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It was exciting when I was a teenager but now I am a fifty year old lady who is just trying to use it to get paid for drawing stuff and I am really tired of fig

It was exciting when I was a teenager but now I am a fifty year old lady who is just trying to use it to get paid for drawing stuff and I am really tired of fighting the social media corporations' constant decisions to de-emphasize posts with offsite links to places where I can get people to pay for my work. The thought of pivoting to making vertical videos because all the kids are on TikTok now feels incredibly exhausting, especially because I know it'll probably be replaced by yet another corporate-owned social site with its own bullshit in a year or two. NFTs just seem to add an extra layer of bullshit where every transaction happens via a bunch of people wasting an absurd amount of energy to perform useless computation in hopes of being the one who wins the lottery for some cryptocurrency. Don't tell me your favorite crypto's moving off of PoW, it's wasting incredible amounts of energy right now and moving off of that relies on getting a consensus from people who are financially incentivized to stay on PoW. (The most damning sentiment about NFTs I've seen is that there are two groups who are historically at the forefront of new ways to get paid on the internet: porn makers and furries. And neither of them is into NFTs.)

_fat_santa 5y ago
I have to disagree with you about Web3 (Cryptocurrencies, NFT's, Blockchains, that whole space), I think this is the next frontier of the internet and it's an incredibly exciting time. NFT's and Crypocurrencies are just one of the earliest implementations of this new technology. The first implementation of NFT's is for artwork but that's just one implementation. When you step back and look at the actual technology, it's introduced a paradigm shift for how we think of objects on the internet. Before NFT's, everything on the internet was fungible, if it existed on the internet, you could copy it. Sure there are things like DRM, but that is just an abstraction on top of a fungible thing that tries to make that thing non-fungible. I don't know where the technology will take us, or what it will look like in 20, 30 or 40 years, but when you think about the idea that everything up until now on the internet has been copyable and we are just starting to figure out how to actually give a digital thing ownership, that will change how we look at just about everything on the internet, from DRM to authentication and many other aspects. I think when I'm your age (mid 20's now), NFT's will be everywhere and "NFT Artwork" will be looked back on as the very first implementation of the technology, and likely with many jokes about how bad it all was.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  I don’t think the vast majority of people care at all about “owning” a digital image or “verifying” it’s integrity. Furries pay lots of money to have custom work done of their character. They don’t pay to “own” some random pre-existing art. And basically everything that NFTs do, a database can do better.
- lekevicius 5y ago
  Looks like OP's post is out of the homepage, so I can reply without downvote avalanche incoming. I agree with your sentiment. It is probably the most exciting aspect of the internet, and digital ownership concept has a long and exciting road ahead. I am also utterly baffled by how this sentiment is met on HN. Thoughtful responses are downvoted, cheap shots against this sentiment rise up. I no longer want to participate in discussions about anything crypto on HN, negativity is too strong. And there is absolute irony that this is happening on a thread called "Jaded about the internet?".
  - yuuu 5y ago
    I agree with both of you guys. It's clear to me that this sort of decentralization will prove to be revolutionary. People who immediately equate NFTs with JPEGs are idiots and don't get it. They won't get it until they're using them to buy and sell tickets to events, which is probably the next major use case.
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >They won't get it until they're using them to buy and sell tickets to events I'm not really pro or anti-NFT. But, I will say that people frequently champion them by stating potential future use cases. I think it's unfair to do that as a basis for claiming current detractors have it wrong. Right now most enthusiasts are heavily promoting the primary use case as essentially digitized files (be it JPEG or whatever--but mainly art). So, that's the current argument, as opposed to some future wherein they supplant x or do y.
      - 5y ago
ziml77 5y ago
> I am really tired of fighting the social media corporations' constant decisions to de-emphasize posts with offsite links to places where I can get people to pay for my work. I only just recently learned of this. Younger people are equally unexcited by that bullshit. I saw an artist, who's in her early 20s, always posting the link to her Twitch streams as reply to the Tweet where she'd announce that she's streaming. I asked her about it and she told me that links to other sites never make it into peoples' timelines. She and her boyfriend also write words like Patreon and commission in leetspeak to avoid any issues with those. And you're absolutely right about NFTs. There is only hate for them among the furry artists that I follow (and there's a lot of them given that's all I'm on Twitter for). They hate the environmental impact. They hate the theft of artwork. They hate the scams. And they just think NFTs are overall pointless.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  I'm so tired of seeing my friends tweet about their "p*treon" without even appending a link, it's such a horrible little hellworld detail. I don't bother with that but I sure have ended up with the habit of tweeting the art, then tweeting links to buy prints, support me on Patreon, and read more about how I did the piece on my blog, as a reply, in hopes that this will suppress the post less. I should probably try actually looking at Twitter's analytics to see this for sure but I find staring at that shit and trying to modify my behavior towards what Twitter likes to amplify to be pretty depressing and stressful. You will probably be unsurprised to find that I am a furry artist. :)

