We're joined by Yancey Strickler: writer, cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the person behind a string of projects that try to give creative life a workable economic form: Bentoism, The Creative Independent, Metalabel, the Dark Forest Collective, and now Artist Corporations and the Dark Forest Operating System. The episode is timely. We recorded in late May, days before Governor Jared Polis signed the Colorado Artist Company Act into law on June 2, 2026 - the country's first "A Corp," a company type where the artist keeps...
We're joined by Yancey Strickler: writer, cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the person behind a string of projects that try to give creative life a workable economic form: Bentoism, The Creative Independent, Metalabel, the Dark Forest Collective, and now Artist Corporations and the Dark Forest Operating System. The episode is timely. We recorded in late May, days before Governor Jared Polis signed the Colorado Artist Company Act into law on June 2, 2026 - the country's first "A Corp," a company type where the artist keeps majority control, intellectual property reverts to its maker if the company dissolves, and an artistic mission sits above profit. More than 4,000 creators have already signed up, and several states are drafting their own versions.
Where this show usually works by critique, Strickler builds working alternatives and writes them into law. Our running question throughout: when criticizing the system is the admired move, is building something real the more radical act, or does anything built inside the system end up serving it?
Yancey Strickler's projects
- Yancey Strickler — ystrickler.com
- Bentoism — bentoism.org
- The Creative Independent — thecreativeindependent.com
- Metalabel — metalabel.com
- New Creative Era (Strickler's podcast with Joshua Citarella) — metalabel.com
Artist Corporations & the law
- Artist Corporations — artistcorporations.com
- The Colorado Artist Company Act (SB 26-133), annotated full text — artistcorporations.com/law/annotated
- Strickler's TED talk, "Forget hustle culture. Behold the Artist Corporation" (2025) — ted.com
- News coverage of the signing: The Colorado Sun · The Art Newspaper · ARTnews
- Frieze, "Can A-Corps Save the Struggling Artist?" (skeptical take, also previews DFOS) — frieze.com
The private internet, AI & IP
- Dark Forest Operating System (DFOS) — app.dfos.com · protocol spec at protocol.dfos.com · code on GitHub
- Strickler on DIDs, the AT Protocol and Bluesky ("Antienshittification") — ystrickler.com
- Holly+ (Holly Herndon's voice model / licensing experiment) — holly.plus
Books & ideas cited
- This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World (Viking, 2019) — thiscouldbeourfuture.com · Penguin Random House
- "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet" (essay, 2019) — original on ystrickler.com · The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet (Metalabel, 2024) — Goodreads
- Samuel W. Franklin, The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History (University of Chicago Press, 2023) — press.uchicago.edu
- Venkatesh Rao's "cozyweb," — Ribbonfarm
