Thread by @owenbroadcast

the facebook - meta - metaverse video everyone has been talking about. go deeper. yes, they want you to have VR meetings. but beyond that, this is their way of both announcing and getting in front of “web 3.0” which most people are still unfamiliar with. why? ask yourself this.

im the max level of tech skeptic. i dont expect anything to work properly if it has electricity in it. never owned a microwave. dont really “believe” in artificial intelligence. however as u learn in painting + art history you are always a child of ur time and have to accept that

now that “real life” has been inextricably integrated with the internet there is a very interesting next step unfolding because “web 3.0”, the next phase of tech life, is actually characterized imo by decentralization. de-centralization. who is “the center”. is that good for them

gotta ask urself questions like this rn before it all breaks mainstream and the narrative is cemented. what are they telling people about all this? why? what are normal people being coached to think about such things. why? who benefits? who could benefit, from these developments.

NFTs are a perfect accelerated example. right now creatives are getting played. totally fleeced. since web 2.0 they make all the cool stuff and are basically forced to use large centralized social mediaesque platforms. so they make the stuff that makes those platforms interesting

and what do they get out of it? the hope that maybe people who are using the e-side of it will come and buy stuff from them.. somewhere. does this happen? yeah sure. but its usually a by product of what they’re actually doing. they’re not directly benefiting from the “main thing”

so they put out all this stuff that makes these large centralized platforms cool and interesting in exchange for the hope of funneling some traffic to their little shop down the road in the next town. meanwhile the people who own the centralized platforms become very very rich.

then suddenly for literally the first time ever a new tech comes along that allows the creative to own and sell what they are producing online in a new way that completely upsets this dynamic and gives them the upper hand. the monetary aspect of it is completely shifted, entierly

and, as luck would have it, this particular tech does not disrupt what is already happening. the work can still be disseminated freely (as it is now) while also being sold. and theres a secondary bonus where the more popular (disseminated) a work is, the more its worth, not less.

wow. thats pretty crazy. quite the game changer - a new monetary funnel directly to the creatives - without disrupting or interrupting current patterns of consumption and dissemination. well its been about a year, maybe 6 months really, of that unfolding. whats the narrative?

this question could be applied to many things, but that is a nice solid example. what are people saying about this? why? thats interesting. who does that narrative serve? that video you saw isnt “the thing”, imo, its them trying to get out in front of “the thing”. imo.

as usual i would encourage you to be skeptical of very simplified presentations of things, hyper simplified angles, that just so happen to (total coincidence) serve to maintain certain informational and monetary power imbalances that have been the norm and law thus far.

saw a kid with an epic mullet today at the store. blonde, going all the way down his back. he said hi to me and i said “i really like your hair man”, and he ran away. perhaps a local spirit of some kind. anyway gotta get back to getting owen jr past the tutorial catch u guys soon

also i dont mean this in a negative way. i love running my little shop down the road (y000 check it out) but im lucky because, im really an analog art guy who came over to the digital. other people are not so lucky, who have no integration with physical analog things. interesting

https://twitter.com/owenbroadcast/status/1454649786632740864