Welcome to Season 2, Episode 3 of The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show, a podcast for the Farcaster middle class.
Clips:
BArt-Head calling DWR People https://drakula.app/post/d5f4819c-68ab-4bbf-8ad7-ca694d628a0f?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
What happened in your childhood https://drakula.app/post/1f4bcabe-eaa7-4cf3-aa84-11164565e64b?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
BeavChris's reaction to Status As A Service https://drakula.app/post/85cd33da-3002-4766-976a-9fc574e79434?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
BArt-Head gifts everyone with his presence https://drakula.app/post/e9481297-e313-4fdc-b075-b8d3a56ad676?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
BArt-Head admits Warpcast is a good place https://drakula.app/post/3bb070e4-d592-49a0-8365-8322dc91ea7e?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
Watch the episode on Zora, and Mint to collect.
Summary
Tune into The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show on Unlonely. Status as a service or freedom to dissent? Dive into the world of Farcaster, where power badges, tipping, and AI filters collide. Join us as we explore the delicate balance between convenience and censorship, and uncover the hidden social dynamics shaping our digital landscape. Plus, discover LunchBreak.com's innovative social graph portability!
This episode was sponsored by Lunchbreak.com.
Dune dashboard dash.lnch.is
BaseScan smart contract contract.lunchbreak.com
Sponsor this spot for 0.1 ETH (90 seconds for 0.05 ETH).
Transcript
BeavChris
Hello. We, as usual, might be live.Let me refresh our screen. GM.Oh, we have elbrys.eth in the chat. Thank you for joining us so early.
BArt-Head
GM.
BeavChris
GM.All right. Shout out to our permissionless partners, Unlonely, Base, Zora, Paragraph, Drakula, Seemore, and our sponsor today is Lunchbreak. com from Borodutch and JasonKim.eth. What,cumulatively, what trouble have you gotten into recently?
BArt-Head
I want to say, since the last week, I've gotten a like and a recast from dwr.eth and our
BeavChris
Oh yeah!
BArt-Head
Our BCBH Show intern has gotten a power badge. So by all traditional measures, we are winning hashtag winning. We are killing it. We are doing social all right.
And when I saw the powerbadge, that really was the worst day of my life. I thought this insane.
BeavChris
Wait, why? It's like you got what you wanted, yet you don't like it because now you have no one to fight against anymore.
BArt-Head
No no, I did not want the BCBH Show show account to have a power badge. What I wanted was for the power badge, which to me carries a heavy psychic weight of human suffering. I wanted that thing to disappear and for it not to be a celebration or for someone. To co opt us or for it to morph into a spam fighting tool that everybody can get behind. I just want it, I really want it to burn in the 0x00burn address. This whole idea of the power badge.
BeavChris
Isn't that just like you being annoyed that the thing you're fighting ideologically against keeps changing and improving towards your direction? Then you can never be happy in person.
BArt-Head
There's so, there's this difference philosophically of, and this is maybe an American thing. If you are building freedom, but in doing so, you have to compromise some of your stated values. That's not what Americans would prefer to do. Otto von Bismarck and Realpolitik, that was European,and Tao Tse Ting.
BeavChris
Sounds like we're having a Europooooor discussion right now.
BArt-Head
Yes, and Art of War, and Lao Tze, was Oriental, and
BeavChris
Don't use that word in our show.
BArt-Head
Henry...yes. That's a loaded term.
And Henry Kissinger was not born an American. What Americans like to say is that we are cool, our ideals. You can't,
BeavChris
It's like a train that's like being fixed. It's just moving, right? Whereas you want a great reset. Also very problematic to say because our context. Back into what?
BArt-Head
I want a final solution.
Not. No. I, let's go back to Europe for a sec.
BeavChris
So I feel that's why you can get more upset.
BArt-Head
No I'm not saying you can't make mistakes. But I'm saying that the way you make decisions and the way you correct mistakes are important. There, there are some instances where you can say, I need to make an omelet, so I will break some eggs.
There are proper times to say that. There are other times when you're engineering, where you follow a procedure until it breaks, and then you fix it. But there are also some human interactions where one man setting himself, one group of people setting themselves up to silence others and treating them as best case scenario, collateral damage.
