3 ms·

"All week in New York, the myriad token-gated parties and meetups applied social filters based on digital ownership. Tickets to these events could only be purch

"All week in New York, the myriad token-gated parties and meetups applied social filters based on digital ownership. Tickets to these events could only be purchased once you connected your crypto wallet and proved that you held the correct NFTs. At any given party, the coolest people in the room were always the “whales,” semi-mythical figures who own over 1000 ETH ($3 million at the time of writing) in digital assets. Rumors of exclusive “whale dinners” trickled down through the ranks of attendees, who jockeyed in anonymous group chats for passwords to invite-only events." This honestly makes me physically cringe. It's not even the worst aspects of new money, it's people LARPing as the nouveau riche. Imagine sitting in a room full of adults with status anxiety who compare their 20 dollar deviantart ape drawings they bought with their entire savings.

pjc50 5y ago
2020s looking suspiciously like the 1920s in so many ways. Great Internet Gatsby.
- marcodave 5y ago
  1910s had the spanish flu, we have (had??) the COVID-19, so...yep
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A couple of attendees were approaching him, strictly wannabes, they had maybe 200 ETH between them in deviantart apes. He flew away, somewhere in the twisting mazes of the market there would be exclusivity, only the billionaires with digitally executed works at hand to interact with. When a work was digitally executed it was put into a room that functioned as a 3d scanner, then the room's heat was turned up high enough to vaporize iron. The 3d scan of the work would be saved to an NFT complete with digital proof of its absolute destruction. Case was currently looking for the Gauguin, which, after its execution was now the most expensive NFT in the world, estimated worth, two billion dollars. Bezos would pay double that.
- cyber_kinetist 5y ago
  "The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically." - Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Why does 'Case' still sound like a cyberpunk name? It's like it's perpetually from five to ten years in the future.
  - consilla 5y ago
    We are living in a William Gibson world.
    - bsenftner 5y ago
      That would be infinitely better than the Faux News sponsored one we are actually in.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    Because not a lot of parents from the cyberpunk reading generation ran out to name their kids "Case". I mean if Case McGraw had grown up now to be a top NFL Quarterback, Case would not immediately raise connections to cyberpunk in your mind.
WJW 5y ago
Is it so surprising? Humans desire status, this is pretty much baked in. Ambitious 20-somethings suffer from this even more than usual. If you cannot get status quick enough in the "real" world because the entrenched interests are too powerful, building your own subculture in which to be important is a tried and tested strategy.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  This was also the case in eastern Europe during the Cold war - some countries came quite close to being classless societies, but people there nevertheless made up a bunch of status symbols out of fairly ordinary items - like jeans. Young people didn't flinch at spending one-month worth of income for a pair of jeans, while scoffing at nearly identical non-denim trousers, at 1/20 the price
  - paganel 5y ago
    There were also the car number-plates. Out here in Romania having a 3-digit car-number plate meant you most probably were part of the nomenklatura (the local one, if you had a county-specific number-plate, the national one if your number-plate was from Bucharest). The "normal" people had 4-digit number-plates, while the great majority of people had no car at all. Quite interesting.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      I've heard Saudis will similarly pay as much for their license plates as for their sports cars, repeating or alliterative numbers being highly desired.
      - gilleain 5y ago
        Yes indeed: https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/info/worlds-most-expensive-number-plates https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/info/worlds-most-expensive-nu... 9 out of the top 10 are in UAE. Top price 7 million.
  - 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

2020s looking suspiciously like the 1920s in so many ways. Great Internet Gatsby.

marcodave 5y ago
1910s had the spanish flu, we have (had??) the COVID-19, so...yep

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A couple of attendees were approaching him, strictly wannabes, they had maybe 200 ETH between them in deviantart apes. He flew away, somewhere in the twisting mazes of the market there would be exclusivity, only the billionaires with digitally executed works at hand to interact with. When a work was digitally executed it was put into a room that functioned as a 3d scanner, then the room's heat was turned up high enough to vaporize iron. The 3d scan of the work would be saved to an NFT complete with digital proof of its absolute destruction. Case was currently looking for the Gauguin, which, after its execution was now the most expensive NFT in the world, estimated worth, two billion dollars. Bezos would pay double that.

cyber_kinetist 5y ago
"The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically." - Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Why does 'Case' still sound like a cyberpunk name? It's like it's perpetually from five to ten years in the future.
- consilla 5y ago
  We are living in a William Gibson world.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    That would be infinitely better than the Faux News sponsored one we are actually in.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Because not a lot of parents from the cyberpunk reading generation ran out to name their kids "Case". I mean if Case McGraw had grown up now to be a top NFL Quarterback, Case would not immediately raise connections to cyberpunk in your mind.

WJW 5y ago

Is it so surprising? Humans desire status, this is pretty much baked in. Ambitious 20-somethings suffer from this even more than usual. If you cannot get status quick enough in the "real" world because the entrenched interests are too powerful, building your own subculture in which to be important is a tried and tested strategy.

thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
This was also the case in eastern Europe during the Cold war - some countries came quite close to being classless societies, but people there nevertheless made up a bunch of status symbols out of fairly ordinary items - like jeans. Young people didn't flinch at spending one-month worth of income for a pair of jeans, while scoffing at nearly identical non-denim trousers, at 1/20 the price
- paganel 5y ago
  There were also the car number-plates. Out here in Romania having a 3-digit car-number plate meant you most probably were part of the nomenklatura (the local one, if you had a county-specific number-plate, the national one if your number-plate was from Bucharest). The "normal" people had 4-digit number-plates, while the great majority of people had no car at all. Quite interesting.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I've heard Saudis will similarly pay as much for their license plates as for their sports cars, repeating or alliterative numbers being highly desired.
    - gilleain 5y ago
      Yes indeed: https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/info/worlds-most-expensive-number-plates https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/info/worlds-most-expensive-nu... 9 out of the top 10 are in UAE. Top price 7 million.
- 5y ago