Groupcore in theory and practice
Plus a new episode of the New Creative Era podcast
We’re obsessed with how groups of people do creative things together. The uncertainty of coming together without a clear plan. The magic of the pieces starting to come together. The awe of being part of something you couldn't have done on your own.
It takes a special set of circumstances and people to create these experiences. Today we're excited to share three pieces that dive into how to do it.
New Creative Era: What’s a Dark Forest?
First, we have a new episode of the New Creative Era podcast. This one lays the groundwork for the season ahead by answering the question: what's a Dark Forest?
As the episode explains, Dark Forest is a term describing the private spaces where people gather away from the mainstream to hang out, plan, and practice manifesting their visions together. Dark Forests are one of the key new areas of the new social landscape we find ourselves in today.
Listen to Josh and Yancey discuss them on Apple, Spotify, or right here:
Groupcore in theory and practice
Dark Forests might be the venue, but how do we describe what's happening inside them? This is where the idea of groupcore comes in.
In a recent post we talked about Metalabel’s focus being groupcore: software, tools, economics, spaces, and ideas that help creative people cooperate. But what does groupcore really mean? Can one groupcore as a verb? Is groupcore distinct from other forms of coordination we already know?
Our theory: groupcore is a pattern of coordinated action that mixes collective achievement, personal growth, and meaningful work. It's a labor model like open source or co-ops that any person can participate in. Groupcore happens when individuals pursue a form of cooperation that preserves autonomy, distributes authorship, and creates emergent value no one individual could foresee alone.
Today we're sharing two new essays that explore groupcore in significant depth.
The first explores groupcore in theory, laying out what we believe groupcore is, how it works, and why it’s growing right now.
The second explores groupcore in practice, taking those same ideals and using them to show how Metalabel operates — the most in-depth look behind the scenes of our work to date (including diagrams of how our many projects relate).
These two pieces lay out a model we ourselves are using and our output directly speaks to. (The upcoming Dark Forest OS release especially.)
We’re deeply inspired by the idea of the Hacienda from an early Situationist manifesto. The Hacienda is the place where all the right people are having all the right conversations. But it's a place that does not exist and cannot exist permanently. The Hacienda must be built and can be built by anyone at any given moment.
Groupcore is less an end-state than a state of being. It doesn't seek to dominate competition or extract excess labor. The goal of groupcore is to open the space of divine connection that exists between us, and to keep it open long enough for new ways, new selves, and new value to grow.
Go deeper:
Yancey Strickler
Yancey Strickler
Peace and love,
Metalabel
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