In his Dark Forest Theory of the Internet, Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler describes the public internet of the late 2010's and early 2020's as a social battleground of hostile ideas and viral information, a transformation which has shifted discourse towards more private spaces: 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.
It's no surprise that people are becoming less-and-less comfortable with sharing on public social stages and increasingly prefer to spend more-and-more time in private spaces like direct messages, group-chats, and email newsletters.
In a poetic twist, the very spur-of-the-moment spontaneity that made Twitter (and Facebook, Instagram, etc.) interesting, even magical, in the first place have made those places. The goal is to never be it- maple cocaine January 3, 2019 Social media isn't good anymoreĮach day on twitter there is one main character. It's an open format, which means that anyone can create their own RSS feeds, apps, or services. Unlike our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok feeds - impermeable black boxes which are completely controlled by their respective companies - RSS is like email in that it isn't "owned" by any individual company or entity.
Last year, after more than a decade of getting my information from social media, I switched back the original newsfeed: RSS.