{ "blyg": "0.3", "id": "4s8axky65tq51dba4pmcnhyt94", "kind": "fragment", "origin": "https://www.msweet.net/notes/", "page": "121-onyx-kites", "author": { "name": "Matthew McDowell-Sweet", "url": "https://www.msweet.net/" }, "created": "2026-10-17T09:21:45Z", "updated": "2026-10-17T09:32:22Z", "version": 2, "content_md": "[New Nature](https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/new-nature) *needs* a ruin. [Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Tsing) [matsutake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the_World) don’t thrive in pristine forest; they come up in logged-over ruins once the extraction has moved on, feeding on what the clearcut left behind.\n\nPlatforms are our plantation, and they’re well into ruin: the [dead internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory), ghost forums, link rot, with surveillance capitalism and now the RL data black holes speeding things along. Our first response was to hide, either in [dark forests](https://onezero.medium.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet-7dc3e68a7cb1) or in the [cozyweb](https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-extended-internet-universe) of group chats and private channels. But hiding isn’t regrowth.\n\nWhat’s actually growing back is Aneesh Sathe’s [thicket](https://aneeshsathe.com/2025/12/19/logic-of-the-thicket-and-the-unsearchable-web/). It’s tempting to mistake *new* for *primitive*. Scrub looks crude next to the plantation, but every pioneer species carries the whole of [evolutionary history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Dangerous_Idea) in its bones.\n\n[Blygger](https://blygger.org/) is the same. Static files, RSS and the blogroll look like a step backwards, but they’re two decades of platform lessons [compressed](https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4360) into a tiny spec: fragments and threads, but no replies, no likes and no graph to farm, because we’ve seen what gets farmed.\n\nTraversing a thicket is slow by design. There’s no feed to scroll, no discovery layer, no algorithm to hand one the next thing. One moves blyg to blyg, along blogrolls and transclusions, the way animals move along trails they’ve worn themselves. That makes it [deliberate work](https://aneeshsathe.com/2025/12/25/the-deep-dark-terroir-of-the-soul/), mostly done by the ecosystem’s own participants: people who write in it, read in it and know where the paths go.\n\nTourists bounce off, because nothing is laid out for consumption. Extractors bounce off too, because there’s no aggregate to harvest, only a tangle of small, locally meaningful places. But it isn’t a walled garden either. There’s no owner to know, no entrance fee, no wall to hop: every blyg is a public URL, and any feed reader gets in.\n\nThe thicket is open to anyone willing to walk it carefully. Thickets are thorny. There’s no running, no easy path cut for one in advance. That friction isn’t a bug to be engineered away. It’s the immune system of an evolutionarily advanced ecosystem, one that has risen from the ruins and learnt targeted hardness to protect generative liveness.", "content_html": "

New Nature needs a ruin. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s matsutake don’t thrive in pristine forest; they come up in logged-over ruins once the extraction has moved on, feeding on what the clearcut left behind.

\n

Platforms are our plantation, and they’re well into ruin: the dead internet, ghost forums, link rot, with surveillance capitalism and now the RL data black holes speeding things along. Our first response was to hide, either in dark forests or in the cozyweb of group chats and private channels. But hiding isn’t regrowth.

\n

What’s actually growing back is Aneesh Sathe’s thicket. It’s tempting to mistake new for primitive. Scrub looks crude next to the plantation, but every pioneer species carries the whole of evolutionary history in its bones.

\n

Blygger is the same. Static files, RSS and the blogroll look like a step backwards, but they’re two decades of platform lessons compressed into a tiny spec: fragments and threads, but no replies, no likes and no graph to farm, because we’ve seen what gets farmed.

\n

Traversing a thicket is slow by design. There’s no feed to scroll, no discovery layer, no algorithm to hand one the next thing. One moves blyg to blyg, along blogrolls and transclusions, the way animals move along trails they’ve worn themselves. That makes it deliberate work, mostly done by the ecosystem’s own participants: people who write in it, read in it and know where the paths go.

\n

Tourists bounce off, because nothing is laid out for consumption. Extractors bounce off too, because there’s no aggregate to harvest, only a tangle of small, locally meaningful places. But it isn’t a walled garden either. There’s no owner to know, no entrance fee, no wall to hop: every blyg is a public URL, and any feed reader gets in.

\n

The thicket is open to anyone willing to walk it carefully. Thickets are thorny. There’s no running, no easy path cut for one in advance. That friction isn’t a bug to be engineered away. It’s the immune system of an evolutionarily advanced ecosystem, one that has risen from the ruins and learnt targeted hardness to protect generative liveness.

", "content_hash": "sha256:a5420416352d7a82be3fa12788d28a72f251588b58a634b3db27dcd25e80eac6", "media": [], "changelog": [ { "version": 1, "at": "2026-10-17T09:21:45Z", "note": null }, { "version": 2, "at": "2026-10-17T09:32:22Z", "note": null } ] }