(2025-10-16) Strickler What The World Needs Now Is Groupcore

Yancey Strickler: What the world needs now is groupcore. “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.” — K-Hole, “Youth Mode,”

The old internet is dead. A public space built on shared protocols and open APIs so powerful they created an immense universe that overtook the world that birthed it.

In its place: the new internet, built on the foundations of the old. Once public, now locked down on corporate servers (BigTech), scraped for ads and AI, regurgitated as models to generate all forms of expression, no effort required. (Surveillance Capitalism)

One response to these changes is COPE, in the traditional sense: soothing ourselves through change.

Another response is COPE, in the internet sense: false bravado that perpetuates our beliefs in the face of contrary experiences.

A third response, harder, is DIVERGE. Not blindly going with the dominant change, but diverging to make our own change in response to how we experience what’s around us.

Metalabel is a project pursuing this third path.

what Metalabel has always been about: making creative groups of people more capable. We’ve since come to see our focus more clearly, with a new word and category to define it once and for all.

Metalabel makes groupcore (noun): software, tools, economics, spaces, and ideas that help creative people cooperate.

Groupcore defines all 20-plus releases by the Metalabel Studio:

This is especially true of a new product we’re releasing in limited beta later this year: the Dark Forest Operating System (DFOS), a new private internet for creative groups to hang, plan, and make meaning and money together.

The open web is no longer a viable home for creative work or community.

DFOS gives groups the ability to come together, share ideas and projects, and operate with aligned economics in private worlds of their own.

The first era of the internet empowered individuals to discover and become themselves online. This next era will give groups those same powers and much more.

The same way corporations shaped much of culture over the past hundred years, Dark Forests and other internet-aligned groups will shape the world in years to come. (Network Enlightenment)

Getting there isn't a one-shot. It’s a journey with many steps, not by one person or group on their own. We’ve taken four of them so far:

• Build a groupcore label to release software and ideas. (Metalabel Studio — live)
• Use that label to release tools that help groups form, release work, and share profits. (Metalabel.com — live)
• Use the lessons of those groups to introduce a new legal structure for creative people. (Artist Corporations — in progress)
• While doing above, provide a new private internet where groups can meet and make meaning and money together in worlds of their own. (DFOS — coming soon)

Explore our groupcore catalogue