This Twitter thread about NFT stuff bums me out. The spirit of it is supposed to be an exposé of The Real Life & Times of a web3 entrepreneur and how it ain’t all sunshine and roses, mann. I get that. We’re all allowed to learn and grow and share and have emotions. And clearly this thread is resonating with people.
This is how it hits for me. Say you wanna get in on this NFT stuff. I could get these angles:
- You’re an artist, and this way of producing and selling art vibes with you.
- You’re a developer, and the technologies behind all this vibes with you.
There doesn’t seem to be any art going on here. For example:
Nobody knows what the market sentiment will be next week. We’ve had to pivot 10+ times … people love and hate different things every week.
So there is no particular vision for the art aside from “whatever the market is buying”.
… there are always debates on what looks good or has mass appeal. Nobody really knows
Art by committee seems like it the worst “by committee” thing possible. It’s clear this isn’t really an art thing.
So is it a tech thing?
We’ve gotten quotes from $500 to $65,000 from developers to write our contract. I’m not a dev. How do I know who is trustworthy.
No. The tech will be outsourced entirely, and there is so little understanding of the tech that’s its shot-in-the-dark territory.
We’ve spoken with 40+ NFT “advisors”
So it’s really not a personal exploration of art or tech. What is it? Oh snap, it’s about saving the world:
We assumed that helping solve world hunger and saving lives would be an enticing reason for people to buy our NFT … NOPE.
Moving on from that because it’s so silly I can’t even.
It seems like it’s about finding the perfect … thing … that separates people from their money. And I suppose making sure it’s coded in such a way that it slurps up cryptobucks for as long as possible.
If that was all it was, I think I’d be kinda fine with it. That’s kinda what Doing Business is, essentially. Find some way to extract money out of the world and get after it. Even making art specifically for mass appeal or hyper niche current trends don’t bother me that much, even though I’d much prefer to see you make art that is meaningful to you.
What gets me is that entrepreneurialism is still rooted in attempting to help people. Build a better mousetrap. Write a software program that helps people do a thing. Sell moisture-wicking undergarments. If people need those things, they buy them, and you dial it all in to make a profit. Maybe it’s still a breeding ground for greed, but at least people’s butts are dry.
I’m just gonna leave this with two tweets I enjoyed more.