I'm sorry, our algo. Was not finely tuned enough to differentiate you from a bot. That's the best case scenario. And there's, there's more, there's worse ways to characterize that, which go into the realm of George Orwell in 1984. Doublespeak, like that kind of
BeavChris
Oh yeah, I think the creatives know what doublespeak is, but I think that's just society. And we are a reflection of society.
BArt-Head
And I also think it's important when we encounter doublespeak, that there is enough space for people to throw eggs. Throw tomatoes, throw shoes, blow raspberries, make satire, make biting wordcel comments. These are all part of a free society. Some people might disagree, but I live in New York City and there are graffiti artists who express themselves.
BeavChris
So are we the graffiti artists? So far it seems like it.
BArt-Head
So I don't exactly know where we sit, but spammers are similar to graffiti artists. And so you have people who don't
BeavChris
Noooo, that's insulting to graffiti artists.
BArt-Head
So now I'm insulting the artists. Let me pick no, then let's be clear that. People who consider art as spam, like the, apparently the 50 percent of people who vote in the poll that consider certain kinds of things as spam sometimes are similar to people who consider graffiti art or folk art or emergent art that has not yet reached mainstream acceptance. As things that should stay out of their sight, there are certain people who
BeavChris
this is interesting, right? Because I feel actually, they have finally touched on a nerve and it's not the one we expected. Oh, and by the way, Adrienne says, is there a disclaimer that being in the audience means we don't have to endorse the content?
BArt-Head
I want to say 100%. In fact, being in the audience means you dissent against what art says. Being a co host means you do not have to endorse the content.
BeavChris
Exactly. If I'm endorsing the artist thing, oh god this is a terrible job. I think what really touched my nerve recently is, instead of the whole power badge censoring content dilemma, it's tipping, trying to hide tipping.
And cast storage. I feel like those two things have like really touched the nerves of people. Very much like taxation or something. I feel like there's these ideological topics that I think are very much like in the grey zone of like nuance and debate. But when it comes to having to pay for more storage, that's something we all don't like.
BArt-Head
First, they came for the trade unionists. But nobody spoke up. Then they came for the tippers. Then no one spoke up. Then they came for the storage costs. So think, these things are all on a spectrum. And related for sure. And of course like we do have a free society where we can put on silly wigs and make silly content.
And, yeah that's allowed. And we can annoy people with our casts. That's allowed and it happens. Maybe it's not something that people like, but we like, it happens. There is spam and people get annoyed and people get worked up and people feel some kind of way. So yes, they're like we have dissent.
I think it's important that people are able to speak, identify and describe their source of dissent as well as express their values. So it's very frustrating to me that it's very important to people to get an incremental amount more of storage for what we are paying. When, like last night, I thought that we've been given a vision of a future where there can be free magic internet money supporting artists and poor people and entirely 100 percent self sovereign.
And people want to crush it. People want to crush that possibility. Because of arguments like, mute word, people are too lazy to use mute words.
BeavChris
So I like how you're just like calling DWR people.
BArt-Head
No. DWR said most users do not bother to use the mute words. So it's not that DWR is
BeavChris
That is true.
But here's the thing that's why doublespeak is so powerful, because when I read that, I was like, yeah, that's true. It's using truth to obscure another truth, which I think is super interesting as a technique.
BArt-Head
When you hear most other people, yeah, most people, when you hear most other people are lazy, You think, oh, yeah, I'm lazy too.
BeavChris
That's correct.
BArt-Head
When I hear it, I think, I'm going to cut my nose off to spite my face to prove to you how un lazy I am. I'm gonna, I'm gonna mute every word I can think of and prove that I can mute things. Like, when I hear that people are lazy, my unique reaction
BeavChris
What do you think happened in your childhood that makes you contrarian?
BArt-Head
Yeah, there is a contrarian streak, which, I say it's American, but obviously not because many Americans will not bother to mute words.
I do want to be very clear of, in my head, is that there are trade offs. So laziness, not laziness, let's call it convenience.
