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by Yancey Strickler
May-June
2019
from
OneZero Website
Spanish
version
Part One
This is also what the
Internet is Becoming: a Dark Forest
May 20,
2019
Photo by Rosie Fraser
on
Unsplash
In his sci-fi trilogy
The Three Body Problem, author
Liu Cixin presents the dark forest theory of the universe.
When we look out into space, the theory goes, we're struck by its
silence. It seems like we're the only ones here. After all, if other
forms of life existed, wouldn't they show themselves? Since they
haven't, we assume there's no one else out there.
Liu invites us to think about this a different way.
Imagine a dark forest at night. It's deathly quiet. Nothing moves.
Nothing stirs. This could lead one to assume that the forest is
devoid of life. But of course, it's not. The dark forest is full of
life. It's quiet because night is when the predators come out. To
survive, the animals stay silent.
Is our universe an empty forest or a dark one?
If it's a dark forest,
then only Earth is foolish enough to ping the heavens and announce
its presence. The rest of the universe already knows the real reason
why the forest stays dark. It's only a matter of time before the
Earth learns as well.
This is also what
the Internet is becoming:
a dark forest.
In response to the ads,
the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors,
we're retreating to our dark forests of the Internet, and away from
the mainstream.
This very piece is an example of this. This theory was first shared
on a private channel sent to 500 people who I know or who have
explicitly chosen to receive it. This is the online environment in
which I feel most secure. Where I can be my most "real self."
These are all spaces where depressurized conversation is possible
because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified
environments.
Podcasts are another example. There, meaning isn't just expressed
through language, but also through intonation and interaction.
Podcasts are where a bad joke can still be followed by a self-aware
and self-deprecating save. It's a more forgiving space for
communication than the Internet at large.
Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of
activity.
As are other dark
forests, like,
...and on and on.
This is where
Facebook is pivoting with Groups
(and trying to redefine what the word "privacy" means in the
process).
These are all spaces where depressurized conversation is possible
because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified
environments. The cultures of those spaces have more in common with
the physical world than the Internet.
The Internet of today is a battleground. The idealism of the '90s
web is gone. The web 2.0 utopia - where we all lived in rounded
filter bubbles of happiness - ended with
the 2016 Presidential election (en
USA) when
we learned that the tools we thought were only life-giving could be
weaponized too.
The public and
semi-public spaces we created to develop our identities, cultivate
communities, and gain knowledge were overtaken by forces using them
to gain power of various kinds (market, political, social, and so
on).
This is the atmosphere of the mainstream web today: a relentless
competition for power. As this competition has grown in size and
ferocity, an increasing number of the population has scurried into
their dark forests to avoid the fray.
The web 2.0 era has been replaced by a new "Web 2" era. An age where
we simultaneously live in many different internets, whose numbers
increase hourly.
The dark forests are
growing...
The dark forests grow because they provide psychological and
reputational cover. They allow us to be ourselves because we know
who else is there.
Compared to the free
market communication style of the mass channels - with their high
risks, high rewards, and limited moderation - dark forest spaces
are more Scandinavian in their values and the social and emotional
security they provide.
They cap the downsides of
looking bad and the upsides of our best jokes by virtue of a
contained audience.
This is a trade more and more people are looking to make.
The Bowling
Alley Theory of the Internet
I went dark on the Internet a few years ago.
I took social apps off my
phone, unfollowed everyone, the whole shebang. This was without a
doubt a good decision. I've been happier and have had better control
over my time since. Many others have done this and are doing this. A
generation of modern wannabe monks.
But even as my personal wellness grows, I see a risk in this change.
You could argue that these decisions removed me from the arena.
-
I detached from
the mainstream of conversation.
-
I stopped
watching TV.
-
I stopped looking
at Facebook and Twitter.
-
I silenced my
voice on the platforms where the conversation was happening
because of the strings, risks, and side effects they created
in return.
This detachment wasn't
just in politics.
