Thread by @davekarpf

Interesting thread.

And/but, it really calls to mind some of the similarities between the big, splashy tech nonsense of 1999/2000 and 2021/2022.

https://twitter.com/schrep/status/1527520245362982912

The obvious analogy is the dotcom commercials in the 2000 Super Bowl and the 2022 Super Bowl.

(Really tempting the fates there, eh cryptobros?)

But that understates just how… excessive things had gotten in 99 and 00.

A couple of my favorite examples from the #wiredarchive:

First, the November 1999 cover story on Digiscent (“You’ve Got Smell”).

wired.com/1999/11/digisc…

Second, the June 1999 cover story on the Wired Index.

The tech writers at WIRED magazine had decided that they knew more about the new economy than all of Wall Street. And, for a minute there, they were beating the market.

Pride goeth before the fall.

wired.com/1999/06/wired-…

Compare that to a couple of the big stories from 2021.

Remember Clubhouse? It was briefly valued at $4 billion.

Normies like me thought it was a fad with no business model. But venture capitalists were sure they saw something we didn’t.

wired.com/story/inside-c…

And then there’s the NFT boom, particularly stuff like cryptopunks.

Why were JPEG receipts being bought and sold for millions? Is this The Future, or just evidence of an insane bubble divorced from reality?

wired.com/story/the-1000…

I won’t pretend I know what happens next.

But I will say that the valuation of a lot of these projects hasn’t made a lick of sense. And the justification has repeatedly be some version of “well, look, the Line Goes Up!”

If it turns out the valuations come back down to earth, and tech firms are judged based on their ability to, y’know, actually turn a profit, that’s hardly surprising.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

And 2021’s tune sounds a lot like 1999s.