We write for the future we want to see — not the one taking shape in the Meta corporate offices and our Twitter feed. Which means we’re back to ignoring whatever bullshit Elon Musk or Post Malone’s Bored Ape are getting into these days. Instead we’re bringing you a brief on the Metaverse irl, softcore porn you can buy guilt free, and a eulogy for the blockchain project we helped kick off one month ago. It might not be everything, it might not be important, but it sure is the goddamn Internet.
Chad & El Prof
Markets
BITCOIN ETHEREUM CARDANO SOLANA
DOGECOIN SHIBA INU TEZOS(Price changes reflect past 7 days as of 12.14.21 @ 4:20 PM EST.)
- I mean, yeah, it’s not good. Not, like, Black Tuesday not good. But not not Easy Money not good. On the plus side, a literal fucking joke is trending up. Must be the raging ’20s after all.
An oral history of the culture.
A month ago, we reported on the inaugural day of NFT Culture Proof, a project in which writers exchange tokens for a chance to leave a lasting imprint on the Polygon blockchain in the form of a 120-character paragraph. The Twitter comparisons continue: what began as a high-minded experiment in human communication quickly devolved into a series of thinly-connected shitposts and subliminally implicit pissing contests, unintelligible without context. I imagine most of you are (understandably) unwilling to scroll through half a thousand infinity tweets to get said context. Unluckily for you, I am. And, as sales of these eternal pieces of Internet real estate come to a close, I feel it’s my professional duty to give y’all the low/highlights.
The project both peaked and valleyed on its first day, with a spirited discussion of possible names for the Metaverse. After quickly exhausting the most original submissions — Untitled, Life, the, uh, Metaverse — the best minds of our generation started dishing out memes, strings of emojis, untranslated references to Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, and haikus from yours truly. Lo, in less than 24 hours, Internet discourse had already reached its logical conclusion: incoherence.
By the beginning of the second day, the collective had moved on to virtual scatting. As you read, keep in mind: each of these posts went for 64 MATIC ($100+) a pop.
It soon becomes impossible to discern any thruline in the Culture Proof, in part because the prompts to which the writers responded are not included in the feed. Thus, frantic philosophizing appears next to typo ridden gibberish and achingly personal flash poetry. The result is bizarre, disorienting, but ultimately, kinda moving.
Except, of course, when it isn’t.
However, in between the epic edgelording and half-baked attempts at profundity — as well as strange tangential debates about the Game of Thrones finale, because it wouldn’t be the Internet without those — something somewhat beautiful begins to emerge. Perhaps more than any viral article or bit of spot-on fiction, reading these short paragraphs captured the ineffable feeling of being alive today.
As a culture, we’re considering our legacy, absurdity, and supposed immutability like never before. We’re in some unholy limbo between divine comedy and Greek tragedy as the world goes to shit in so many ways and there’s nothing we can do about it except get online and scream and laugh together just to hear our own voices and opinions for as long as we have them. Which is exactly what happened here.
One user shelled out a Benjy to say: ‘I love to think about early net.art and how quaint yet revolutionary it seems now. I can only hope the same for this.’ Maybe those hopes won’t be in vain. But more likely, the project will gather dust in the corner of a server farm until a freak storm or global electricity shortage comes along to remind us that the blockchain isn’t forever, after all.
The project ends today, and, with little mainstream attention to this point, it’s looking as likely as it is shameful that few aside from the participants will ever read NFT Culture Proof. You can check out the live feed here or contribute yourself until 5PM PST. But you won’t. So, in honor of one of the strangest Internet projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of, here’s its essence in a single overpriced sentence:
Culture: proved.
Decentralize the nip.
This week’s Hot Col Tuesday comes to you fresh from the seas, both Open and Sol, where our latest sponsor slash patron saint of funding Madison Jesseka has minted the latest in her on-going collection, digititties. Designed to support women in STEM, you may recognize them from our referral program, or from the notebook doodles of the guy who sold you weed in high school. Whatever the case, we’re as bullish on them as you can be. And unbiased. Totally.
MJ, like us, believes in a multi-chain future, so digititties drops will alternate between OpenSea and SolSea. The currently available NFTs are minted on the latter for a floor price of 1 SOL or $200 USD. But, beecause the collection is so fluid, her website is the best guide for current and future releases.
Aside from shilling porn house gifs, Madison has also been gracious enough to be the guinea pig for our artist support and decentralized media high-deas, the latest of which is a custom gallery of her mixed media work on our forthcoming NFT discovery platform, SN0B. Check out the prototype here.
Our intent is to let any artist list their NFTs and galleries to help facilitate the discovery process of their own work. We know that not all artists will see the value in our approach to audience building, but we are confident we can execute on delivering a low-cost, high-quality audience. For a budding NFT artist like Madison Jesseka, that can make all the difference.
If you are in the same boat — i.e. you like to create shit, be it NFTs, traditional art, music, content, or just social media posts — then join our community and collective to help reshape the creator economy and level the cultural playing field. Entry credentials will be available December 25th in the form of SN0Bs, our first in-house NFT collection, but we will airdrop them for free to reliable contributors and creators we believe in. Reach out now. Be a snob.
Brave new w-irl-d.
While crypto writers compare the sizes of their new names for the Metaverse, the real thing is showing its face in both predictable and preposterous ways.
In the former category, Coinbase has announced integration of Ledger hardware wallets as part of a push toward self-custody as a web3 norm. The idea is to live up to DeFi’s potential to buck banking traditions by giving consumers control of their own financial assets. It sounds great on paper. But, in practice, crypto wallet management is a bug-ridden shitshow and a major impediment to mass adoption. (Criticisms to which Coinbase is not immune.) Meanwhile, Ledger, supposedly a safe answer to prevalent crypto scams, is functionally an overpriced USB drive with time delayed login and a pretty display screen.
In the latter category, a video went viral last week, demoing a product concept for a digital price tag you can attach to your sneakers to broadcast their latest valuation on StockX. The ‘Hypetags’ received instant backlash — which, given that no mention of them exists outside of the original video, and that the ‘inventor’ is infamous for garnering unironic coverage of straight-up trolling, was obviously the whole point. Luckily it also sparked an interesting discussion of what the Metaverse looks like, irl.
Zuckerberg press conferences and degen Twitter diatribes aside, the Metaverse of the forseeable future will likely be less Ready-Player-One-esque dystopia and more cringey products designed to flex your online creds in real life. The reasons why are up for debate — maybe we still have some preservation instincts as a race, or perhaps we really are just marginally evolved, hierarchically hardwired great apes.
Personally, I lay blame at the feet of Web3’s overwhelmingly white, male, and dopamine-addicted early adopters. However, being one myself, I also feel entitled to carve a piece of the Metaverse in my own image. So here are my $M ideas:
- Headphones that display the artist and song being played — for those who want to cosplay as the type of people who still bump To Pimp A Butterfly, or have the balls to admit they listen to Baby Keem.
- An iPhone case with a screen on the back showing your social media post with the most engagement, so everyone will know you have the dankest memes.
- An $800 black hoodie with the logo of an NFT collection you hold screenprinted on it. Oh wait.
SLOPPY SECONDS
- A somewhat readable deep dive into the impact of NFTs on property rights
- Black Mirror might be trending irl now, too.
