This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Required? No. Valuable? Maybe. A lot of uses on blockchain "could" be served by something else, but blockchain offers something "unhackable" to the public mind. NFTs are mostly the Zoomer answer to infomercials promising me a Certificate of Authenticity with my commemorative Dale Earnhardt plates. What they offer is marketing, this is high tech and impossible to fake or duplicate. Right now I can buy a perfect fake of a Gucci bag. And some people will look at it, be unable to see a single difference between the real and the fake bags, acknowledge that fact out loud, and nonetheless will not value the fake bag as highly as the real one. NFTs offer a way to encapsulate that value in a single concept, when you own this you really own the bag.
NFTs offer a new vision of authenticity and ownership, which we do see developing in real time among the monkey weirdoes on Twitter. Everyone looks at them and says "All I have to do is hit right click and 'Save As' to own the Ape too?" And they say "No but then you don't own the ape, you just have a copy of the file!" There's a metaphysical belief that underlies the NFT weirdoes, that I use the Gucci example to explain because it's closest to branding power in our current understanding of ownership.
If you get the BoredApe idea of ownership, in which it is encapsulate in the NFT and not in any physical good or any utility provided by anything, and you market it effectively to Gucci owners, it's no longer a problem that the bags are divorced from the NFTs. Yes, bags will be lost, stolen, donated to thrift stores by careless owners or their heirs. But those bags will not be purchased or worn by any self-respecting fashionista without the NFT, they are rendered fake. In the same way that the BoredApe guys display in their profile the apes that they own, not ones that they don't own, despite the obvious fact that they could display whichever they wanted. It's socially unacceptable to display an ape you don't own. It could become socially unacceptable to own or wear a bag you don't have the NFT for, because it's a fake.
In the end, I think this is all beta testing, all the Monkey weirdoes and digital sports card traders and the luxury purse fanatics are paying early adopter taxes to build out infrastructure that can be used for more valuable purposes. Title Insurance is a $23,000,000/yr business that could be revolutionized with appropriate use of NFTs. Ditto car titles. I think fascinating things could be done with ownership of stock in publicly traded companies.
More options
Context Copy link