This IS one of the most hilarious things about NFTs, because when the bubble began, the point that got hyped up the most was "guaranteed unique", leading to widespread confusion among the public when, for instance, everybody at a ceremony got "the same NFT" of Chadwick Boseman.
Which is probably why the NFTer-Grifters have moved on from "uniqueness" as a hype point to "scarcity", which I feel is going to backfire on them in a more subtle way, as you can't explain how a digital asset is "scarce" without revealing you just chose not to make more of them.
And if you can choose to make more of them at any time, then nobody's "investment" in your "scarce" asset is actually secure. They're just trusting you not to flood the market and devalue their "holdings". Nothing in the NFT framework prevents this, or even can prevent it.
I think the second most hilarious things about NFTs right now is how NFTer-Grifter accounts keep going around to comment/QT on threads about NFT flaws with "Imagine being mad about NFTs and not realizing that [existing media] is used for all the same things."
We DO realize that.
"Imagine being mad about a game using NFTs for in-game assets that are just records on a server when existing games already have items that work that way."
Yes, we know! You can do the useful part of the thing without NFTs! Thank you for admitting that!
"Imagine being mad about NFTs being used for selling digital media when media is already sold digitally and you don't 'own' anything but access to a file that way, either."
Yes, we know! Thank you for acknowledging that NFTs contribute nothing but overhead to the process!
"But NFTs let you do it in a decentralized way."
Every single unnecessary step of the pointlessly convoluted and wasteful blockchain process depends 100% on the existence of internet architecture that is controlled by those central authorities you're supposedly circumventing.
There is at the moment a legitimate edge case use for crypto, which is circumventing payment processors who would restrict the kinds of media that can be purchased online, but as far as I'm concerned, people selling their lewds as NFTs are just hacking two terrible systems.
The vanilla financial system excludes them, and the crypto "financial system" is nothing but an elaborate skin put on the vanilla financial system; the "value" always and only lies in the ability to sell your cryptocurrency for a volatile amount of real money.
And the fact that this edge case exists is a testament to how crypto can never be used to decentralize the world, because you couldn't run a "decentralized internet" with routing and such controlled by a blockchain-based consensus process *without* the actual internet...
...handling the routing during the validation process, and even if you could somehow bootstrap a blockchain-based routing that validates itself (and try not to imagine how slow browsing would be using that), you'd still need the actual money economy for NFTs to work.
Like, "We figured out how to use computers to manufacture scarcity! For the cost of using up already-scarce mineral resources, we can create new and exciting kinds of scarcity!" is so the opposite of a revolution. It's capitalism persevering.
And to the extent that it's not *yet* beset by *all* the problems of late capitalism, it's because it is itself in early days. I.e., it's not monopoly-proof, it's just not cohesive or valuable enough yet for any well-funded outside player to see the point in monopolizing it.
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Randomly popped into my head how different the plot of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George steal a limo sent for two VIPs (who turn out to be Neo-Nazi leaders) would go today, when antifa on social media would have immediately figured out who they actually were.
So instead of all the counterprotesters assuming that the two guys who show up to the rally in the fascists' limo must be the fash, they would have been hailed... a Jewish comedian leaving two Nazis stranded at the airport or wherever.
I mean, TV show Jerry's level of celebrity was whatever the plot/gag demanded so he wouldn't necessarily immediately be recognized as "Jerry Seinfeld, the famous comedian", but the crowd today would know what the men they were looking for looked like.
The "radical ideology" that people really fear from trans people is the idea that your body is your own, something that you have, inhabit, own, and can do with as you please.
The latest anti-trans rhetoric is very stark about this, as the example I mentioned the other day where someone was claiming (to general agreement) in a TERF thread that the mind "exists to serve" the body and should be changed rather than altering the body...
...or the increasingly arcane formulation of "simple biological reality" by transphobes, which is now as esoteric and dehumanizing as "bodies are organized around the production of gametes".
So I've been reading the Dishonored tabletop RPG and I think they have my favorite version of the "oh, we're not doing attributes" attribute system that I've seen yet.
If you've closely followed my game design theory threads, you might know that I have a strong disdain for systems that give things players will need to refer to in play cute/twee names that don't convey what they're for, like having a stat named Hot, Cool, Hard, Weird, or Wisdom.
(And if you think "Wisdom" doesn't belong on that list, just wait until people start replying with what they think it *obviously* means. NB: I'm not asking.)
As someone with food sensory issues, I can tell you exactly what the difference is between Kellogg's frosted mini wheats and the bargain brands (K has thinner biscuits, thus higher ratio of sugar frosting to extruded fiber), and also that it's no reason to cross a picket line.
If you have a need that can literally only be answered by crossing a picket line, I'm not going to tell you to not do it, but... you don't have to make it a public referendum. You're not going to benefit from it.
Great thread, with the hilarious addition of indignant cryptobros in the QTs of various tweets going "Clearly the OP hasn't heard that sometimes NFT sellers are also selling perks like a copyright or license for the art with the NFT, which means the NFT has value."
If you're selling an album or tickets to an event or a piece of artwork -- that is legitimately yours and that you're actually selling -- and you attach it to an NFT, the NFT adds nothing to the process but waste/expense and hype.
Would I like it if there was some open source system where small venues, even ones that aren't particularly tech savvy, could set up ticketing and sell tickets for events without partnering with a big company? Sure.
NFT techbros who say NFTs are this want to be the big company.
The most ridiculous "well actually" I ever received on here was somebody who replied to one of my tweets about being "wide awake at two in the morning" to tell me that well actually "morning" refers to the time after the sun has risen, and I meant 2 at night.
Not to get all timecube in here, but... there's more than one morning. That is, "morning" has more than one meaning, and which one a person means -- when they don't overlap -- is clear from context.
Like, day and night are opposites, and when it's night it's not day, but a daily occurrence can take place at night and there are 24 hours in a day.
Words mean things, but they also mean other things, some of which seem contradictory.