BeavChris
Yeah, convenience
BArt-Head
comes at a cost and that cost is perhaps tipping to reward art. For, so it was presented to us that users don't like a feed that's full of tipping casts and users will not use mute words and users don't complain, they just churn.
So therefore, Farcaster lover, if you want Farcaster to survive. You must accept that tipping will die. Or, tipping will have much harder headwinds.
BeavChris
And I think this is interesting, right? Because you've complained about all sorts of things, which I think always think you are in the minority and that you will like, will churn, right?
You represent the type of people who churn out of ideology. But this time with the whole tipping, hiding thing, I'm like, Ooh, this actually might get them to change their mind because there's enough average users who are unhappy with that choice. Oh, wait, Fufu says I want Tipping to die too.
BArt-Head
Yeah.
BeavChris
But I don't know ,I think Tipping doesn't annoy me. What annoys me is the AI responses. I'm like, that should be filtered out. And they've done a pretty good job with hiding those replies. Hopefully no one's caught in the stray. But then I feel like they haven't even tuned in to be that sensitive yet, because only half of the AI responses get filtered out.
BArt-Head
If you are caught in the AI filter, as it gets ever tighter and tighter, and there's no power badge to complain about, what can you do?
BeavChris
Oh, I see. It's even worse.
BArt-Head
In some senses, it's even worse. In some senses, it's better. There are trade offs. Absolutely. I think my general point is that there are prices to convenience, and maybe they're not borne by the people who are the recipients of the convenience, right? And so it's important to think in terms of mechanism design, that these choices are balanced in a way that's healthy and fair. So if your North star is. Growing DAU, and you're making choices to grow DAU. Then there are different choices that you have to make to achieve that.
If your North Star is killing spam, then, if that becomes an existential issue based on some determination. Then you have to make other choices and, the sequence of these things matters as well and the limited resources to, to deal with. You, I asked myself, why do we build payments and then remove the priority badge and replace it with a spam filter?
And then maybe get to the spam bots at a later time or not, like there are different reasons for sequencing things in certain ways to try to optimize in a multidimensional fashion for things. And, there's also this
BeavChris
You shared a hypothesis with me in our telegram chat.
BArt-Head
I don't know if this is what you're referring to. So my interpretation of every decision. is that Warpcast is a status as a service product.
BeavChris
Yeah, did you all know that? Y'all in the chat you're part of a status as a service product. Do you feel status y? Yeah,
BArt-Head
Christin has a very strong reaction to that. And I have to share with our listeners that I have very different reactions. And I'll share some personal information.
BeavChris
Actually, I don't even know what this reaction is.
BArt-Head
Yeah.
BeavChris
Tell me more about my reaction, then your reaction.
BArt-Head
Yeah, your reaction is a bit shocked that you're part of this, the high status group. And my personal reaction is, I have always been high status. And coming to Farcaster, I have gifted everybody with my presence of being high status. This pandering To people like Kristen of low status seems a little bit strange to me, but I accept it because, I like Kristen and I like her as part of the conversation, but if there was none of this, it would just be
BeavChris
Speaking of cutting off noses by face, you're also telling me you want to delete your account and start over from fresh. Oh! I see ,
BArt-Head
right
BeavChris
see you you want your own home.
BArt-Head
No I want to be like Siddhartha, who was born a prince, and it was not enough for him. And so he sat under a tree and then he gave away all his belongings, and eventually you had
BeavChris
me a podcaster, monastic.
BArt-Head
Look I never knew that hanging out with you, Christin, would take me down this path, but this path of of searching for enlightenment. By giving away my belongings is, has become extremely appealing. Oh, sorry, go back to status as a service. I've been part of different groups.
BeavChris
The status as a service world, but what's happening is that you're creating your own sense of status identity by making anti status to be the status. It's like the monkey king that can't escape the Buddha's hand.
BArt-Head
Whoa. So like Justin of Quidli said in one of the very nice castimonials, we have an anti cool kids club, cool kids vibe. But my point is, I have my status, whether or not Merkle gives it to me or not. And so do other people, so do other people.
