#65 | Jumping into the Dark Forest [2026-02]
Cautiously optimistic and weary but game! ~ "Goodbye, Ghandi" ~ "Forward not back"
In the end, I took the plunge. Because if something isn’t working, we can’t just keep repeating tried/failed patterns and expect different outcomes. And, for me social media wasn’t working. I’ve been posting on social media everyday for +2 years now (X in 2024 and then Bluesky in 2025) and the results have been solidly mixed: the consumption part is great; I’ve read, watched, and learned many fascinating things. But while I’ve met a few people, I largely haven’t connected with as many strangers as I’d hoped to. The “social” in “social media” wasn’t working for me.
So for the month of February, I overrode all my instincts and reservations about not building castles in other people’s kingdoms and spent four weeks building a magnificent castle in someone else’s kingdom.
On February 4, I joined a Dark Forest Operating System (DFOS) space called New Creative Era. DFOS is from the same team that brought you Metalabel and spearheaded by Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter fame. I don’t know Yancey personally but have religiously followed his New Creative Era podcast, which is how I heard about this DFOS space to begin with. From the few brief chat interactions I’ve had with him in the DFOS platform, he seems like a good guy. And when I first joined the NCE DFOS space and voiced some of my concerns in the general chat, someone on his team even DM’d me separately to vouch for him. So that definitely helped sway me a bit. I’ve also followed him for a bit now even before NCE, reading his blog and collecting his Post-Individual essay and others. I think it’d be more accurate to say that I’m not necessarily as convinced by dark forests as I am simply believing in Yancey.
What is DFOS? They describe it as “a private internet” which I think is accurate. eg. For February, I basically stopped checking Bluesky, Substack, WSJ, and YouTube. Whatever time I would’ve spent blindly scrolling, replying to strangers, watching clips, and reading articles, I basically instead spent in the DFOS universe. We only have so many hours in a day; it’s zero sum. DFOS was the first site I’d visit each morning, throughout each day, and then into evening, just hopscotching around my various DFOS spaces. There’s the general New Creative Era space which all people initially land in. And then from there, it speciates into specialized niche spaces. Coffee, tech, music, writing, etc. (I personally run a writing space.) Space runners can decide to make their DFOS space closed, application-only, or open. But people can only join spaces if they have “keys” which take the form of specialized join links.
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“Goodbye, Ghandi”
I may wish that social media was more open, that more people engaged openly and with generosity in the open plains and tall grass, but after two years of using X and Bluesky, I must concede defeat. Additionally, I grew another year older recently and my old age has now been making me more generally reflect on my broader core values and worldview. I’ve sadly decided: I am now turning my back on Gandhi. I tried to be the change I wished to see in the world but the world was indifferent; I haven’t changed anything; I have simply only suffered. I no longer believe in being the change you wish to see in the world. For example: all the years I’d used PC instead of Macs. (I switched over to Mac in Jan 2025 and it changed my life immeasurably for the better!) For years now, I’ve chosen to #buildinpublic over retreating to private, more intimate spaces likes dark forests because I felt some (misguided?) obligation to the commons and public good. But while I may be comfortable sharing freely on the open, clearnet web, I have simply empirically learned that it is unequivocally true: other people feel much more comfortable sharing in dark forest spaces. So in the end, we must meet the world where it is, not where we wish it were. I have built for years in the open trying to help my people find me. It didn’t really work. So now I’m wandering into the dark forests to find them.
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The good stuff
In literally two days on DFOS in the NCE space I had more engagement than in two years of using X and Bluesky. In two days in the NCE dfos space, I’d met other high-agency people who were interested in reading James C. Scott’s Domination and Arts of Resistance and we created an NCE Reading Group which now meets weekly. Additionally, I’ve created a new invitation-only writing space (The Forest of Arts & Letters) and as of today, six other people have already joined even though I’ve shouted from the rooftops that it will not be a free space but will eventually cost a $1/mo tithing like in church. Not all dark forests are like this (for example, last year I’d tried the pay-only Do Not Research group on Discord and didn’t vibe with them) but the NCE dark forest has —so far— been incredibly welcoming and everything I’ve been looking for. Tons of synchronicities everywhere. Everyone knows who Adam Curtis is. And since we all found our way to the space from the NCE podcast, there’s those two seasons of common firmament that operates as a sort-of biblical touchstone for the whole community. People have passed the shibboleth to be there, which is why we’re all —at least for now while the total population’s still small— so aligned. People volunteer to make art and membership cards. Someone made a map of all members and a script that combines all our daily song picks (one member’s each day) to mash together 30-min super-mixes we lovingly call MEGASONG. The internet is fun again and so far, the experience has been wonderful. It’s only when I think about the larger questions— can I export my data into something useful? Will the platform even still be around in a few years? If everyone does what I’m doing, what does that mean for the commons? —do I feel uneasy.
But I think Yancey put it well in NCE’s Season 2 finale: “Forward not back.”
What we currently have with the public internet, where a handful of billion and trillion dollar companies literally own all distribution and followers don’t mean anything cannot possibly be our path forward. I don’t know if DFOS is the future but we must try something different if we want our future to be different and this is the closest thing I’ve found so far.
If you’re interested, the rabbit hole starts here: https://nce.dfos.com.
Robert
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Postscript - Loose change:
In February, I channeled one of my all-time heroes of high literature, Andy Borowitz and published satirical pieces every Mon/Wed/Fri! I call the series The Robertlandian and had a blast doing them, twelve pieces total for February! I thoroughly enjoyed writing satire about contemporary news though— I feel trying to intentionally write something satirically funny stretches my brain in a unique way nothing else really does. So I’ll be continuing the practice into March!
Pretty sure this is the future of news.
Formally wrote up a summary of my personal website, https://robertl.in! (This was just so I’d have a single canonical piece to share across the different DFOS spaces I’d joined.)