The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet by Yancey Strickler was a valiant attempt to paste together a collection of blog posts about dark forests and the cozy web into a physical object.
The posts were hit-and-miss, as anthologies tend to be. But since the connection between them was tenuous in the first place I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything by skipping one or two that were too steeped in post-modern mumbo jumbo.
A nit to pick: Strickler insists on using the term “dark forests” to denote the cozy bubbles people retreat to in order to escape the methaphorical predators of the Internet dark forest. This is clearly nonsensical: a dark forest ecosystem, one where everyone is quiet as even predators can become prey, is unquestionably anti-human. Dark forests are something you escape from, not into. So, Venkatesh Rao and Maggie Appleton’s “cozy web” is much more apt.
But if you already knew about Strickler, Rao and Appleton’s writing and don’t care much for post-modernism, is there anything of interest left in this collection? The concept of moving castles ended up having more to do with performance art than I hoped for, so not really my thing though of course it may be interesting to some. And two essays by Caroline Busta were thought-provoking, particularly one about (counter)counterculture.
Worth the price in terms of utility? Probably not, unless you are sociologist or a left-leaning artistic type wanting to make your own “collective”, “co-op”, or what not. But then chipping in so that people who seem to care about the same things as you can do something about it is not the worst way to spend money, time and attention.