2 Videos on NFTs

[olivermoss]

Josh Strife Hayes is an MMO youtuber and streamer most well known for creating content for other MMO youtubers and streamers. He breaks down the specific things those sorts of content creators need to be aware of. He made a very basic NFT video aimed at creators who are increasingly being targeted and pressured. He repeats himself a few times for emphasis, but does so in a lovely British accent.

And for a masterclass Folding Ideas dropped a video on NFTs today that is over 2 hours.

The main thing I didn't know about NFTs is that there are multiple registries. So, any time someone says they have 'the NFT' of something, they are being grammatically incorrect. They have 'a NFT' of something. The tokens are unique, but there can be dozens of tokens made of the same image at the same web address. The definite article does not apply here.

I wonder if we normalized saying 'a NFT' if that might help dispel the BS around them? Eh, it's a pipe dream, but if I ever see someone dumb enough to buy one I can annoy them by pointing it out :)

The Folding Ideas video is long, but he gets into a lot of side issues about crypto, web 3.0 and the myths around decentralizing the web. I think all Folding Ideas videos are worth the time, no matter the topic. But yeah, it's a chonk.

Comments

[james]

I just wistfully dream about selling an NFT and making a few thousand and then retreating to reality and living my life, but with a financial cushion. Because I'd turn whatever payment I got back into actual money. (Is that even possible? Can you sell bitcoin back into cash? Oh god, the things I do not want to know.)

[olivermoss]

You can turn bitcoin into cash but it's highly volatile. The Folding Ideas video goes in depth into all of that if you want to know.

The short version is that NFTs are a speculation market mostly designed to pump money into people who are already rich, either through transaction fees or inflating crypto values. The normal protections for pump and dump and other schemes don't apply because of lack of regulation for these markets.

[james]

Perhaps I should go back to hoping I win the lottery but never buying a ticket.

[olivermoss]

Maybe! Loot box gambling in video games is probably a better life choice and NFTs

[muccamukk]

Oh! Thanks for these. Do you need to *watch* the chonk, or can you listen to it in the background?

ETA: Never mind, I just watched the chonk. I could probably have listened to most of it.

Do you have a link to a good explanation for what Web 3.0 is meant to be?

[olivermoss]

Web 3.0 is a 'decentralized' version of the web to get away from the current tech giants, but it's all crypto start ups and by nature privacy would be even dead than it is now. While hosting would be decentralized, the services would be more centralized. It's all empty promises from people who want to be the new boot.

You know how Venmo started as both a payment service and a social media, so people could just see all your transactions? Imagine if every payment service was like that. I think when it caught on it stopped making every transaction public by default, but that was the initial concept and a lot of people didn't get that. It was 'new' and 'not paypal'. Different is sometimes worse.

This is a link Dan put under the video: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ It has a decent 'about' page.

Rahaeli has ranted about Web 3.0 bullshit and why to run from it... but twitter advanced search is treating '3.0' as '30' and I can't find the tweets.

[muccamukk]

So it's like fediverse run amuck? Who is paying for the servers in this masterworld?

[olivermoss]

Pretty much. I don't know what the long term plan is, especially since hosting would be a lot more expensive and everything about the web would be massively energy intensive. Even the 'low energy' block chains from computers cooperating instead of competing is massively energy intensive compared to not using it. I guess they are just hoping to be too big too fail? Have everyone adopt and have to put up with it?

There have already been attempts are new web services with their own coins where people 'earn' money using them. That was the whole idea behind one browser that was going to ~pay artists~ by giving that money to the websites you were most on. Brave runs on it's own crypto: BAT. Basic Attention Tokens. It blocks ads, but then sends the BAT to the websites you use.

People have put up with the web getting worse and worst before, maybe they think they can just push that?

[mistressofmuses]

I saw another article recently in which someone pointed out the "you have *an* NFT, not *the* NFT" and frankly, that was a delightful thing to learn. Every time I get to watch someone shred the NFT trend bullshit my heart grows three sizes.

[olivermoss]

My hot take is unoriginal! Ah, well, figures :) I don't actively keep up with crypto stuff. I only have the grounding that I from having written on article on Kodakoin.

It's like everyone is trying to make the original 'the internet is taking off' landrush happen all over again and it's just not going to happen. The people mired in Web 3.0 are the biggest, but less known, names of web 2.0.

And Dan is delightfully harsh about NFTs and the reason behind the communities

[mistressofmuses]

I actually think your reply to a thread on tumblr was the first place I saw anyone mention the grammar regarding it!
There was a separate pretty long post I saw comparing NFTs to those "star registry" things that were pretty popular for a while, and how there were so many different registries out there, you had no idea if "your" star that you'd "named" had been named and claimed by countless other people through other registry lists. I think that was the first place I saw the point about that being a possibility for NFTs as well.

It really does feel like an attempt at the e-gold rush/landgrab, but it's so clearly doomed to failure. I'm GLAD it's doomed to failure, but it sure is obnoxious to hear people still sure this is how they strike it rich. (Or how they will, if they can just get you to join the pyramid under them...)

[olivermoss]

They are hoping that enough people buy in, then *their* star registery company will become powerful enough to control space and enforce those claims. And a lot of it took off in 2021, because who doesn't want to be hard sold into an online cult during a pandemic?

