First thing I’d want to figure out is the tech. Next, I’d be interested in the creators that understand their memes, and are open to scaling network effects around them.
I wrote an essay diving into the ‘creator’ side of onchain culture earlier this week.
https://mirror.xyz/lght.eth/vWmKcZ4E2ja6PkgNq6zBCD7uFfPwh9pfor5GS4pfQDE
Now I’m trying to think through the ‘collector’ side of the equation.
Onchain - Culture
If the creator supplies the memetic material by which a culture incubates itself around, then the ‘collector’ is a microcosm-agent for the ‘collective’ flowering. Drake makes a song, but it only becomes of cultural relevance when fans spread the energetic-fire.
Thinking along these lines, onchain culture only becomes a real thing when a similar dynamic evolves into the skin of onchain dynamics.
Bottlenecks
@Enjoyoor did us a huge service pointing out the elephant in the room.
In the spirit of full-picturism I also feel there is a second elephant needing addressing.
In short, we have a scenario that looks something like this:
creators see potential for a new way of life and real monetary gain
collectors see potential for a new way of life and real monetary gain
both want to do the bare minimum and expect the other to take care of the rest
As a result, scammers see this naive way of thinking and successfully grift capital, attention, resources, and energy from the market through false promises.
On the collector side of things this means capital and attention flows away from artists. On the creator side of things, this means meme-distillation and the foundations for network effects flow away from the collectors. It’s a net-negative scenario.
Fine Tuning
As a creator of nearly a decade, I feel like I have some sense of the upgrades we need to make for onchain culture.
They include, but are not limited to:
authentic creative material
well thought out individual vision
ability to articulate both creative material and vision
technical proficiency in main medium and supplementary tools
willingness to network and provide memetic equity to early supporters
thoughtful branding
an onchain discography
If the aforementioned are on the table for a creative, and they have a reasonable amount of grit and true character, then the missing links are the microcosm-agents responsible for the ‘collective flowering’.
Thinking in the meme-context of imports/exports, the corresponding upgrades I can think of for collectors are:
authentic curation interest
easily differentiated individual voice
ability to articulate curation interest and voice
technical proficiency in curation of the medium-of-interest
willingness to network and accept memetic equity as early adopter
thoughtful branding
an onchain collection
Hypotheticals
If I were one of these collectors the next thing I’d want to do is:
acquire a decent amount of the creator’s work (paid and through curation agreements)
have them on spaces, podcasts, and use my ‘collector’ brand to help contextualize their work to the market
partner with gallery/showcases to share the work & curate experiences
connect them with other collectors and curators I felt may resonate
discuss/build network effects on the deeper memes connecting us all within their work
I asked this a while ago:
I still disagree with the majority here. But, if you think of everything we have unpacked thus far and reexamine the question above, one could say that @Nouns is an example of a creator (@Gremplin) and collector (@4156) scaling network effects on top of the inherent memes that brought them together. This is the essence of onchain culture as far as I can tell; merging memes and markets in a way like never before.
With no permission necessary.
