I've been circling the same question for twenty years: how do creative people make things together and what structures — technological, economic, legal — do they need?
These pieces map that journey.
I. The internet becomes a dark forest
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (2019) As the public internet turned hostile, life moved into private, non-indexed spaces — group chats, newsletters, podcasts. The essay that named the shift.
Beyond the Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (2019) The follow-up: dark forests keep us safe, but they can become black domains with no influence on the world outside. What we still owe the public web.
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet (2024) The theory expanded into a collectively published 208-page book with Venkatesh Rao, Maggie Appleton, Caroline Busta, Lil Internet, Joshua Citarella, and others — the group that became the Dark Forest Collective.
II. From individuals to groups
The Post-Individual (2024) Five years in the making: how the internet ended the reign of the atomized individual, and what identity looks like when it's held in networks and groups. Not the end of the individual — its amplification.
Rethinking Labels (2022) Record labels reimagined as a form for all culture: a group of people, a common identity, a common purpose, public releases. The conceptual seed of Metalabel.
Defining Groupcore (2025) Naming the shift: loose, rotating circles of collaboration as the primary creative unit. Fractal, anti-fragile, lattices not skyscrapers. The thread connecting Metalabel to DFOS.
III. New economics for creative work
This Could Be Our Future (2019) A manifesto against financial maximization as our default definition of what's rational — and the origin of Bentoism, a four-part frame (Now Me, Future Me, Now Us, Future Us) for a bigger self-interest.
What's After the Creator Economy? (2023) The creator economy convinced us to compete alone for attention — an assumption only the platforms benefit from. What replaces it is collective.
Why Artist Corporations? (2025) From a farmhouse in Clover Hollow to a new corporate form: why artists need a legal structure of their own, and how the A-Corp turns 1099 gig workers into owners. (The behind-the-scenes story of the TED talk: Some things are worth the wait.)
IV. The creative life itself
On the Creative Life (2025) Thirteen conversations with Joshua Citarella on how creative people release work, structure careers, and build worlds.
Nobody Cares About You (2017) A short one: why realizing that nobody cares is freeing.
Why We Started Kickstarter (2009) The origin story of the first big attempt at all of this: the motivations, the constraints, and the values built in.
Taxonomy of a Top Ten and Finding Myself as a Writer (2005) Where this started: learning to write by writing about other people's work with care.
What I'm building now
A new system of our own (2026) is the current chapter: DFOS, a private internet with cooperation at its core, and Artist Corporations, now law in Colorado — two projects, one vision. The Dark Forest Era, written with Joshua Citarella, comes later this year.
New essays land on the blog and via newsletter.