of indexing, optimization and gamnification that govern the Internet writing. Think of podcasts, newsletters and Slack messages. In these rear channels, we can all feel a little more relaxed in what we say and how we say it. However, by withdrawing towards them from our public accounts X and Instagram grids, we essentially abandon our ability to influence an internet which simply does not disappear, maintains Strickler, opening space so that his cohort collectively identifies, diagnose and otherwise commemorated the various idiosyncraties of the Internet today in a series of wide texts.
But how can we manifest the internet with words? Writing on virtual spaces and infinitely transforming is particularly difficult in what is challenged to articulate a feeling of experience of interactions that feel Purely social, but are in fact governed by a series of decisions of design deeply taken into account (and now mainly focused on data). If the Internet is a place, the author's role is, in part, to invite the reader to imagine getting dressed.
In general, the authors of Internet dark forest theory are quite alleged about their imaginary audience, which seems to be as chronically online as they are. The book is full of ideas and neologisms, some inventive – the “comfortable web” of Venkatesh Rao, for example – and others that have more weight. However, while the collective concern of the authors is mainly sociological or even political, the texts are often riddled with industrial jargon or technical, granular references and whimsical terminology whose lexicon makes them not only with a touch in a funny but simply painful way to read. The theory does not have to hurt.
Fortunately, Internet dark forest theory is anchored by Strickler himself. The book ends with another essay of its, the most strongly sought after “the post-individual” and the texts of several others which have confronted a set of concepts which are currently percolating in very specific corners of the Internet, the academic world and the art world. Many of these ideas – around art, trade and social and cultural institutions, in particular – are really exciting.
At the beginning of the aughts, the Internet made a certain speculative look like a space for creative and financial self -determination. At present, art itself has evolved to comply – and to criticize – the digital space focused on the platform while our consumption behavior is almost entirely defined by applications and socially focused payment systems on daily financial transactions. The rarefied world of “arts” forms its own mysterious and opaque ensemble of socio-economic microsystems, where producers, paradoxically, hold the share of the lion of social capital as creators, but suffer the most financial yields. The specially designed platform of Metalabel feels different by design in its rationalized process, its own appearance, and its frank transparency: the company makes its cup known and there is a lot better than what is offered in your gallery, label or publisher. Whatever the currency, we all pay to play. Do!
Although many have been said about the first company of Strickler, Kickstarter, which he co-founded with Perry Chen and Charles Adler and launched in 2009, two clear facts remain: the economic impact of Kickstarter is indisputable as a business and a platform whose “Economy of creators” software “still quite precarious.
In addition, however-and in a critical way with regard to the book-the Internet of 2009, in all its peaks of painful economic-crisis-Meets-Web 2.0, has radically changed in 15 years since, undergoing a tonal transfer to a site of profound socio-political package. The technology itself has also evolved – in algorithmic discovery, cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and a generative AI, for clear examples – as well as the public perception of the industries that fuel it, which has grown considerably. The online atmosphere in 2024 is definitely not good.
Joshua Citarella, Caroline Busta and Lil Internet – who all operate at the forefront of contemporary art and media theory – take up this feeling in a series of essays that form the intellectual dorsal spine of the book. I was also struck by the conversation of Leïth Benkhedda and Nathan Schneider in “Proof of Vibes”, as well as “The Forest Dark Expansion and the AIA generator” of Maggie Appleton. What is notable in these pre-before thinkers, who all engage directly with so-called “new” or emerging media is their deep and deeply articulated distrust of institutions, including major technologies. These people have seen the interior – all have or in the past what I call “big work” – and they have strong ideas about how to escape and go beyond.
A generous interpretation of anthology Place Strickler, his cohort, the book and Metalabel himself at the center of a critical conversation in constant evolution on the role and the relevance of the Internet as a global cultural production and consumption site. It is there that the authors of the book clearly wish to stand as a long-standing observer participants of a system and a culture that Strickler and his co-founders have helped to design.
The anthology of the dark internet forest Capture a sense of socio -cultural zeitgeist around the Internet in 2024. A set of feelings, sensitivities and tastes that Metalabel will play what is, in the end, consumer behavior. That the platform really takes fire when it opens up to the world – to date, anyone can ask for an invitation – remains to be seen. I would use it.
The anthology of the dark internet forest (2024) is published by Metalabel and is available online.