And your choices of how you interact and move and carry yourself convey that and demand that or allow other people to treat you without it. And that to me is natural, a natural part of free human interactions. The part where it gets unnatural is for a small subset of people to decide for the larger group that certain people should not have that status.
But, Warpcast is a status as a service product, which is, it's a feature, not a bug, that it exacerbates inequality and, poor Gini coefficients, whatever you want to call it. It is a feature. And so all these people who say I deserve to be seen, I want to support that because that's how you become seen.
BeavChris
So like Ryan Brian had some recent shitcasting about this, right? Did you see where he was like?
BArt-Head
Let's recap. So this is Unlonely Brian.
BeavChris
Yeah, Unlonely Brian.
BArt-Head
Where he was on the auto follows list.
BeavChris
Yeah, something like that. And then he was like, wait, why did I get dropped off? And then I think he said he was on a phone call with Dan.
And then he, I don't know maybe he's just taking a piss out of it. But he said, you can, you have to follow this list of mandates cast in channels. But essentially, you also made the quip in our chat that like, the behavior that is most rewarded with status is one that is most presentable to VCs.
BArt-Head
Sure. Yes. There are individuals who are very presentable on Farcaster. That's also why I like being here is to rub shoulders with very reputable and high quality individuals like that. That's a good thing. And there are people who get, I think your phrase, not my phrase, was there are teacher's pets. Who gets, who the teacher calls on to show the other students this is how how to get ahead by, doing things this way. And some of, some people revel in it because it's great to be identified as doing it.
BeavChris
It feels really nice to be featured. I gotta say that myself,
BArt-Head
Making a, making the right life choices. It's a good thing. That's a good thing. And yet,
BeavChris
there is this teacher's pet dynamic that you don't like.
BArt-Head
No I hate this implicit power dynamic. And yeah, one more thing before we move. We, I think we have to move and pay some bills, but,
BeavChris
yeah, which is related to this topic. So luckily you'll be a less rough transition than normal.
BArt-Head
There was talking about teacher's pets. Everybody who was a kid. And was a teacher's pet learns how to respond because, get some reaction from it. You get some benefits and it comes with some, some other things. So you gotta be, you gotta be cool. You gotta, you If you want to be amongst the cool kids and sit at the cool seat at the lunch table, you can't be too nerdy or too geeky or too alone.
Maybe that's the, maybe that's the main thing is you can't be too by yourself. If you haven't found your tribe, like you have a hard time, you actually, maybe in some environments can completely be nerdy, geeky, into Hyperion and science fiction and still find your tribe like that's great. That's a healthy.
BeavChris
Yeah, I don't think that's a mechanism that works against this. I understand what you mean, right? It's like they're instead of a normal social platform where your dynamic is only with your audience of choice. Now we have this additional dynamic with what the Merkle team determines to be palatable.
And it's like a dual dynamic that we need to deal with. But it's also the price of government, right? If you want roads, am I a libertarian? It's very controversial. But if you want the basic amenities that they are providing you have to follow a little bit of the social norms of this tribe, right?
BArt-Head
I guess you are, you're totally, yeah.
And so human history shows us that there are many competing versions of What the government needs to provide and what is more efficient and appealing to emerge out of society. And there's there's however many years of history of showing different experiments.
And in fact, right now there's a great powers conflict arising of competing visions of how much you want to allow to emerge and how much you want to be controlled. And if there is something that has overreach, especially in decentralized social, people can make their choices with their time, attention, their feet, their wallets, their everything.
And so if there is high churn, that's a metric to follow of the decisions, if they were different, might bring you out of a high churn situation.
BeavChris
Speaking of voting with your feet, someone was proposing to me that he I think, my actual concern, can I say, what do you think I'm going to say?
Is that for all the threats, all the unhappiness that he's accumulating here, this person here is actually thinking about leaving us. And I've been going, Oh, my God so these are like the next three episodes has the implicit thing of is this going to be the last season of the show? So please stay tuned to see whether we can collectively convince this person.
But then you are also thinking about alternatively deleting your account and starting over from scratch. So therefore you are free, you are a true free agent, in a sense, and able to start over without any Merkle influence, right?
