The internet is dying on the outside but growing on the inside

Dark Forests rule everything around us. Signal chats to plan wars? Check. Private group chats where rival athletes discuss injuries? Check. Communications increasingly monitored by states and authorities? Check. A decrease in posting on social media? Check again.

In 2019 I wrote that the internet was becoming dangerous and people were moving out of the mainstream and into dark forests instead: 

“The internet of today is a battleground… The public and semi-public spaces we created to develop our identities, cultivate communities, and gain in 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.”

This was written during a much more agreeable time on the web and the world than now. The post worried about the consequences of the dark forest: that as more of us retreated from the mainstream, public spaces would be increasingly filled by extreme voices working to gain power and influence instead.

What was a theory of growth in the hidden corners of the internet has moved to the heart of it all in the years since. Even as humans use social media less, online spaces are increasingly being used for ideological gains, now aided by AI. There’s now more bot content than human content being posted for the first time. As Sean Monahan (formerly of K-Hole) writes, the iconic Dead Internet Theory that the internet will be increasingly non-human — which multiple tech leaders have recently echoed — combines with the Dark Forest Theory to explain the strange internet we inhabit today:

The internet is dying on the outside but growing on the inside.

One way to look at this schism is through the lens of who makes the content — human or machine. Another lens is who has more power. As Domination and the Arts of Resistance, a book by James C. Scott (author of “Seeing Like a State”) explores, subjugated people maintain their cultures and ideas in the face of oppression using “hidden transcripts”:

“The theatrical imperatives that normally prevail in situations of domination produce a public transcript in close conformity with how the dominant group would wish to have things appear. The dominant never control the stage absolutely, but their wishes normally prevail. In the short run, it is in the interest of the subordinate to produce a more or less credible performance, speaking the lines and making the gestures he knows are expected of him. 

“’Hidden transcript’ characterizes discourse that takes place ‘off stage,’ beyond direct observation by powerholders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript. 

“We do not wish to prejudge, by definition, the relation between what is said in the face of power and what is said behind its back. Power relations are not so straightforward that we can call what is said in power-laden contexts false and what is said offstage true. 

“What is certainly the case, however, is that the hidden transcript is produced for a different audience and under different constraints of power than the public transcript.”

Hidden transcripts are drafted, revised, and designed in dark forests safe from outsider view. Public channels are where dominant powers dictate and control narratives. As authoritarian regimes around the world increase their monitoring and persecution of those who do not fall in line with the dominant story, these spaces and their security become increasingly important.

This is coming from the voice of a white guy who’s used to being positively included in the system. But this presumption of safety has never been available to others.

This month the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University is hosting a gallery show called “DFT 2025” — “DFT” an abbreviation for Dark Forest Theory. The show’s co-curator, artist Salim Green, uses this shorthand to describe the Dark Forest concept, particularly as it relates to Black people who “may gain agency through concealment.” The show asks: “How might a practice of hiding, abstraction (as a tool and strategy), evasion, a refusal of visibility and insistence on privacy, and opting out, facilitate freedom?”

Still from Rodney McMillian's "A Migration Tale, 2014–2015," part of the DFT 2025 show

The show includes works from Rhea Dillon, Nikita Gale, Rodney McMillian, and others exploring the tensions between what’s hidden and visible. It also includes DFT Radio, a streaming station broadcasting sounds and ideas from the show as oblique echolocations from the Dark Forest.

Screenshot from DFT Radio

Over the past two years, the Dark Forest Collective, a private group chat of 15 writers, has published three books charting unseen universes: The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet; Antimemetics by Nadia Asparouhova (one of The New Yorker’s best books of the year); and A Sexual History of the Internet by Mindy Seu. Each a map of worlds that aren’t always meant to be seen.

The dark forests have grown so vast that the metaphor now needs infrastructure. At Metalabel we’re building the Dark Forest Operating System, or DFOS: software that makes it possible for small groups to create their own private internets. The idea that once described how we hide will soon be architecture for how we can safely gather and not be alone.

DFOS.com landing page

Everything public feels like an ad. Everything private feels real. The gap widens every day. The dark forest is where decisions are made; public space is where they’re performed. In an age of state dominance, only hidden spaces keep our conversations and ideals off the menu.