As technology seeps into more of our lives, it collides with massive behavior shifts.
The biggest is a backlash to centralized power.
This is an aftereffect of the 2008 financial crisis. Today's young people grew up in the Great Recession and are skeptical of institutions.
Gen Zs aren’t interested in “renting” their time or working within the system; they’re interested in using hustle & savvy to dictate their *own* fortunes.
We see this in GameStop, NFT mania, Dogecoin, populism.
Gen Zs trade Millennial idealism for shrewdness & practicality.
The dual forces of 1) the internet and 2) the rejection of institutions fuel the disaggregation of work.
By 2027, over half of the American workforce will be contractors.
We will be a majority-freelance economy.
This is fueling the burgeoning creator economy:
• Roblox developers made $300M in 2020
• Patreon has paid out $2B to creators
• Over 300 OnlyFans creators earned over $1M last year
Almost any skill is now monetizable. Work is more flexible, diversified, & creative.
The internet is also becoming more *participatory*
People are moving from passive consumers to active creators. Over time, software has become more accessible to use—from Wix to Airtable to Roblox to TikTok.
Anyone can build with tech Legos. Everyone is a creator.
It's also easier than ever to build *companies*
Amazon Web Services & Stripe are Lego-like building blocks that make it fast and easy to launch a business.
A majority of Gen Zs—about 54%—say they want to start a company. They're the most entrepreneurial generation in history.
Tech is making entrepreneurship more accessible.
Culture is making entrepreneurship more sought-after.
Creators are key to Web3.
Web1 was about making information searchable & exchangeable. Google was the big winner.
Web2 was about platforms and gave us Facebook. But value flowed through platforms.
Web3 is about ownership: creators and communities capturing value *themselves*
Blockchain is the innovation that makes Web3 possible through trusted, secure value transfer.
Web3 will remove the brokers and intermediaries who have traditionally monopolized value.
Creators & communities will win back ownership.
Web3 will be built on new business models that stretch far beyond the advertising-based models of the Web1 and Web2 eras.
Ads ➡️ Commerce
Commerce has more room to run: the global ad market was $647B in 2020, ~50% already online. Commerce is $25 trillion, only ~20% online.
Digital commerce will underpin digital economies.
Gaming today gives us a glimpse of future internet business models. We will also use virtual currencies & microtransactions in robust, thriving digital economies.
Microtransactions & virtual currencies are becoming more common beyond gaming:
• Bumble has Bumble Coin
• Twitch has Bits
• Duolingo has Gems
Facebook now offers a virtual currency called Stars—one Star is redeemable for $0.01. Creators earned $50 million in Stars in 2020.
NFTs are key to digital economies.
Imagine how much more valuable a Fortnite skin of Captain America becomes when you can prove there are only 100 or 1,000.
NFTs offer provable scarcity & make digital ownership possible.
To catch a glimpse of the future of these digital economies, check out this spectacular graphic from @AndrewSteinwold.
It's a data visualization of NFT transactions on OpenSea, foreshadowing the robust virtual economies of the future.
Digital economies will pave the road to the metaverse. Virtual interactions will become more immersive and frictionless, capturing the shared social presence of real world interactions.
Roblox, Rec Room, and Gather all give us a glimpse of this future.
We will all have digital personas and express ourselves in new ways.
@thecodemiko is an early example of how technology can unlock new forms of creativity & self-expression.
Crucially, this metaverse will (hopefully) be decentralized.
This comes full circle to the rejection of centralized power that we're seeing today.
Web3 is about direct value creation and capture. It will finally fulfill the internet's promise of removing gatekeepers.
Concepts like virtual reality, digital economies, and the metaverse may seem far-fetched—until you realize how far technology has already come in the last ~25 years.
Every Wednesday, I send out a piece of writing. Topics include: creators, internet culture, digital economies, Web3, & social media
You can subscribe here. Below are 10 of my favorite recent Digital Native pieces 👇 digitalnative.substack.com
📹 What People Misunderstand About The Creator Economy 📹
5 reasons it's important:
• It's about self-expression
• It's horizontal, not vertical
• It enables diverse voices
• It lets workers reclaim agency
• It breaks down outdated power structures digitalnative.substack.com/p/what-people-…
🏛️ The Memeification of American Capitalism 🏛️
There are common threads between r/WallStreetBets and NFT mania. Both are emblematic of a growing backlash to institutions.
This is Miko. She's a virtual streamer who is controlled by a real-life woman known only as The Technician.
The Technician uses the Unreal Engine and a $30,000 motion-capture suit to create Miko.
Thread 👇
The Technician's story starts like that of many other creators:
At the beginning of the pandemic, The Technician was laid off from the animation studio she worked at, just weeks after moving to Los Angeles.
She found herself unemployed and stuck with a $2,000-a-month lease.
In her words: “I thought, you know what would be the good thing to do right now isn’t to try to look for work. Let me put down $20K and try to make it on Twitch.”
The early days were slow-going. She made $300 a month and was thousands of dollars in debt from expensive equipment.
OnlyFans 2020 numbers:
• Revenue grew +553% to $391 million
• Users grew 5x from 20 million to 120 million
• Over 300 creators made more than $1 million
OnlyFans' success is a fascinating combination of business model innovation & the desire for online belonging.
👇👇👇
OnlyFans' business model lets creators stitch together subscriptions, tipping, & microtransactions.
Creators can send out locked DMs that look like personal messages, but are sent en masse to thousands of subscribers. One message can earn a creator thousands of dollars.
Locked DMs are a way for creators to earn income at scale and for subscribers to feel personally connected to the creator.
@lucymort_ calls this “the commodification of intimacy.” Online relationships with OnlyFans creators can become replacements for real-life intimacy.
1/ It's 1995. Netscape is the dominant browser. Your laptop costs $6,000. The World Wide Web has 16M users.
And GeoCities is the 3rd-most-popular website in the world.
"Community" is again becoming the defining word of the internet. In many ways, community began with Geocities.
2/ GeoCities helped people discover the internet & find like-minded people online with "Neighborhoods"
GeoCities had 28 neighborhoods built around interests, like Area51 for sci-fi & fantasy and Hot Springs for health & wellness.
Early web users found community & belonging.
3/ In 1995, Bill Gates said: "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow."
Before Google & search, GeoCities helped people understand online community through the familiar paradigms of neighborhoods and, within neighborhoods, blocks.