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A lot of things are cults and it doesn't have to do much with social media or the behaviors he is outlining. Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company,

A lot of things are cults and it doesn't have to do much with social media or the behaviors he is outlining. Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. Let's move even farther away. There are cults for clothing companies. Companies that make drinks. Gaming companies. Youtube streamers. Heck, there even cults in processor companies. Take for example AMD. I have had chats with people who just get livid when Intel vs. AMD conversations come up and I am thinking to myself "We are talking about CPUs right?". There are even cults with Operating Systems. Just ask the nix vs. Windows folks. Those discussions get heated. So I am not sure what he is trying to argue here. There will always be folks developing who will have a civil discourse and try to make the currency better and then there will be the peanut gallery. That comes with anything that gains wider exposure.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
I think maybe you are confusing or just being hyperbolic on the difference between fan club and religious devotion.
- sgt101 8y ago
  There are many differences (of course!) but one common strand is that both are elements of the adherent's identity. In the case of Crypto there is another defining commonality - which is life style and life chances. Religions provide a vehicle (the community) which provides adherents with different chances from those outside, Crypto does the same - via money... if you have invested you might be rich, or poor, but your life is changed.
  - jenga22 8y ago
    Right. I agree. I am also going one step further and arguing that crypto is more of a fan club then a cult. There are cults way stronger that illicit a far greater emotion reaction that crypto. Even now, when the price is in the toilet, a lot of really smart people are having sane discussions across sub-reddits. And those very smart people are still checkin in code and making improvements. This has happened before. During the BBS era and ARPA Net era, a lot of people said those things were "cute" and only used by underground cult figures. They said that people who believed in the "internet" were dillusional that a global network would ever happen. They also said that it would have limited impact on society. They said it would stay largely with universities. Newspapers laughed. Television networks laughed. Music companies shrugged it off. But the one thing I learned from both those eras is if there are a lot of smart people working in it then it is not to be discounted.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > BBS era and ARPA Net era These services were launched to solve a practical problem. Bitcoin was launched as the manifestation of an ideology.
      - jenga22 8y ago
        You sure about that? Arpanet was created to exchange short messages in case of a nuclear attack on the United States rendered all above ground communication and survivability useless. I hardly consider that a practical use case. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_during_the_Cold_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_during_the_Cold_W...
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        The U.S. government considered it a practical problem. That’s why they paid for it. If it helps, replace “practical problem” with “a problem customers will pay you to solve.” ARPANET had that. Bitcoin, on the other, never had an original sale. It was mined as a curiosity and then jumped from narrative (“currency of the future!”) to narrative (“store of value!”) to narrative (“mostly goes up!”)
        jenga22 8y ago
        What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't. That is a shitty statement. The U.S. also considered spending 2T on a jet that was worse than the F-22. Just because the U.S. spends on something doesn't mean it has a practical application. Nevertheless, the internet turned out to be transforming from its original purpose. We can sit here and argue about cyrptocurreny but the game is young and we wont know what it will turn into in 30 years. Just like the people in the 70 and 80s didn't know how transforming the internet would become for our society.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't Sure. But it’s still a customer making a purchase. That purchase grounds the project in someone’s need. A need they’re willing to trade for. The “trades for” part is important, since it references the status quo. Financial assets, particularly speculative assets, don’t solve a need. They promise to solve a future need. (Sometimes they don’t.) Part of the discipline of speculating investing is knowing when to pull the plug.
  - dnomad 8y ago
    But this is true of all groups. All groups offer identity and possibility of growth. What makes cults special is the element of faith. This is the difference between an investor and a speculator, an engineer and a magician, and real currencies that can be used to pay taxes and exchange tokens like gold/bitcoin/beanie babies. Cryptocurrencies are inviting their members to take a leap of faith on a mechanism that is not subject to rational analysis and be rewarded with riches beyond their wildest dreams. The beauty here is that there's social proof -- in the form of actual crypto millionaires and lots of fancy whitepapers from smart people and open-source code that anybody can download and review. This attracts irrational players into the game (which in turns attracts more predators since irrational players are easy money). There's a vicious cycle at work and eventually the whole game is dominated by irrationality and delusion.
codetrotter 8y ago
> Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. According to Wikipedia, Apple has sold 1.2 billion+ iPhones. Are you going to tell me that all of those people are going to “rabidly” support Apple? No way. What you are seeing is a very vocal very small minority.
- pdpi 8y ago
  Not all people in the cryptocurrency space are followers of the cult either, though
  - codetrotter 8y ago
    Indeed. That was also my point though I didn’t say it explicitly, but probably should have. What I said applies not only to Apple but to a lot of different groups of people.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