It was also true of how I
shared my personal life. Milestones for me and my family were left
unshared beyond our Internet dark forests, even though many more
friends and members of our families would've been happy to hear
about them.
Those of us building dark forests risk underestimating how powerful
the mainstream channels will continue to be.
Not sharing was my choice, of course, and I didn't question it. My
alienation from the mainstream was their loss, not mine. But did
this choice also deprive me of some greater reward?
Not everyone who joined a bowling league (when people did such
things) loved bowling. Many loved being with other people first and
bowling came second or not at all. Being together is what mattered.
The venue did not.
This is the Bowling Alley Theory of the Internet:
that people
are online purely to meet each other, and in the long run the venues
where we congregate are an unimportant background compared to the
interactions themselves.
Did we meet on MySpace,
Tinder, or LinkedIn? Does it matter?
When I went offline for reasons of personal wellness and
productivity, I stopped going to the bowling alleys altogether. But
lately, I've started to question that decision.
I'm reminded of what happened in the 1970s when the hippies -
bruised and bloodied from the culture wars of the '60s -
retreated into self-help, wellness, and personal development, as
Adam Curtis documents in his series
The Century of Self, and
video...
While they turned inward,
the winners of the '60s culture wars took society's reins.
A focus
on personal wellness created an unintended side effect:
a retreat from the
public arena, and a shift in the distribution of power ever
since.
It's possible, I suppose,
that a shift away from the mainstream Internet and into the dark
forests could permanently limit the mainstream's influence.
It could delegitimize it.
In some ways that's the story of the internet's effect on broadcast
television. But we forget how powerful television still is. And
those of us building dark forests risk underestimating how powerful
the mainstream channels will continue to be, and how minor our
havens are compared to their immensity.
The influence of Facebook, Twitter, and others is enormous and not
going away.
There's a reason why
Russian military focused on these platforms when they wanted to
manipulate public opinion:
they have a real
impact...
The meaning and tone of
these platforms changes with who uses them. What kind of bowling
alley it is depends on who goes there.
Should a significant percentage of the population abandon these
spaces, that will leave nearly as many eyeballs for those who are
left to influence, and limit the influence of those who departed on
the larger world they still live in.
If the dark forest isn't dangerous already, these departures might
ensure it will be.
Part Two
Beyond the Dark Forest Theory
of the Internet - Re-learning how to be yourself online
Jun 04, 2019
Photo: Artur Debat
Getty
Images
Prequel to the Dark
Forest
Two weeks ago I wrote about the dark forest theory of the Internet.
I used the dark forest
theory to explain why we're afraid to be public online, and what
could be lost as a result.
I first connected the dark forest theory with the Internet when I
had a strange realization earlier this year: that I knew how to be
myself in real life, but I didn't know how to be myself online.
In "real life" I'm a reasonably self-confident, 40-year-old human.
If we sat next to each other on a plane we'd have a
good-to-memorable conversation.
But on the Internet, I feel like a teenager struggling to find their
identity. I'm all awkward exclamation points and weird
over-explanations. I'm often too self-conscious to be interesting or
real.
When I used the Internet as an actual adolescent in the 1990s and as
a young adult in the 2000s, this wasn't the case. I blogged every
day. Message boards were how I learned to test theories and debate
ideas.
These communities were
small enough that people knew each other but big enough that there
was a diversity of opinion and conversation.
You could vehemently
disagree with someone about politics in one thread while agreeing
just as passionately with that same person in a debate about movie
sequels in another.
I had no problem being myself online then. But now it feels
different.
A lot of this difference is on me. I'm older. I have more at stake.
But it's not just me that changed. The Internet did too. The
Internet went from a venue for low stakes experimentation to the
place with some of the highest stakes of all.
With the rise of online
bullying, shaming, and swatting, the Internet became emotionally,
reputationally, and physically dangerous. It became the dark forest.
Our digital breadcrumbs
became evidence that could and would be used against us. To keep
safe we exercised our right to stay silent and moved underground.
