Play Darkly builds bounded interactive systems, and produces formal notes for studying pressure, distortion, and harm propagation in digital systems.
This is a Research project page.
2026 03-05 Running in parallel
PlayDarkly Research Series
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
02 — Evolutionary Control Theorem
03 — (Summer 2026)
“Violence enters the network as signal. Once recorded, replayed, and circulated, harm persists beyond the act and becomes a structural property of the system.“ Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
Cyber-enabled, transnational, monetized animal torture networks use offshore platforms, cryptocurrency-like payment channels, and distributed spectatorship to convert cruelty into repeatable, commissioned media. Domestic law then collapses the harm into low-level public-order enforcement because animal abuse, child protection, platform circulation, cross-border payment, and evidentiary contamination are split across incompatible legal categories.
’01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence‘ contains a framework that can connect existing enforcement concepts to newer systems without relying on rhetorical inflation or constant legislative reinvention.
“Elijah Morgan has developed an original and credible analytical framework for thinking about networked violence and information failure in digital environments. His work is serious, rigorous, and highly relevant to criminological efforts to understand emerging forms of technologically mediated harm.” M Jenny Edwards, Criminologist
What is this?
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
This work, 01—IFMNV, is engineering-first in orientation. It draws from complex systems, information theory, control theory, optimization dynamics, and failure-mode analysis.
What does it examine?
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
The research examines information failure, networked violence, and systemic risk through systems-level questions of feedback, control, coupling, constraint, and instability in digital environments.
What are the objectives?
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
The objective is structural clarity translated as definitions, tests, and formal descriptions capable of identifying when a system shifts from evidentiary function toward throughput preservation, distortion, coercion, or escalation.
What field is this?
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
In outer-circle terms, this work is legible through complex systems, cybernetics, information theory, and control. In inner-circle terms, it is a concentrated research program on information failure, networked violence, and systemic instability in digital systems. What is missing is category stabilization.
Outputs
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
Outputs are developed through texts, formal notes, mathematical fragments, and book-length structures.
This becomes the foundation of Play Darkly cybernetic systems prototyping, using real-time 3D systems for cybernetic and biomimetic prototyping, with a focus on embodiment, environmental constraint, and pressure-state behavior.
Novel Formulations
01 — Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
Detailed derivations, novel formulations, and implementation-level mathematics are published separately in versioned repositories or formal releases.
Published independently, the research is designed to be analytically portable across cases and able to support formal extension.
Current program hubs_
Working Papers:
2026/04/15 Play Darkly. ‘Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence’ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19599230 Networked Violence, Zoosadism, Nihilistic Violent Extremism, Evidence Laundering, Audit Failure, Chronology Loss, Systemic Risk, Platform Governance. Under curation at OpenAIRE
2026/03/26 Print copies now available of: Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence. 1st edition (2026), Play Darkly Imprint. Systems/Platform Design, Criminology, Nihilistic Violent Extremism, Harm Propagation Analysis
Canonical Notes:
2026/05/04 Morgan, Elijah. The Cost of Assertion Substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/playdarkly/p/grounded-hallucination-at-the-top ‘The platform generates the classification failure. The misclassified subject pays the correction cost.’ + Play Darkly. https://playdarkly.com/the-cost-of-assertion/
2026/04/21 Morgan, Elijah. Useless Machines, Cost Offload, and Owner-Adjacent Model Governance in Platform AI. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19678962
2026/04/20 Morgan, Elijah. Error-Inducing Input Classes Formal note on identifying source classes that prevent convergence in networked systems. Play Darkly. https://playdarkly.com/forbidden-regions-and-error-inducing-inputs-in-networked-systems/ (c.f. Codeberg entry, 2026/03/25)
2026/04/06 Morgan, Elijah. The Network Does Not Need Infiltrators Play Darkly. https://playdarkly.com/the-network-does-not-need-infiltrators/ Concerns emergence of degraded or laundered evidence flowing through animal activist networks.
2026/04/06 Play Darkly. A control-theoretic note on harmful engagement systems. (2026). Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/regulatory-cost-offloading/src/branch/main
2026/03/26 Play Darkly. (2026). Friction Exclusion in Contamination-Tolerant Advocacy Networks. Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/ifmnv-notes/src/branch/main/lemma-friction-exclusion.md
2026/03/25 Forbidden Regions and Error-Inducing Inputs in Networked Systems Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/error-inducing-input-classes
2026/02/16 Play Darkly. (2026). Structural Coupling as a Stability Condition in Gradient-Optimized Systems (Version 0.1). Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/structural-coupling-stability/src/branch/main/docs/tofs-v0.1.m https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/structural-coupling-stability
2026/02/11 Play Darkly. (2026). Boundary-Coupled Selection in Adaptive Systems: A Minimal Formal Note (Version 0.1). Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/boundary-coupled-selection
Play Darkly Notebooks:
https://playdarkly.com/category/information-failure-modes
Play Darkly Press:
