Broadcast It, Babe
We don’t know where the next big insight will come from, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if it came from you?
This was originally published in the inaugural Boys Club zine, which launched last Friday (yes, THAT Friday). Read it over on the zine site for the full Boys Club experience (you won’t be disappointed) and make sure you mint it before the edition closes tomorrow.
Broadcast It, Babe
Maybe you know the feeling.
Imagine you’re standing in a crowded room. Everyone appears engaged in vigorous, confident conversation. You have something to say, something that feels so insightful you desperately want to share it.
But wait, you think, maybe it only feels insightful because everyone else in the room has already arrived at this insight. You continue talking yourself down. Someone else has probably said it before, in any event. Then you tell absolutely no one because you don’t want anyone to think you’re an idiot, days late to the party everyone’s already attending.
This room is crypto Twitter.
“I’m having some anxiety“…“about saying the wrong thing, about people thinking I’m an idiot.” — Deana Burke on her increasing influence in web3, BOYS CLUB EPISODE, “WE HEAR FOR YOU.”
Babe, same.
I joined crypto Twitter in December 2021. I was intent on transitioning to web3 from my decade-plus career building mission-driven brands in web2. Despite knowing approximately zero people in crypto, I pursued a method that guided me through previous curiosities: poke around the internet and talk to people. Fast forward one year to December 2022 and, like Deana, my star is steadily rising. I’m thrilled, and utterly terrified of saying something stupid with my new-found platform.
Let’s back this up and provide context for who, exactly, these people are that might think that we’re idiots.
Crypto is a nascent industry. As of August 2022, there were roughly 84 MILLION WALLET USERS WORLDWIDE, which is less than the NUMBER OF MONTHLY SPOTIFY LISTENERS FOR THE WEEKND (85.99 MILLION).
So, like, there’s practically nobody in crypto to think we’re idiots in the first place.
I’m being flippant, of course. 84 million is a significant number and yet, “We’re so early.” We hear this all the time because it’s true. Depending on who you ask, we are somewhere in the pre-browser, 1995ISH EQUIVALENT OF THE COMMERCIAL INTERNET’S ARC, as a16z hypothesizes. Some, like our friend JON HILLIS OF CABIN, POINT TO CARLOTA PEREZ’S MODEL OF TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION to say that we’re still in the thick of the financial bubble phase of crypto’s tech disruption. a16z and Jon Hillis are both saying a version of the same thing: crypto has a long way to go before hitting meaningful mainstream adoption. Or, if you’re more of a Paul Krugman type, you might think we’ll never escape THE “GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING” ERA.
Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of tech innovation analogizers, “earliness” is exciting news for us internet anons building the new internet. It means that no one knows absolutely everything. In any event it’s totally possible that this is all GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. (FWIW, I think Paul Krugman’s thesis is, well, idiotic. It rings of his NOW INFAMOUS 1998 HYPOTHESIS THAT THE INTERNET’S IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY WOULD BE NO GREATER THAN THE FAX MACHINE’S. ) Expertise in crypto is built on the very imprecise method of running experiments live, failing, iterating, and trying again. That is to say, expertise in crypto is built using the battle-tested method employed by history’s greatest innovators before us: by fucking around and finding out.
The through-line between anxiety over sounding like an idiot and crypto’s nascency is this: how can we sound idiotic (spoiler: we don’t) when everyone is simply engaging in varieties of fucking around and finding out?
Yet there are some prolific internet personalities who speak with such confidence that it’s only reasonable to believe a reverse opinion may be idiotic. And they’re actively defining crypto’s arc. We participate in elevating their stars by assigning significant social proof to their declarations. We call them founders, builders, thought leaders. But what if we called them what they are – people with internet profiles giving their opinion as fact; media personalities proliferating a personal meme. What if we called them influencers?
I asked ChatGPT to define the difference between an influencer and a thought leader. Here’s what it had to say:
“A thought leader is someone who is recognized as an expert in their field and is often looked to for guidance and advice. They are known for their unique insights and innovative ideas. An influencer, on the other hand, is someone who has the ability to influence the opinions and decisions of others, often through social media. Influencers are often seen as trendsetters and can have a significant impact on the behaviors and actions of their followers.”
Unique insights, innovative ideas, social media, trendsetter – sounds like boilerplate descriptors for all of us still building in crypto. By the very nature of our industry’s nascency, everyone in crypto has the ability to be both thought leader and influencer. All crypto ideas are by definition a bit absurd, as NATASHA'S INFAMOUS GIRL ‘SPLAINING MEME captures perfectly. (Thought leader material imo.)
Back to Deana on the Boys Club episode, she goes on to say: “I’m not an intellectual. I’m not going to be Chris Dixon.” Fab. We don’t need another Chris Dixon anyway. We need you, internet anon.
We’ve entered a new phase of mainstream crypto narrative malformation. We’ve always been up against a mostly inaccurate — IF NOT WHOLLY REDUCTIONIST (SEE PAUL KRUGMAN'S ARGUMENT ABOVE) — narrative proliferated by mainstream media. The media escalated this narrative to a new level of tommyrot when SBF committed arguably the greatest financial fraud in U.S. history. While everyone in crypto uses the same underlying technology that SBF utilized to commit Wall Street crimes, this does not mean that those of us building novel mechanisms for community-owned networks are necessarily committing wire fraud. Just please god DON'T NAME ANY OF YOUR GROUP CHATS "WIREFRAUD," EVER.
The tl;dr is: we’re up against a big, loud, well-funded mainstream media machine that’s highly committed to reducing all of crypto to a singular Ponzi scheme driven by fake internet money. It’s up to us, the remaining web3 believers, to reverse the narrative to more accurately reflect the earnest if not frankly wholesome shit we’re trying to do (see again, NATASHA'S GIRL 'SPLAINING MEME. It’s up to us to own the insights that feel so intuitive they may even seem idiotic. Broadcast it, babe. We don’t know where the next big insight will come from, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if it came from you? This is our starting place after all:
⚡️⚡️⚡️
One of my favourite articulations of Web3
Oh how did I enjoy this piece. There’s also something to be said about turning to chatGTP for wisdom. (Not me over there trying to heal my imposter syndrome with prompts).