When it comes to showing our true selves online, many of us are more
like black domains than we care to admit.
In
The Three Body Problem series,
author Liu Cixin presents a solution for the dark forest
threat:
a "black domain."
This device slows the speed of light to
create a cloak of invisibility around a planet or galaxy. A black
domain stops everything from getting in or out.
It's security through
cosmic self-imprisonment...
Dark forests like email lists and Slack groups are more forgiving
than Liu's black domains. They're off-grid, but they aren't that
off-grid. Today's black domain equivalents might be things like
putting phones in freezers, Mastodon, and crypto cold storage.
Not many of us are that
hardcore with our digital habits yet.
But when it comes to
showing our true selves online, many of us are more like black
domains than we care to admit.
Beyond the Dark
Forest
When I realized I didn't know how to be myself online, my first
thought was:
Who cares?
It doesn't matter. It's
just the Internet...
But the more I thought about it, the more I began to think that it
did matter. There's tremendous value in coming into yourself as a
person. Why wouldn't that be true online, too? Recognizing that my
online self was lacking, I decided to learn how to be myself on the
Internet.
I started with a simple exercise...
For one week, I would
tweet twice a day. (Normally I tweet about once a month.) I wouldn't
try to impress or be cool. I would be real and share whatever was
actually on my mind.
Once in the morning and once at night, I tweeted. I wrote about
child-rearing, grocery shopping, politics, books, and basketball.
The results were more trivial than revolutionary, and that was the
point. I wasn't trying to stand out. I was getting practice reps at
being me. The regular schedule lowered my anxiety and helped dial in
my voice.
The next step in my digital self-acceptance was to try sharing my
dark forest self with the larger Internet.
After sending my last
email about the dark forest, I posted it here on Medium,
which isn't something I normally do. I didn't expect a response, but
I was nervous nonetheless. And then, out of nowhere, the piece blew
up. In the last two weeks, more than 130,000 people from around the
world read it.
The dark forest theory struck a chord. And it's no wonder: many of
us struggle to be ourselves online.
We're wary of showing who
we are outside our private channels. But at the same time, we
recognize that there are trade-offs to our isolation. Our dark
forests can become black domains, with little connection to or
influence on the outside world.
The Internet went from a venue for low stakes experimentation to the
place with some of the highest stakes of all.
What's the in-between? That's what my experiments have been trying
to find.
That process is ongoing,
but my more-complicated-in-practice-than-theory answer is to strive
to be your true self in every context and vow to be present wherever
you are. We can't lurk in the dark forests and expect anything to
change for the better.
To improve and positively
contribute to the communities and cultures we're a part of, we have
to actively engage. As I wrote last time, what kind of bowling alley
it is depends on who goes there.
Sometimes I question the merits of the project. Is this a waste of
time? Why not just delete my accounts and stay in my dark forests
forever?
It's tempting, I admit. But whenever I go down that path, I think
about Russia's disinformation campaign that began before the 2016
election, and that continues to this day.
Russia's
GRU directed their agents to pose
as Americans using fake social media accounts, and to use those
accounts to flood Twitter and Facebook with politically and racially
divisive messages. These sleeper accounts didn't (and don't)
just post propaganda, however.
In between their attempts
to inflame, they posted about cooking, sports, and other everyday
mundanities.
They used the trivial to
build rapport and trust with their followers, to make the fake
accounts seem more real, and to normalize the extreme ideas they
were posting.
Here I was retreating from the web because I thought my online
presence was unimportant and inconsequential.
Meanwhile, a foreign
power was using its resources to pretend to be someone like me to
try to influence someone like me.
What kind of
influence does that mean I really have?
What kind of
influence does that mean each of us has?
And who fills that
vacuum if we fail to fill it ourselves?
I don't like the
possibilities that come up when I try to answer that question.
And so rather than
retreat into my black domain, here I am:
re-learning how to be
myself on the Internet instead...
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