Thread by @Lystrialle

A thread 🧵 about the way NFTs seem to be seen in Japan, and why, when making your case against them, you probably should NOT be using all the usual arguments that work here, and what would probably get you more success instead.

There is a HUGE cultural gap in the way NFTs are viewed in Japan vs. in the West, and it's way bigger than you guys even think. This is leading to obvious problems when someone says they're interested in them and you all have a sudden, massive cow without explaining yourselves.

So you're actually making the problem worse when you do this, because the end result is that it's being perceived as Westerners getting reactionary and angry for no good reason and throwing a tantrum for being ignorant (not for having seven months of discourse already).

However, there *are* still problems that you can explain. It's just that you need to take into account the difference in the way the issue is perceived, or else you're not going to get anywhere, and from their perspective you're going to sound like a mad idiot.

(The following information is from discussion with @sawamuracun, who has been compiling information on NFTs from the Japanese perspective and would like to work to help clear the cultural gap. I'll get into this article later, but here's the center of it.)
note.com/sawamuradacun/…

ARGUMENT YOU SHOULD NOT USE, #1: The environmental one.

Easiest standby in the West because it appeals to morality, but also the easiest to "debunk" (note the quotes), and also has so many complicated layers of how this is even relevant that, again, you just sound like an idiot.

It doesn't even work here, and furthermore, even the concept of crypto and how it works, let alone being environmentally friendly, doesn't have much documentation there, to the point many think it's just a "stigma" or being morally preachy. In the West, *we* are already scarred-

-- by the GPU market inflation or the sight of those power factories churning out crypto, but that correlation has yet to be made there, so imagine how strange it sounds to yell at people "don't do this art thing because climate change will happen!"
It sounds made up, I'm sorry.

Let alone the fact that all of these NFT/crypto orgs can straight-up lie and say "we're eco-friendly now!" or claim that they'll be eco-friendly by next year because of proof of stake or whatever (with no clear intention to do so), and it's easy to chuck this argument out.

ARGUMENT YOU SHOULD NOT USE, #2: The "it's not even real art" argument.

This theoretically sounds like it should appeal to common sense, but the problem is that some of the lies and misinformation around NFTs are taking a *very* different form in Japan right now.

The main issue here is that *commission culture as we currently know it does not exist there*. For us, it's easy to find an artist you like, pay them, and get a piece of art you'll have full usage rights for (pay more and you might get commercial rights).

The problem is that this system doesn't exist in Japan -- it's professional or bust, and even the recent Skeb works by "I pay you to do the act of drawing this but I still don't get the rights".

Which means NFT proponents in Japan are selling it to people like it's commissions.

I'm not kidding, they're pretending that it's a service to transfer usage rights to a client the way we would do commissions here. So if you try to pull out the argument "you don't get the actual file", the counter-argument is "but the rights are transferred, so it's okay."

So, let's go into the things that *are* likely to get across better.
I'll plug this again, but this article contains all the below points and in a way more understandable to that side, so I recommend linking it because of how complicated the issue is.
note.com/sawamuradacun/…

I think the main thing that needs to be put out is that NFT proponents and "salesmen" are literally lying about it. Obviously, nobody would ever complain that NFTs are like commissions here, because we already have commissions! They're just re-tailoring their lies per market.

The first thing to do is simply dispel the myths. No, it doesn't transfer usage rights. No, it doesn't actually protect your art from art theft; in fact the rate of theft is *worse* and encouraged because of how easy and profitable it is to do. Yes, it's a money laundering front.

The whole "it protects artists" thing is *still* being touted as the main reasons this concept should have appeal in Japan. Over here, that ship has already sailed, but without that being cleared up first, again, you sound like a reactionary madman.

The other thing is that there's *very good* reason we call it a pyramid scheme or scam, but we as Westerners tend to be pretty bad at explaining why. Fortunately, my impression is that a lot more average Japanese people understand the issues with economic bubbles and speculation.

I suspect it's because the Japanese asset price bubble from the 1990s still has a major impact on the country and the current generation, whereas for us it's a bit more detached (at best, maybe Beanie Babies or the dotcom bubble, but there's much less personal sentiment).

But in fact, explaining the actual *economics* behind it tends to actually make headway, because the truth of the matter is that it involves rich people who got in early exploiting anyone else who got into it later. Exact definition of a pyramid scheme is right there.

