A few weeks ago, while discussing the audience and what users said about Lens, we received the most excellent feedback we could wish for: people saying that Lens is for girls.

Given that our Ecosystems and Growth teams are actually ran by girls, we were stoked by this. We work really hard to create an inclusive and friendly culture around Lens, and it’s great to see that people are noticing it. 

Lens is for girls, and Lens is for culture. Lens is for everyone that chooses a better internet and a global, diverse community. 

Onchain games for onchain people and the rebirth of multi-user dungeons

this cursed machine

Last weekend I spent an inordinate amount of time playing This Cursed Machine. Created by Moving Castles, this MUD (Multi User Dungeon) very memetic game is raw, critical and just very fun. The experience finds you in a fulfillment centre where you need to “produce” different products (a lot of them a bit gross) in order to achieve financial freedom. The game is a tongue in cheek commentary on crypto’s greed and society’s pressures. You can play the tutorial for free and try to pass several levels before you need to buy credits, so everyone with a wallet can really give it a shot (or many!) for free. Every day, at 4pm CET, the Twitter account for the game drops new items one needs to produce in exchange for $BUGS, the in-game onchain currency, and everyone battles to produce them before they ran out. 

Multi User Dungeon games date from the 70s. Coincidentally a few months ago I helped write an exhibition text with my husband, for a group show he curated that was called M.U.D in homage to these games, and got to explore this world.  “Early online adventure games often based on genres like fantasy or science-fiction, technically speaking, MUDs were text-based software that accepted connections from many simultaneous users. Starting in the 1970s, MUDs were the predecessors of contemporary Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs or MMOs). The era of the MUD’s emergence and prominence can be seen as an in-between time, which bridged the emergence of the commercial internet, and earlier networked systems like Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and academic internet.” - the full text is here if you are interested.

In the context of highly scalable networks, MUDs, MMOs/ MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Games) will experience an onchain resurgence. Many of these games are de facto social networks as well. How many times have we heard stories about people meeting on Second Life, Elder Scrolls and or Farmville?

I am super excited to experience a world that’s able to explore the intersection between gaming and social, onchain. And I think we’re getting closer and closer to that moment. People are already sharing gaming experiences on Lens, in the Orb /gaming club, for instance. Gaming streams are popping up directly from bloomers.tv as well.

Believe me, Web3 social and games are a match made in heaven. We are all chronically online to work and play, after all.

me on my way to play games onchain on the weekend instead of touching grass

And because we are, as Boys Club says, chronically online - here’s the best of the internet this week: 

Read: 

• Freshly published today, Benoit wrote this incredible article on raving culture in the web3 world, including our iconic rAAVEs and the Milady Raves.

• Bankless published a guide on $BONSAI, helped by my guide on $BONSAI, perfect collaborative moment <3

• The All About Orb guide - Orb shipped many updates this week, like club wallets and easy profile minting and onboarding, so refreshing your knowledge is a must!

Culture: 

• Fini’s teaser up for mints, can you guess what it is? 

• Supersigil’s LP Spectres announcement and community experiment

• Sound of Fractures’s open call, create SCENES with the musician!  

• Kay’s Met Gala commentary (here’s one of the posts)

• Cybernovae’s regionalist manifestation took my breath away

• Ben Alistair’s lyric visualizer commissioned by Todd Pham

• A Social Contracts remembrance post - last year Arikan did this great NFT project to mint your social graph based on the NFTs in your wallet.

• Definn building a Bonsai art gallery

• Chloee’s Slut Pop 

Laughs:

• Nstalgiaxpress with the crypto adjacent bro that you always had a crush on

• Infinati giving us $NOTHING

• Testnet Baddie by Lindao is the best thing to happen to my week.

• Daisy winning the hot takes game

• The song for the Lens bots - if you can’t beat them, serenade them

• Aave went to the Met Gala

HOT NEW LENS USERS

• HEROGLYPHS, the new 0xMaki project

• Artist Josh Sauceda

• Artist Bimpster

• Not a user, but a club - Yeche Lange gallery (trust me and watch that space!)

• The hypertalented Selene

• Mathilda Yuriko, creator from Tokyo

• Internet Persona

• Not new, but Jewels came back this week!

We’re now fast approaching the Berlin Blockchain Week, where we’ll host afk Berlin, an event to celebrate ideas, good vibes and a major announcement we got coming up. If you happen to be in Berlin on May 23rd, please join us. More details about the event in our blog - and the invite link here. 

Till Next Week, when We Touch Grass Again :) 

Get your Lens profile here and start exploring the garden!