I love all the talk of these NFT collectives becoming democratic groups that will create MMOs or comic books based on community consensus. Y'all know that's how Rainfurrest happened, right? Trying to run an even based on community consensus? Actually, that is a lesser known competent to that epic convention fail. I just heard about some of the run up to it via mailing lists for con runners.

It's doomed to failure, but in it's wake some of the worst ultra-conservative financiers will have gotten richer off of morons thinking they are sticking it to the man.

[mistressofmuses]

Oh yes, if enough new blood makes their registry pyramid the BIGGEST pyramid, then everyone else will bow down in awe and agree it must be the special-est and the most real of all!
And who doesn't love a good online cult?

I think I'd possibly repressed what little I knew of Rainfurrest, but just seeing the name gives me flashbacks to disaster. Community consensus as the way to run a group is great in theory... until you get an unmanageable group who feel no rules apply to them because there ARE no enforced rules, or you have subsets within the community with very different ideas of what should happen. I don't think I'm a terribly authoritarian person or anything, but "community consensus utopia" is a thing with a long track record of utterly predictable failure, lol.

That's definitely the worst. It's doomed to failure, and it's obnoxious as hell... but the worst of the many bad actors involved will enrich themselves immeasurably before it all crashes. And despite the fact that they should fucking know better, it's still going to suck when people get fucked over.

[olivermoss]

If the Brave browser had become dominant, they'd have supplanted the monetization of all online content with their own cryptocurrency. That was the bet, to end advertising as we know it and replace it with BAT. And of course all the people who use it are like 'but I care about mu privacy' and it's like, my dude, then why is your browsing history going into a system where it's impossible to ever delete data?

Even if people are somewhat manageable, it's nearly impossible to get through to most people the fine lines of what is allowable or not per laws, venue or, most importantly, insurance. I have spent countless hours trying to explain things to people... and the very idea of trying to get a few hundred people all on the same page on things even if they are earnestly trying... nope, cons needs leadership for a reason and one reason is that it's their job to understand fine lines. Like, I can't even get con staff to understand how we can't make rules that disallow things that are illegal because we'd get into legal trouble. We can only point to relevant federal laws or our legal liabilities explode.

Sorry, I spent too much time running cons... and not the fun kind where you gather a ragtag crew to trick rich people.

Anyway, Rainfurrest allowing... certain things was due to that system. I am going to assume you don't want me to curse your brain by knowing exactly what.

[mistressofmuses]

There's just such a cognitive disconnect with so much of this! The "my privacy!" when your data is being stored in a very deliberately permanent fashion. "Sticking it to The Man by using crypto!" when the people most benefiting from crypto are the shittiest examples of The Man.

Right? There can be some really finicky and convoluted aspects of local laws, venue restrictions, etc. that impact what can be allowed, regardless of what the community is interested in. Leadership is also what provides an avenue of enforcement of the rules that are in place (or HAVE to be in place for legal reasons). To not even get into interpersonal conflict and how it gets solved (or doesn't) in absence of any real structure.

You definitely have a much more boots-on-the-ground perspective on con-running and all the work that goes into it! While I conceptually can think about the sheer monstrosity of logistics that would be involved, I haven't had to *do* it.
(But putting together a rag tag crew to trick rich people DOES sound like much more fun, tbh.)

I just remember it being a lot of uh, very *literal* shit that happened. That's what sticks out in my brain, anyway, though there's probably plenty that I don't remember or never knew about, haha.

[olivermoss]

The cognitive dissonance with crypto and NFTs is a lot. I think most people who 'don't get NFTs' absolutely do understand them. They just don't get why so many people are snowed by them.

Logistics is fun! Complicated stuff about lines, attendee sinks and mapping beakers at hotels that don't know their own electrical systems is my weird idea of a good time. When Defunctland dropped that 2 hour video on Disney's line management I was excited.

Yeah, the literal shit was ... allowed. The pro-diaper people got their way. Some trolls were really good with rhetoric about 'accepting' all parts of the community.

[mistressofmuses]

It is a lot.
I think you're right. Trying to explain NFTs in a basic way really does just highlight that it's... real stupid. So it seems like we *must* be missing something, because how could so many people be so invested in something so stupid?

I can see the fun in the logistics side. I don't think I could do it on that scale, but I do enjoy doing sometimes unneeded amounts of planning and mapping of things that I enjoy, ha. And stuff like Disney's line management IS genuinely pretty fascinating.

Yeah... that was the impression I got. Unfortunately a LOT of trolls (and sometimes others who aren't outright trolls, but are pushing their own niche... whatever) are good at mimicking the right phrases and arguments for "acceptance" or "inclusion", especially within a group that already faces a lot of derision and hostility. "If you don't allow this, you're being just as bad as the people who treat you badly!" is a powerful motivator for well-meaning people.
I mean, I feel like "you do you, as long as it isn't impacting the health and safety of others" is a reasonable boundary, but especially for a group trying to run on "community consensus", I can understand *how* they swung too far the wrong way on permissiveness. Doesn't make the waves of literal shit less disgusting to inflict on everyone.

[olivermoss]

You know exactly how they pushed their shitty agenda, yup. It's so hard to have boundaries and limits in fandom spaces because some people just see them as pieces of string to play with. 'yay, we can larp being oppressed!'

[mistressofmuses]

The shittiest of agendas, lol.

Ugh, fandom spaces can be a nightmare for that kind of thing. I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who want to do the right thing... but they wind up overly susceptible to the arguments from bad actors who also know the right buzzwords to throw in.