A Place to Express Yourself on the Dark Web
March 7, 2016
For evidence that the dark web is not all about drugs and cybercrime, check out this article at Motherboard: “The Dark Web Now Has a Literary Journal.” As it turns out, anonymity is also good for people who wish to freely explore their creativity and private thoughts.
The new journal, the Torist, was just launched by a professor at the University of Utah, Robert W. Ghel, and a person known simply as GMH. Inspired by the free discussions on their dark-web-based social network, Galaxy, they have seized their chance to create something unexpected. The journal’s preface asks:
“If a magazine publishes itself via a Tor hidden service, what does the creative output look like? How might it contrast itself with its clearweb counterparts? Who indeed will gravitate towards a dark web literary magazine?”
So, why is one of the Torist’s creators anonymous while the other is putting himself out there? Writer Joseph Cox tells us:
Gehl, after being pitched the idea of The Torist by GMH, decided to strip away his pseudonym, and work on the project under his own name. “I thought about that for a while,” Gehl said. “I thought that because GMH is anonymous/pseudonymous, and he’s running the servers, I could be a sort of ‘clear’ liason.”
So while Gehl used his name, and added legitimacy to the project in that way, GMH could continue to work with the freedom the anonymity awards. “I guess it’s easier to explore ideas and not worry as much how it turns out,” said GMH, who described himself as someone with a past studying the humanities, and playing with technology in his spare time.
Gehl and GMH say part of their reasoning behind the journal is to show people that anonymity and encryption can be forces for good. Privacy furthers discussion of controversial, personal, and difficult topics and, according to GMH, should be the default setting for all communications, especially online.
Submissions are currently being accepted, so go ahead and submit that poem or essay if you have something to get off your chest, anonymously. If you dare to venture into the dark web, that is.
Cynthia Murrell, March 7, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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