For decades, humans have been trying to contact an alien civilization with no response. We’ve sent numerous radio calls, searched hundreds of planets, and flung the twin Voyagers into deep space. And yet… nothing. It seems like we’re the only ones here.
If alien civilizations existed, wouldn’t they be contacting us? If intelligent life existed, where is everybody? The conclusion we reach is that there’s nobody there.
The dark forest theory invites us to consider this differently.
Imagine a dark forest at night. It’s deathly silent. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs. There are no birds singing, no frogs croaking, no monkeys rustling. Is the forest empty of life?
All hikers know a silent forest can only mean one thing: predators. It’s quiet because prey animals are hiding. There’s something dangerous lurking, and you need to shut the hell up before you get eaten.
The Dark Forest Hypothesis is an attempt to answer Fermi’s Paradox by suggesting alien civilizations do exist, but are silent. They remain undetectable in order to avoid a bigger, hostile civilization.
In the fantastic novel The Dark Forest (sequel to The Three-Body Problem), Liu Cixin states:
- Suppose a vast number of civilizations distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of observable stars. Lots and lots of them. Those civilizations make up the body of a cosmic society. Cosmic sociology is the study of the nature of this super-society.
- Suppose that survival is the primary need of a civilization.
- Suppose that civilizations continuously expand over time, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.
The logical conclusion is that any intelligent life will be pitted against other life in the struggle for survival.
Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler suggests the internet is becoming a dark forest. The predators we’re hiding from are advertisers, tracking bots, clickbait creators, social media influencers, and trolls. It’s unsafe to reveal yourself in any authentic way, so we retreat into private spaces. We hide in the cozyweb.
The cozyweb is a term coined by Venkatesh Rao. It’s the “high-gatekeeping slum-like space comprising slacks, messaging apps, private groups, storage services like dropbox, and of course, email”. It’s the informal, messy, untracked space that bots and algorithms and SEO spiders haven’t reached yet.
I’m a member of 10 Discord servers, each with a specific purpose and untracked by the clearweb. I’m on several Slack channels, all abiding Chatham House Rules. WhatsApp and Telegram groups are rife with spam, but at least it’s not indexed by Google.
The cozyweb is casual, comfy, and private — the online equivalent to a dinner party at home. Compare this to the aggressively public nature of Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, where everything you say or post is broadcasted to everyone for eternity. On the cozyweb, there are no stupid questions.
Social media marketing tends to focus only on the clearweb and the usual suspects of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Throw LinkedIn in there if you’re B2B. But every industry has a cozyweb, and you’d be remiss to ignore it.
AI researchers and users write essays and discuss theories on LessWrong. Lo-fi hiphopheads lurk on Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe. Bloggers plan meetups on the Homebrew Website Club. Go deeper into the dark forest, and you find gatekeeper-protected Slack groups (Rands Leadership Slack) and Discord channels.
I am not advocating joining these private spaces and blasting ads to infinity. That’s a fantastic way to 1) get banned, and 2) ensure potential customers hate you forever. People retreat to the cozyweb to get away from ads.
A common axiom is that your marketing must sound human. With the rise of AI, I’d update that to “your marketing must come from a human”.
That means participating as a person, not as a company. Help people out with questions. Engage in discussions. Contribute to the community by building plugins or writing tutorials. It’s not as immediately effective as an ad campaign, but you’ll be building credibility and goodwill.