I really like this question and the challenge of answering it. I believe what makes NFTs different is a transformative vision of a future that true believers find inspiring and achievable. In their eyes, the current speculative bubble is a mechanism for growing something enduringhttps://twitter.com/AriDrennen/status/1450652779198910465 …
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A good analogy to NFT believers are the people who are really into colonizing Mars. You can argue with them on the technical demerits of their project (no air, far away, all our stuff is here, slow internet), but you're not really getting to the heart of their belief system.
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People want to colonize Mars because they (pick one) want to live out a libertarian fantasy, have deep anxieties about human extinction, want humanity to take over the galaxy, want a fresh start in Year Zero without all the baggage that comes with life on Earth, you name it.
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Like the singularity/superintelligence subculture that came before it, both the Martians and the NFT people have an apocalyptic vision of a future where things are fundamentally different. I mean apocalypse not as the end of the world, but that all is swept away and starts afresh
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In the case of NFT world, that future is an internet decentralized by design so that it can never be co-opted by the rich and powerful or by the state, tying in to a kind of always-on video game layer over reality, and with strong guarantees for ownership provided by crypto woo
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Replying to @Pinboard
As an Internet Old, it blows my mind that the like, youthful rebellious/utopian position here is that the point of the internet is to create artificial scarcity in order to better exploit intellectual property.
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I mean, after a short interregnum, the old zero-scarcity dream was just effortlessly co-opted and neutralized by incumbent capitalist institutions, so I guess go get yours? But this dream will prove even easier to co-opt, since it's already 95% there to begin with.
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Oh, it looks like our tweets got crossed. I agree with you but think the true believers see this whole thing as a brilliant crypto hack to forever keep things from being taken over by The Man
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