Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of activity. As are other dark forests, like Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, text groups, Snapchat, WeChat, and on and on.

These are all spaces where depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments. The cultures of those spaces have more in common with the physical world than the internet.

The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet – OneZero
Via: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

This dark forest metaphor fits nicely with the cave, campfire, and watering hole primordial learning spaces.

Humans are alway creating caves, campfires, and watering holes, including online.

First, and make no mistake here, all three sacred learning spaces will have analogs in cyberspace. If they don’t, then cyberspace will cease to exist as a domain of interaction among humans. Those using the new media will create their own analogs for these learning places, even if they are not designed into the system.

Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century 

Like the cave and campfire primordial learning spaces, Dark Forests provide room for reflection and deep conversation.

Asynchronous, continuous online communities like ours provide something that most conference do not — time for reflection and deep conversations.

communities are the new conference – Harold Jarche

Dark Forests such as the many Element and Discord based communities we inhabit at Stimpunks bring safety to the serendipity.

…as online activity grows, we all need safe places to learn and reflect. Yes, we can be engaged on public platforms, but we need to find safe places to have deeper conversations. Communities can offer a diversity of opinions and experiences. It is essential for every citizen today to develop and engage with a diverse network of knowledgeable people in order to make sense of the world. Citizens also need somewhere to integrate their learning and get trusted advice.

communities are the new conference – Harold Jarche

The dark forests grow because they provide psychological and reputational cover. They allow us to be ourselves because we know who else is there. Compared to the free market communication style of the mass channels — with their high risks, high rewards, and limited moderation — dark forest spaces are more Scandinavian in their values and the social and emotional security they provide. They cap the downsides of looking bad and the upsides of our best jokes by virtue of a contained audience.

This is a trade more and more people are looking to make.

The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet | by Yancey Strickler | Medium

Dark Forests serve community.

There was almost universal agreement that people prefer to engage in communities, both online and in-person, rather than a conference, particularly ones that have a lot of vendors.

communities are the new conference – Harold Jarche

Many Dark Forests are connected rhizomatically.

On discord, there is a growing network of communities. I have lovingly dubbed this collective The Autistic Rhizome. They are an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, and mutual aid and support that have displaced the hierarchical nature of advocate/follower relationships. 

We are equal in these spaces.

This doesn’t mean that all knowledge shared is useful in advancing the neurodiversity movement. Like any knowledge, some is good, some is bad, most is somewhere in the middle.

This growing network consists of communities that do not depend on each other to exist, but are still enriched by their interconnection. There is no starting or end point. There is no advancing through communities based on levels of knowledge. They just simply exist, and people come and go as they please.

Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy

We humans will always be making caves and campfires, both in meatspace and online. As surveillance capitalism and other forces toxify our public watering holes, campfires in dark forests become more popular.

Creating campfires in dark forests is essential community building as we expand the rhizome.

Autistic Rhizome

A growing and evolving network of Autistic communities with no hierarchy or dependence on anothers existence.

Each person forms an integral part and is connected by a flow of energy that not only runs through and between individuals and communities but enables new connections to form. It is a place of safety, support and deep understanding.

The Autistic rhizome creates new energy through the sharing and evolution of ideas which permeates and ripples through into wider society.

@AutisticRealms

There is a natural human need to feel understood and connected; connections build relationships and support good mental health. For some people, those connections and relationships may not look different from the more conventional norms the majority of society holds but are equally valuable. For people who feel marginalised either by neurodivergence, disability or by being in another minority group, there is often no space already carved out for support and building connections in local communities. This can cause feelings of isolation and disconnection. Yet, the need to find people that understand and can connect within the same folds, with similar interests and values, can lead people to create their communities.

It feels like a rabbit warren of underground tunnels and caves where people meet, mainly through online social media platforms. The continuous physical growth of these spaces where people are connecting is slowly creating ripples and heading into real family spaces and showing a genuine need for change in our education system as more and more children are showing how the current frameworks are just not meeting needs and resulting in school attendance difficulties and mental health concerns.

Caverns, Pleats and Folds. The potential to neuroqueer is inside… | by MoreRealms | Medium

The rhizome connects and nurtures dark forests at human scale.

There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet. And they should be weird.

 The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again

It is becoming clear that only human scale organisations are understandable for individual humans and have the potential to provide psychologically safe and healthy environments for humans (Fischetti et al. 2018).

“Study after study confirms that most people have about five intimate friends, 15 close friends, 50 general friends and 150 acquaintances. This threshold is imposed by brain size and chemistry, as well as the time it takes to maintain meaningful relationships”, Robin Dunbar says. 

A careful analysis of human history demonstrates that super-human scale organisations are inherently unsafe for individual humans, and that completely atomised societies are inconceivable, as they are apparently incompatible with human social needs.

The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations