One of the underrated features of Web3 is that the more you use it the more you feel like you’ve genuinely emigrated to a new continent. Perhaps a new planet. And regular web feels… old somehow. Walletvision.
I’m in danger of losing interest in maintaining my Web2 stuff if I can’t migrate it to Web3. I think there’s a string “once you go Web3 you can’t go back” effect kicking in. Very unsettling, since most stuff can’t move yet. It’s too frontiery.
There’s a scene in 1883 (prequel show to Yellowstone) where German migrants heading west are forced to dump all sorts of deadweight they’ve brought with them from Europe, including a piano. Very poignant. Stuff all strewn about in the middle of nowhere. Can’t find a screen cap.
This is why I can’t really bring myself to care about NFT culture wars. That feels like people in Europe arguing about whether Spain or Portugal or Britain will gain power from New World. In the New World itself, there’s immediate concerns like moving pianos.
There’s also the sense that when the New World does awaken politically it will reduce the current Old World chatter to irrelevance. There’s just too much critical detail missing on it. The Old World will still wield inflience in the New for a long time, but not dispositive power.
Yes it’s expensive to move here but so has moving to America always been. People still risk their life savings and sometimes lives to get here. High ethereum gas fees are kinda like that.
I even prefer the critical backlash to be in-metaphor. At least the scale is calibrated right. So long as your imagination is calibrated at continent or planet scale, there’s a chance you’ll have something interesting to say even if you’re coming from a very hostile place.
Welp, this thread really said the quiet part loud.
The thing about the New World frenzy was that there was just SO MUCH exploitation that was suddenly possible. You could get rich overnight; you just had to go full colonizer and ignore the people you crush along the way twitter.com/vgr/status/148…
this seems like some kind of centralization risk. with the centralization being "eth" itself, not some computer. like the pirates stealing the paymaster's chest.