Because this is such a long and complicated issue that is probably best not limited to Twitter characters, I really do recommend the above article made for this exact purpose, because it's important to get things clearly out in an easy-to-understand manner.

(An English version of that article plus better explanation of all the points in this thread should be coming soon, but for now that should work for anyone asking about it.)

Hopefully this allows for better communication and understanding.

One more thing: It's also not well-known in Japan that the NFT discussion isn't new here. Many people seem to think we know as little about it as them, and are panicking for no reason -- not that we've been discussing this for 7+ months and seeing everything go to hell already.

So that might also be a helpful point to get on the table, especially if they bring up the idea "well, maybe it'll be improved later!" We were the test market for this already, nothing has improved, everything's gotten worse, and the "we'll fix it" is clearly a farce.

Some more addendums:

I'm not claiming that this is going to convince everyone, of course, nor that there aren't people who know exactly what they're doing and are willfully dismissing overseas comments. But it *is* true that the discussion is about seven months behind us.

Seven months or so ago, there was a much higher rate of people who were genuinely confused about the whole thing, not just the artists about to do it but the bystanders wondering why people against it were blowing such a fuse. That's the case again right now.

In a situation like this, I think it's much worse to go straight to cursing at people and throwing incomprehensible Western-specific arguments at them, than it is to say nothing at all.

The article I linked is from a Japanese person who independently looked into the issue and --

-- was personally disturbed by what they found; they only contacted me *after* realizing this, since even despite already seeing the problem, they still weren't quite able to understand the violent Western reaction, until I clarified the mountain of cultural context.

So if even someone who is perfectly open to hearing us out *still* couldn't get a grasp of the situation as it's understood here until I was able to clarify it, you can see why the issue has gotten so confused.

The writer also personally believes that, due to the fundamental problems in the setup, it may not be long before the discourse takes off in Japan too, because you just need to explain it enough and people see the problem (personally, I've already seen it start to happen).

I obviously am not in a position to say whether I agree with them or not, but I think the least we can do is not confuse the issue further with arguments that don't make sense out of context and lead to unnecessary conflict, that's all. In other words, please just be mindful.

Additions based on some things people brought up:
I think the most serious issue is not so much people already into it (they're likely to know what they're doing) as much as bystanders wondering what the big deal is, and rampant misinformation circulating unchecked. Same as here.

I might have been too strong in saying you "shouldn't use" the above arguments, but what I mean to say is that regardless of truth value, you need to be careful about using one-liner 280-character statements that rely on the assumption the other person sees things a specific way.

My concern is "out of context". If you're going to talk about the environment, be prepared to explain seven months of context seeing GPUs getting destroyed and even how proof of work works, not just slamming down "bad for the environment" and thinking that makes perfect sense.

I also want to reiterate that it's not about "less" understanding there, but rather "the context and information on hand is different". I mentioned one issue that tends to be discussed more easily there tends to do with bubbles/speculation (because it seems to be more personal).

Another one seems to be in regards to legal matters over who bears responsibility or will be taken to court in the case of fraud. This question doesn't tend to come up to nearly the same degree here, and if it does, it's generally kind of a footnote compared to others.

That doesn't mean it's not a problem for us; all the above problems are universal. But we don't *assume* the other person has already been thinking about this. Things people already know context for without having to explain background for will depend on whom you're talking to.

If anything, it probably says a lot that the NFT structure is *so* unstable that it can bring up so many different problems at once, and the fact the misinformation suspiciously tailors itself to whatever market it appears in (if it were *that* robust, it shouldn't need to...)

In any case, the end result is just "before you send that tweet, please keep in mind what this is going to look like when you're not taking certain things for granted" (again, I think it's better to not say anything at all than to say something that makes it more confusing).

Simply put, the question is "why do overseas people suddenly leave violent comments and block at the sheer mention of NFTs?"
*We* understand it's from effective whiplash trauma at watching GPU destruction and constant scams and art theft and personality cults and harassment...

...so for *us*, reacting so violently has become natural, but I really hope you can understand how incomprehensible and deranged this looks to someone who has not had that repeated personal witness account for seven months. At the very least, "do you have to react *that* badly?"

The promised English version:
note.com/sawamuradacun/…