Top all-time · #7393
Yancey Strickler
Personal blog · ystrickler.comculturestartupsphilosophy
Yancey Strickler's personal blog at ystrickler.com covers culture, startups and philosophy. Since 2021, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “What's the difference between an artist and a creator?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked in discussion of the 'dark forest' theory of the internet, which one commenter describes as a conceptually elegant answer with an evocative, spooky nature metaphor.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Cofounder of Kickstarter, Metalabel, and The Creative Independent. Author of "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet." Writer and entrepreneur.
Most-linked posts?
- What's the difference between an artist and a creator?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-14
- The first A-Corp law is here2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-26
What Hacker News says?
Exactly. I think it's popular because it takes a difficult question and answers it with a conceptually elegant answer that has an evocative and spooky nature metaphor. Unfortunately, since it's so poorly grounded, any second order imagery built off it doesn't really add an explanatory power and usually just winds up as a tortured metaphor. For example, Yancey Strickler's The dark forest theory of the internet blog p…
Comment linking /the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet/
on “The Cognitive Dark Forest”Submitted What's the difference between an artist and a creator? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Antienshittification as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Long Game as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unscale the Internet as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The economics of dark forest spaces as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The first A-Corp law is here as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thinking About Thinking, with Reference to Galileo as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to get where you need to be when you don't know where you're going as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's the difference between an artist and a creator? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Climbing Out of the Rabbit Hole as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Data scientist Jeff Hammerbacher on what gets measured as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Artist Corporations Became Law as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dark Forests and the New Internet as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The first A-Corp law is here as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What we want and don't want from the dark forest era as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building in Private as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Defining Groupcore as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's the difference between an artist and a creator? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Prestige Recession as a story · 1 points
HN discussion