BArt-Head
The argument is that you vote with your feet. If you don't like it, you can GTFO, right? So if you're not willing to GTFO, then, you gotta, you're complicit.
BeavChris
Yeah so part of your GTFO plan is to use LunchBreak. com, our sponsor for this episode. Tell us more.
BArt-Head
Yeah, so LunchBreak is sponsoring this episode. And I asked Borodutch what he wanted us to say about the product. And he said try it, and then tell us what you think.
So he shared with me two links, which I'll share in probably the show notes. One is a do, I didn't want to do it. I just wanted to take his money and read some words off a script. But he like threw it back at me in a very classic farcasteradmin. eth meta-troll. He said, here's a Dune dashboard and here is a smart contract, smart guy.
So I'll share the Dune contract, sorry, the Dune dashboard, which shows you the activity that has been going through lunchbreak.com. Okay. and the smart contract, which you may read if you can read solidity code and you may discuss, in open because it is open and learn from people in the community that are also interested to learn, dissect and understand.
And so I signed up for lunchbreak.com. My, my findings are that it is, it allows you to link. Your Farcaster, X, LinkedIn, Facebook accounts, and I linked my Farcaster account. It was straightforward and as expected. It carries with it an embedded account abstraction wallet, which is through Privy. And I just have to say upfront, that makes me extremely comfortable.
It's not safe because safe is a binary thing, but it makes me very comfortable that Borodutch and Jason Kim do not have my private keys. They are handled by the account abstraction framework that Privy has published and is used in many different cases, including Drakula, which people might be familiar with.
And so you have to fund your smart wallet, which is an isolated source of funds. You can send funds in, but to send funds out, you have to sign. And so I sent some funds in and then I spent some funds to buy different lunchbreak. com seats. And you sign in the app to, to to spend your own money and you purchase a seat, which is, which gives you some public rights and some private rights, including things that show up on the Dune dashboard.
So what they've built is a mechanism with some ponzification games where early people buy seats for cheaper than people who buy later, but if more people sell, the price goes down and you can pick things up cheap after people have sold. And there are messaging features. And one thing that I liked, I did, I cranked it up.
To message someone, you have to pay money. And so I, you can specify how much it costs. Now Christin is low status, so she, it costs less money to message her. I am high status, so it will cost you a lot of money to message me. In fact, more money than it costs to buy a seat, which also allows you to message me.
But if you want to just message me without buying a seat, that's fine. It'll cost you some money. And I have used that to allow myself to turn my notifications wide open. People might know that I've turned notifications off for many things because they're often unwanted compared to my preferred workflow, but if someone's going to pay that much money, then I've turned the notifications wide open and I confirmed that they work.
So if you want to buzz my groin. You may pay money and buzz my groin. And if you don't, that's fine.
BeavChris
The chat likes the tagline, considering how he had demoed the lunch break at FarCon from his groin region.
BArt-Head
Yeah, I'm sure in their product meetings, they never considered that this would be a utility feature of the product. But it, it happens to be a permissionless use of their product is to give myself some groin buzzes for money. Very nice.
So my, my, my key takeaways are you get to participate in some Ponzi games. You get to purchase access to people and you get to port your social graph. Here's a demonstration of picking up your social graph and applying it in an entirely different context. I will add also that I've been following these builders for a while and, I'm interested to see the spit and polish of their products. And, this app feels very nice. The messaging works as expected. It's a brand new product, so there's going to be hiccups, but it's a very solid launch in my biased and purchased opinion, everyone is free to go and try this product.
There's other products out there, which, we will discuss at different times, but that's, that was my experience with with looking at it and I encourage people to actually look at the smart contracts. See what, and then ask questions because there are such smart people on Farcaster that, I remember in previous iterations of smart contract launches Borodutch or Farcasteradmin has a personality that encourages people to take apart his contracts and try to take him down. And, I want
BeavChris
you both share.
BArt-Head
Yeah he's a master. And I'm just the, a little grasshopper. I think that's a positive part of building in on chain is that your smart contract has to be revealed. So if there's funny business, you can see it. And if people have differing opinions, that's illuminating too, because opinions are opinions. They're like, everyone has one.
