NoPixel is the most fascinating virtual world on the internet.
NoPixel is a role-playing game in Grand Theft Auto. You have to apply to get in, and you must stay in character the whole time.
Here's how it works 👇
1/ First, you create your character. You customize your hair, your clothing, your accessories.
Then you fill out an application. You answer questions in character, like "You’ve found what looks like a random car in the street with a load of drugs inside. What do you do and why?”
2/ The goal of role-play is to create an immersive experience—basically to create a realistic, robust virtual world.
At all times in NoPixel, you must talk and act as your character.
3/ Like in the real world, players need to earn money in NoPixel.
Some people choose to be civilians. Others choose a life of crime.
You can make your money honestly, or you can rob a bank or plan a heist.
4/ If you choose civilian life, you can be a car salesman or a garbage truck driver or a bartender.
If you choose a life of crime, you can be a drug lord and run a meth lab. (Yes, this is an image of a meth lab in NoPixel.)
5/ There are real consequences for a life of crime. There's a police force run by real-life players who are out to arrest you.
6/ You may actually find yourself in court, pleading before a judge (who is also another player). And you might end up in jail.
7/ All players start with $5K and then have to earn money from there.
When you make money—whether through honest work or through crime—you can spend it. You can buy a new house or a flashy new car.
NoPixel has a robust digital economy.
8/ NoPixel also functions like a real society.
Everyone has to pay taxes. If you're unhappy with your tax rate, you can vote for a new Mayor with new policies.
9/ NoPixel is a tight-knit community. Recently, the streamer who played the character Misty Mocha died in real life from cancer.
Fellow players held an in-game funeral for her and grieved.
10/ A day in the NoPixel world can range from the mundane (getting a traffic ticket) to the thrilling (a high-speed car chase).
It's mostly a more exciting form of reality that lets you take on a digital persona of your choosing.
11/ As we spend more time online, we might all have digital personas to go alongside our real identities.
You might be a police officer in real life and a drug kingpin online.
You might be a teacher in the analog world, and a professional gambler in the digital world.
12/ NoPixel is a vibrant world with a robust digital economy. It lets people try on new identities and new lives.
It unlocks new levels of self-expression.
13/ To glimpse the future of the internet, look to gaming.
Soon, virtual worlds won't be just for gamers. Everyone will have a digital identity to go alongside their real one.
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Taylor Swift's Eras tour is set to make her the highest-grossing female artist of all time.
I've been thinking a lot about Taylor Swift as a businesswoman.
Let me geek out for a minute about Swift and what we can learn from her:
First, it's no secret I'm a massive Taylor Swift fan. Billy Joel said it best when he called her "The Beatles of her generation."
This is partly an excuse for me to write about my favorite artist. But you also don't have to be a fan to appreciate Swift as a savvy businesswoman:
Taylor Swift is only 33, but she's already the only woman to win three Grammys for Album of the Year.
She holds the record for most songs to ever chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (188 songs), and last fall became the first artist to own the entire Top 10 simultaneously.
A question I think about often is: is brand a moat?
My answer has always been yes, but the recent deterioration of digital advertising makes the answer even clearer.
Brand is a stronger moat than ever, and that's not a good thing:
1/ To step back, marketing, in its modern form, essentially didn’t exist before the Industrial Revolution.
There was such little product differentiation that it wasn’t necessary. Then manufacturing exploded, and production became cheaper & faster than ever before.
2/ New entrants crowded the market & marketing became essential.
Today, marketing is often *all* that distinguishes a product.
In America, kids as young as 2 can recognize brands on shelves, and by age 10 kids have recognition of 300 to 400 brands.
1/ One interesting shift: the globalization of culture.
From 2017 to 2022, 47 of the 50 most-streamed songs in the world were in English. But that dominance is slipping.
In India, Indonesia, & Korea, the share of English-language tracks has fallen from 52% to 31%.
2/ In Spain and LatAm, the share of English-language songs has slipped from 25% to 14%.
It's the same story on TV: in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, only about half of the most-watched shows are North American. In Japan and South Korea, it’s only 35%.
3/ We see the globalization of pop culture in what audiences are consuming:
• Squid Game (Korean) became the most-watched show on Netflix
• Khaby Lame (Senegalese-Italian) is the most-followed person on TikTok
• Bad Bunny (Puerto Rican) is the most-streamed artist on Spotify
The most powerful trend in tech right now: "The TikTokization of Everything"
How it's reshaping literally every industry:
To back up, there have been two major forces powering tech for the past decade: mobile and cloud.
Mobile facilitated the rise of massive consumer internet companies: Uber & Lyft, Instagram & Snap, Robinhood and Coinbase. Each was founded between 2009 and 2013.
Digital advertising rapidly shifted to mobile in the 2010s, and desktop-era companies like Facebook had to scramble to reinvent their businesses.