_fat_santa 5y ago

I have to disagree with you about Web3 (Cryptocurrencies, NFT's, Blockchains, that whole space), I think this is the next frontier of the internet and it's an incredibly exciting time. NFT's and Crypocurrencies are just one of the earliest implementations of this new technology. The first implementation of NFT's is for artwork but that's just one implementation. When you step back and look at the actual technology, it's introduced a paradigm shift for how we think of objects on the internet. Before NFT's, everything on the internet was fungible, if it existed on the internet, you could copy it. Sure there are things like DRM, but that is just an abstraction on top of a fungible thing that tries to make that thing non-fungible. I don't know where the technology will take us, or what it will look like in 20, 30 or 40 years, but when you think about the idea that everything up until now on the internet has been copyable and we are just starting to figure out how to actually give a digital thing ownership, that will change how we look at just about everything on the internet, from DRM to authentication and many other aspects. I think when I'm your age (mid 20's now), NFT's will be everywhere and "NFT Artwork" will be looked back on as the very first implementation of the technology, and likely with many jokes about how bad it all was.

Gigachad 5y ago
I don’t think the vast majority of people care at all about “owning” a digital image or “verifying” it’s integrity. Furries pay lots of money to have custom work done of their character. They don’t pay to “own” some random pre-existing art. And basically everything that NFTs do, a database can do better.
lekevicius 5y ago
Looks like OP's post is out of the homepage, so I can reply without downvote avalanche incoming. I agree with your sentiment. It is probably the most exciting aspect of the internet, and digital ownership concept has a long and exciting road ahead. I am also utterly baffled by how this sentiment is met on HN. Thoughtful responses are downvoted, cheap shots against this sentiment rise up. I no longer want to participate in discussions about anything crypto on HN, negativity is too strong. And there is absolute irony that this is happening on a thread called "Jaded about the internet?".
- yuuu 5y ago
  I agree with both of you guys. It's clear to me that this sort of decentralization will prove to be revolutionary. People who immediately equate NFTs with JPEGs are idiots and don't get it. They won't get it until they're using them to buy and sell tickets to events, which is probably the next major use case.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >They won't get it until they're using them to buy and sell tickets to events I'm not really pro or anti-NFT. But, I will say that people frequently champion them by stating potential future use cases. I think it's unfair to do that as a basis for claiming current detractors have it wrong. Right now most enthusiasts are heavily promoting the primary use case as essentially digitized files (be it JPEG or whatever--but mainly art). So, that's the current argument, as opposed to some future wherein they supplant x or do y.
    - 5y ago

ziml77 5y ago

> I am really tired of fighting the social media corporations' constant decisions to de-emphasize posts with offsite links to places where I can get people to pay for my work. I only just recently learned of this. Younger people are equally unexcited by that bullshit. I saw an artist, who's in her early 20s, always posting the link to her Twitch streams as reply to the Tweet where she'd announce that she's streaming. I asked her about it and she told me that links to other sites never make it into peoples' timelines. She and her boyfriend also write words like Patreon and commission in leetspeak to avoid any issues with those. And you're absolutely right about NFTs. There is only hate for them among the furry artists that I follow (and there's a lot of them given that's all I'm on Twitter for). They hate the environmental impact. They hate the theft of artwork. They hate the scams. And they just think NFTs are overall pointless.

egypturnash 5y ago
I'm so tired of seeing my friends tweet about their "p*treon" without even appending a link, it's such a horrible little hellworld detail. I don't bother with that but I sure have ended up with the habit of tweeting the art, then tweeting links to buy prints, support me on Patreon, and read more about how I did the piece on my blog, as a reply, in hopes that this will suppress the post less. I should probably try actually looking at Twitter's analytics to see this for sure but I find staring at that shit and trying to modify my behavior towards what Twitter likes to amplify to be pretty depressing and stressful. You will probably be unsurprised to find that I am a furry artist. :)