The Financialization of Human Beings

the fucking future of investments. Bro. Hey, Bro, you're fired. Yeah, that's fair. This is it could happen here podcast about how things are bad, sometimes a podcast about how to make them less bad. Today we're talking about the former how things are bad, and we're we're talking about financialization um and specifically the financialization of like human being is in the endeavor to create art? Uh and so artis artist a broad broad term. I mean, I said the

endeavor to I'm sure they all want to be creating art. Well, this won't make any sense to people yet, so I'm gonna I'm gonna give a brief overview. There's an article in the Atlantic that dropped on November twenty nine, called what Happens when You're the Investment. It's by Rex Wouldbury Um who I hate um. So as a note, okay, let let me just get the the the nut of the article is, and that there's been a couple of

other articles on this guy. His name is Alex mass mesh Um and he is a French kid, I think, who decided to tokenize himself. And what that means is so, like you've got the etherium blockchain, right, he basically he's he's putting he's carving up aspects of his like potential future earnings, and he's putting those on the Ethereum blockchain as like tokens that people can buy. And the idea is that this kid had wanted to like start a business and be an entrepreneur, but he didn't have any money.

So using like on the ether blockchain, he turned himself into tokens basically like his potential future earnings and his time. And basically people are able to buy up coins effectively, I mean not coins, but tokens shares. Yeah yeah, dollar sign Alex is like the name of the token which basically shares they're buying. He's turned himself essentially into a

publicly traded company kind of um. And holders of his coins are like, he's splitting up fifteen percent of his income for the next three years basically among people who like hold his coins. And he raised like twenty grand this way. Um. And it's not just like it's not just his future earnings that are being kind of tokenized. You can also use tokens to like buy retweets from him, or one on one conversations or and here's a line

I love and introduction to someone in his network. And and it's the overall idea because there's you can find some other good articles. Good as an interesting word to use. You can find other interesting, fascinating articles about this this idea, which is like human beings tokenizing their future earning potential um in order to uh raise money um. And And it's uh the way this is usually sold as a

good thing. In fact, I should probably just read a quote from this Atlantic article to give you an idea of how uh mass measure is or of how um um the art. The author of the article, Rex good Wouldbury, is is trying to sell this ship. We all have the slightly annoying friend who insists that she knew about so and so before they were even famous. When it comes to Taylor Swift, I'm that friend, and I'm more

than slightly annoying about it. I was a Taylor fan in her pre fearless full on country days, years before Conway interrupted her on stage at the v m AS. But in our current constructive fandom, I'm treated no differently than a fan who discovered Swift on SNL a few weeks back. This would be different, though. If Taylor had done what mass Measure did and turned herself into an investment,

she could have issued a social token. Whereas non fungible tokens or n f t s are so called because of the uniqueness of a digital asset, social tokens are fungible. In other words, each Alex token is interchangeable with every other Alex token, just like a dollar bill can be traded for any other dollar bill. Say Taylor issued had issued her own token, Let's call it a dollar signs swift, and say she had sold dollar signed Swift to her

biggest fans. Yeah, say I was one such fan. Over time, as Taylor's popularity grew, the value of the Swift token would have appreciated. As an early believer, I would have shared in the financial upside of her growing fame. The Swift token I had brought for a hundred dollars in two thousand seven might be worth a hundred thousand dollars today. The Taylor Swift mini economy would serve both the singer

and early fans like me. As an artist, Taylor could have funded her work by selling dollar signs or Swift tokens. She might not have needed to sell ownership of her master's and she might not have been forced to re record her albums to take back control over her art. Taylor's fans, for their part, would have been rewarded for a decade of patronage. We're all evangelists for our favorite artists, yet we capture little of the value that we helped create.

And then there's a lot that, like I find unsettling there.

One of them is the idea that, like, yeah, the fact that I was a fan of someone earlier means I should get some sort of reward for it, Like I should be treated differently because I liked it earlier, which you might recognize, like the thing that everybody has been shipping on for like fandoms for years now, like it's been a it's been a huge thing where like, yeah, you're being an asshole if you're if you're talking about like if you think you have some additional ownership of

Star Wars because you watched it ten years before the fans today and so you like different stuff in it. Like that's we all recognize that as like toxic um. But the the whole argument of this article is that like, no, this is how the entire future of creativity should work. We find unsettling. And it also it also ties into like a really concerning development in paras social relationships of like invest in them, want to buy a conversation with

them in like this really weird way. Um And the fact that young artists are going to be pressured into this kind of thing is really scary. Yeah, because there's like one of the things mass Measure did as like um uh as an experiment, was like allow people who had bought his tokens to make life decisions for him, like tell him when to wake up in the morning and whether or not to eat red meat and stuff

like that. And he stated that like, well, none of this is binding, right, Like I'll i'll I might do what they say, but like I'm not going to do anything crazy or whatever. But also this is like the first iteration of this um. And I like this Atlantic article, which I think is unhinged for reasons we'll get into, but it's purely talking about like, look at this incredibly

successful person. Imagine if they've gotten to be incredibly successful using this method instead, and it might have like spared them this thing. But when I keep thinking about is like, Okay, well, the vast majority of people, like there's no reason to invest in them, Like, yeah, maybe if you come out with a great song or a great video, like, yeah, you could get investments, And I'm sure that could work out.

