The decline of digital third spaces, with Ruby Justice Thelot

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Back in 2012, a YouTube user called @taia777 posted a 59-minute video of some dreamy white clouds obscured by thorny green vines, soundtracked by the music for Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest. It was just another example of the popular trend of video game soundtracks on YouTube, but then something strange happened: Down in the comments section, strangers started spontaneously posting the word “checkpoint”— you know, like the “checkpoint” where a player saves their progress in a game — and anonymously sharing incredibly personal stories and updates from their lives. 

By 2021, when YouTube finally took the video offline, the thread had grown to more than 25,000 comments. According to Ruby Justice Thelot, a designer, cyberethnographer, artist, and author of a new book called A Cyberarcheology of Checkpoints, this particular internet rabbit hole was a stunning reminder of the lengths that users will go to to find community on the internet — and of the fragility of these so-called “third places” on an internet dominated by a small handful of for-profit platforms. (Disclosure: Emilie helped edit the book).

Ruby joins us to discuss the story of Checkpoints, why these sorts of digital third places are so important, and the potential bigger-picture impacts of living one update or copyright claim away from our online histories being lost.

We also talk about a recent essay he published with writer Rue Yi about what they’re calling the “balkanization and babelification” of the post-Web 2.0 internet, his thoughts about a controversial “techno-optimist manifesto” written by A16z VC Marc Andreesen, and what’s lost when technologists focus on progress and forward motion at all costs.

Ruby Justice Thelot. Photo courtesy of Ruby.

Pre-order A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints

Follow Ruby on Substack, Instagram, and X (or Twitter or whatever)

Read more by Ruby:

“The balkanization & babelification of the internet” (co-written with Rue Yi)

“Fanfiction after AI”

“The treachery of images”