I think maybe you are confusing or just being hyperbolic on the difference between fan club and religious devotion.

sgt101 8y ago
There are many differences (of course!) but one common strand is that both are elements of the adherent's identity. In the case of Crypto there is another defining commonality - which is life style and life chances. Religions provide a vehicle (the community) which provides adherents with different chances from those outside, Crypto does the same - via money... if you have invested you might be rich, or poor, but your life is changed.
- jenga22 8y ago
  Right. I agree. I am also going one step further and arguing that crypto is more of a fan club then a cult. There are cults way stronger that illicit a far greater emotion reaction that crypto. Even now, when the price is in the toilet, a lot of really smart people are having sane discussions across sub-reddits. And those very smart people are still checkin in code and making improvements. This has happened before. During the BBS era and ARPA Net era, a lot of people said those things were "cute" and only used by underground cult figures. They said that people who believed in the "internet" were dillusional that a global network would ever happen. They also said that it would have limited impact on society. They said it would stay largely with universities. Newspapers laughed. Television networks laughed. Music companies shrugged it off. But the one thing I learned from both those eras is if there are a lot of smart people working in it then it is not to be discounted.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > BBS era and ARPA Net era These services were launched to solve a practical problem. Bitcoin was launched as the manifestation of an ideology.
    - jenga22 8y ago
      You sure about that? Arpanet was created to exchange short messages in case of a nuclear attack on the United States rendered all above ground communication and survivability useless. I hardly consider that a practical use case. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_during_the_Cold_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_during_the_Cold_W...
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        The U.S. government considered it a practical problem. That’s why they paid for it. If it helps, replace “practical problem” with “a problem customers will pay you to solve.” ARPANET had that. Bitcoin, on the other, never had an original sale. It was mined as a curiosity and then jumped from narrative (“currency of the future!”) to narrative (“store of value!”) to narrative (“mostly goes up!”)
        jenga22 8y ago
        What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't. That is a shitty statement. The U.S. also considered spending 2T on a jet that was worse than the F-22. Just because the U.S. spends on something doesn't mean it has a practical application. Nevertheless, the internet turned out to be transforming from its original purpose. We can sit here and argue about cyrptocurreny but the game is young and we wont know what it will turn into in 30 years. Just like the people in the 70 and 80s didn't know how transforming the internet would become for our society.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't Sure. But it’s still a customer making a purchase. That purchase grounds the project in someone’s need. A need they’re willing to trade for. The “trades for” part is important, since it references the status quo. Financial assets, particularly speculative assets, don’t solve a need. They promise to solve a future need. (Sometimes they don’t.) Part of the discipline of speculating investing is knowing when to pull the plug.
- dnomad 8y ago
  But this is true of all groups. All groups offer identity and possibility of growth. What makes cults special is the element of faith. This is the difference between an investor and a speculator, an engineer and a magician, and real currencies that can be used to pay taxes and exchange tokens like gold/bitcoin/beanie babies. Cryptocurrencies are inviting their members to take a leap of faith on a mechanism that is not subject to rational analysis and be rewarded with riches beyond their wildest dreams. The beauty here is that there's social proof -- in the form of actual crypto millionaires and lots of fancy whitepapers from smart people and open-source code that anybody can download and review. This attracts irrational players into the game (which in turns attracts more predators since irrational players are easy money). There's a vicious cycle at work and eventually the whole game is dominated by irrationality and delusion.

codetrotter 8y ago

> Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. According to Wikipedia, Apple has sold 1.2 billion+ iPhones. Are you going to tell me that all of those people are going to “rabidly” support Apple? No way. What you are seeing is a very vocal very small minority.

pdpi 8y ago
Not all people in the cryptocurrency space are followers of the cult either, though
- codetrotter 8y ago
  Indeed. That was also my point though I didn’t say it explicitly, but probably should have. What I said applies not only to Apple but to a lot of different groups of people.