And smart contracts are smart contracts. This one in particular is a proxy contract, which means that it can be upgraded and changed, which means also that by linking it and making it public, people can watch, like, it immediately. I'm going to use all of my tools to be notified right away if the smart contract changes, because that's a required step to rug pull, is to change the smart contract.
BeavChris
I feel like it's very well designed, very slick. It has utility on top of being a social graph trading card kind of game. And I would love to see everyone else on it. So it's not so it's not just me
BArt-Head
plan. My plan is. Yeah. I can see lots of dreams and visions of a world of flying cars and lush greenery and glass bubbles that we all live in.
And in one of those worlds, you can take your social graph and move it to another context, and it's, it's not seamless, it's not super convenient because People are incentivized to, to make lock in, but it's possible if you overcome some hurdles. And so what I saw in this, and maybe, other people will not want to do this, but I have fun group chats on Warpcast with my friends.
And if we want to have those fun group chats in a place which maybe has better encryption, we can do it. Or maybe that provides different things that are more aligned with my values than I can because people happen to also be there. That's a good
BeavChris
I think it's a catch 22, right? Because if you vote with your feet and leave, then you build your own insular island of people who think like you.
And in a way then people are less exposed to your dissent. Which I think is like a healthy, gesture- y way for people to be exposed to different ideas,
BArt-Head
absolutely. There's there's different platforms that are better for building your comfortable silos. Of not being challenged like I don't like to be at home and be challenged by my kid.
I want him, I want my home to be a place where my word is law, but unfortunately that doesn't happen because kids are kids. But if I want a space where nobody ever challenges me ,maybe that it's good to have that in another space. And then, I'm not saying that Warpcast is a space where no one ever challenges people because it's definitely a space where people challenge people and tease and meme and try to bring people down, but it's not as much as other spaces which expose ideas, like
BeavChris
Yeah, this is already the best space.
BArt-Head
The fact that it's not an extreme doesn't make it the best, but it is, it's good. I hear what you're saying. It is a good place. I don't disagree and I have as much skin in the game as you do of bags and products and reputation and onchain things and public things as you do.
BeavChris
Exactly.
BArt-Head
It's a good place.
BeavChris
Yeah. So speaking of dealing with imposed hierarchy the other products I want to talk about today are humankind candles. As many of, Samantha has a corporate day job and much of their passion is expressed through Sam now starting her, their candle business and candle making. So I think we all have,
BArt-Head
Sam likes candles?
BeavChris
Yes, correct. I believe that Sam is a crazy candle person. And I think that's the magic of this place, right? Is that you could start an entire small business based on just one platform alone. And I think that's why many of us are still Hanging around like there is the camaraderie and there's also still entrepreneurial opportunities.
So humankind makes dual layered candles like getting two different scoops of ice cream. And Sam has launched a hyper sub. So if you haven't checked it out already, go check out the new candle hyper sub where you can buy candles and potteries with crypto. And it also allows you access to a really fun group chat that I'm a part of as well. And now it would be
BArt-Head
What's the key date?
BeavChris
The what date?
BArt-Head
The important date for that Hypersub
BeavChris
oh, it's already live.
BArt-Head
Oh, if you join before August 3rd, they have offered shared discounts.
BeavChris
Oh sorry. I'm getting to that!
BArt-Head
Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
BeavChris
Yes. So if you until August 3rd, you will get shared discounts on other hypersubs from some of our friends. YB, Priyanka, Laurieann and Marjorie. So this is one of the, I think probably one of the best group deals on hyper sub right now. Please do go check it out. You can check out the slash humankind channel, which I believe will allow you access to the HyperSub frame. And if not, you can always go to HyperSub itself. I feel like, there's so much going on. Good stuff going on that I understand your frustration of as someone who is high status of always not having to live under impositions of other people, which is something that I've always done. So I think that bothers me less because I'm just like, that's always been the case.
So my expectations of freedom maybe are just lower. But, I think there's still plenty to see. And as every week the meta changes, which I think bothers you because everything you complain about actually suddenly improves. But in the ways that you think are annoying because they don't prove you right, they only fix things.
But I think it may still change in the next few weeks.
BArt-Head
Yeah, you did ask me what would, what would make me really want to stay.
BeavChris
Yeah,
BArt-Head
and I don't remember what I said. Do you remember what I said?
BeavChris
More actual DAU.
BArt-Head
More users.
BeavChris
Yeah.
BArt-Head
I would, I would say, I'd almost put as a, like a, out there challenge. If there is a Japanese version of Warpcast in the next couple of weeks. That would be a real skin in the game. Demonstration of product prioritization that would surprise me in a highly positive.
BeavChris
Like a Japanese app? Or like a localization option for the app or something?
BArt-Head
No, an app experience which is tuned to the particular demands of one non English community, like in tune with, there's lots of specific concerns that they have.
BeavChris
If there's a polymarket bet on this, I will not bet on this happening.
BArt-Head
And to be fair, like you were saying, things happen. So longcast was beneficial to the Japanese community. Because for whatever accident of history, of tech history, it takes more bytes to store characters in languages other than English.
BeavChris
Oh, yeah.
BArt-Head
And so 320 characters in English was like, it was fewer than 320 in emojis for sure, right? But if all your writing is in Japanese language, in Japanese script, Then you only have, 160 characters, and Japanese is partially phonetic, so you can't really express that much in 160. Longcast helps them, for sure. And that's great. But there are other issues that they have expressed that are quite important.
BeavChris
And speaking of Japanese community, another like upstart is our very own JRF or Jacob. Because many of you might have seen this like weird emoji thing that he's doing right now called characters. Which is an example of something that like an individual like made up. And it's super popular with the Japanese community, apparently.
Probably because it's very reminiscent, right? Because of the whole Japanese influence on emoji development and using ASCII to draw really cute characters. It's like totally their thing. So I was really happy to see that the apparently Japanese community have came over and then called JRF J-chan and then they have a cute little thing together where they, auction characters and have a lot of fun.
So I think. This is an example where I don't think we can expect the Merkle team to be in charge. Like it is, build your own client, but maybe like one down, like one more realistic thing is build your own project and seeing that, you can engage in community in that way.
BArt-Head
Yeah. The fact that there are success stories is something to be celebrated and to be learned from and to, for the community to try to replicate. And encourage inasmuch as It's interesting to them to encourage. So there is one other negative.
BeavChris
You have to be Diogenes and be the person to throw crap and to point out what is wrong.
BArt-Head
I'm far from Diogenes. I think even Borodutch is far from Diogenes. But like the community has to push for it, support it, and replicate it.
The fact, that there are positive stories, if everybody preferences convenience, or not thinking, or choosing not to look deeply because it's too hard. Then what ends up happening is these positive examples get lost, and the opportunities get missed, and you get more churn, and then the science experiment falls.
So I'm happy, I'm very happy that in our podcast, We are putting onchain many examples of positive efforts that are things that we like, that we want to see more of, that they sometimes happen to be our friends, sometimes not, but sometimes they are. There are things that we tend to enjoy seeing more of.
BeavChris
Yeah. So I think we should end it here. Of course, if you can see our show notes, this is only one fraction, only what I wanted to cover today. But I think we'll have to wait till next week and I'm sure it'll be a new better meta by then.
BArt-Head
All right. Thank you all for joining us. Once again, we want to give a shout out to our permissionless partners. Streaming on Unlonely. We're minting our episodes on Base via Zora. We have clips on Drakula. We have our blog posts, including our transcripts, on Paragraph. And our online presence is managed by SeemoreTV. We have a soon to be unleashed collab for some Web3 native scheduling and notifications. And our intern has been putting in the work, bcbhshow.eth. Please follow that account. Engage with it. And give feedback, because the intern is just a half formed personality and character.
BeavChris
Yes, alright, and then thanks to our sponsor, lunchbreak.com. Alright I hope you all have a wonderful day. Observe your hidden, your participation in hidden social dynamics.
And have a good one.
BArt-Head
Bye bye!