I'm sure, Like Taylor Swift is a successful enough person, I'm sure she could have found a way to succeed under that system too. But what I think will be much more common because there's no real reason to anticipate that the average person will have an earnings potential. If you give them twenty grand, that's greater than twenty grand. Um, the most likely thing is that like people just buy shares and poor people to make them do fucked up ship. Yeah it's gonna be How would you not how would

that not be where it goes? That's that's that's the only way that this is going to get like used on a large scale. People just selling themselves. People are people are gonna use the ether blockchain to like crowdfund and crowd uh cast a new jackass basically, like it's going It's not going to be like a thousand Taylor Swift's all token izing themselves. It's going to be like millions of people in the Global South issuing tokens to like vote on whether they roll down the hill in

a barrel or in like a fucking porta potty. Like it's just it's a nightmare to me to contemplate people actually adopting this. You know, there's there's a lot of really like the thing I think is the most incredible part about this is that like, okay, so like it basically doesn't matter what like economic theory you used to look at it. It's like every single one of them

tells you something just like absolutely fucked about it. And like you know, because because I mean they're there, there's there's there's some extent to which I look at this and it's like this isn't that much different than the fact, you know, it's like, okay, so you're paying someone to do whatever you want, but like, okay, like that's not that much different than just a job, right, Like it's it's not it's not inherently that much different than the

fact that everyone is forced to just do wage labor. But also, like there's one was interesting things to me that I thought about this when I was what I was reading this was so, do you just know what capitalization is? Yeah? Yeah, so this is this is just capitalizing a person, right, Like it's literally taking a person public effect put putting, turning them into like a tradeable

share and that's like an investment. Yeah, I mean, this is all one of the things that like a Forbes article I found points like this is another kind of

unregulated securities training. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's what's interesting to me about it is that like, okay, so you know, this is also already how accounting wise, every corporation sees a person, right like every every every every person in the asset book is you know, yeah, you know, like a wage is just capitalization, right, It's like how much

will you pay now for this much money? Later you could But it's like people are doing it to themselves now, which is like this, Yeah, you could argue that like elements of this or how like banks treat you when you get a mortgage right um like, but but also that's much more rigorous and limited, like it has like

regulations and it has for how those things work. It's not some like twelve year old getting like like going on to coin base and buying part of you as a joke with your with like his dad's money, right like, because it's like yeah, because what if it's like, there's no law against a seventeen year old I guess if maybe their parents may need to consent, but there's no law against the seventeen year old getting a facial tattoo of like the doors of a concentration camp on their face.

But what if some kid tokenizes himself for forty grand so he can drop an EP and that's what like a bunch of four channers who buy up his his shares want him to do um. And maybe the fucking kid does that because he knows it's going to get him, because his brain is not done and he knows it's going to get him. A bunch of fucking social media clouds and like it's there's a lot of and there's no way to regulate that, Like it's just an inherently

toxic proposition that I don't think the government would. I don't know what side of this the government would even step in on, Like what is the regulation of people deciding I'm letting random strangers who pay me money vote on what I do with my life? What do you ever think? It reminds me of a lot is like the micro lending stuff from the nineties, where it was like, oh, well, we'll like empower these people by we'll go in and uh, We're going to give them like a small amount of

money and they have to pay back. And it was like you know, and and all of the same stuff that you're reading, all the arguments about why this is a good thing are exactly the same as the micro lending ones and that stuff. You know. There there were two ways it turned out. One was basically you get the scenario where both sides are scamming each other, where you know, all the people who are getting these micro launchers, they're just taking the money and walking right like that's

you know that their their their things. Oh this is I can just get money like this and we can just keep I just keep not paying it back, and so I'm scamming them. But then on the other side, you have these people who are like, oh cool, I can give this person this loan and turn them into a debt pion and it and you know, and and the the the really depressing side about it is so that the people who couldn't get away, like I mean, we're literally reduced debt pions. And you know, I mean

there's a huge wave of suicides in India. Probably don't say example is wave of suicides people drinking past a side because they couldn't pay off these loans and so and and the thing that's different about this is that like I mean, ay, you're doing it to yourself. But then be again, there's no regulation. But that also means there isn't any way to force someone to do what you say you're gonna It's it's unclear how it's going to be enforced. And the other thing that is not

clear is like what does losses look like? Like what what happens when someone like you cannot make back on like an investment, But if the investment is a person, how does that work? And if someone's contractually obligated to give a certain share of their income. What happens when there's not enough income for that, like, like you know, so those types of things. Yeah, I mean there's no

answer to that. Uh, And there's nobody like the money that's going to be whatever made in this is going to be made before anyone steps into to try to answer that. If anyone ever does, like, um, it's it's gonna be the next because I think we're I think we're heading for a crash with with n f t s. Like there was just an article today about how what is of nfc T trading is done by like ten percent of people, which further back because the allegations of n f t s is that most of what's happening

isn't people actually buying them. It's people like the same person using multiple wallets basically trying to jack up the perceived value by throwing a bunch of other Internet money that they already have. So these these whales who have like a bunch of crypto gaming the system, and we've

seen some of it. And the biggest n f T S salever, it was like half a billion dollars and it was a guy selling it to himself and then transferring it back into another wallet to try to make it look like it was worth half a billion dollar. There's even though no one had actually really paid that for it. Um so I and I think you know that. And kind of what we've seen with the regulations, the government's annance for n f t s, I think that's

a problem for them in the near future. And I wouldn't be surprised to see this takeoff next, especially given like the creator economy that we're seeing on like the kind of thattk yeah TikTok Like, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a rash of big TikTok stars tokenizing themselves. And like I'm not even sure, I'm I'm I'm sure it would be a mix of the person making the tokens being the one doing the scam and the person

receiving or the people buying the tokens being the one doing. Like, I'm sure it would be a mix of different kinds of exploitation. But it's not gonna be good, I mean, And and just like a t it's gonna make like I don't know, fifty people super rich when they when they first start trying it right like that, that that is that is like when this happens, like when a TikTok star with five million followers, when they do this, they will make boatloads of money. It's just unclear what happens

after that. Yeah, well, Fleet of Mexico. Yeah, I mean that would be the smart thing. That would be the smart thing to do. Yeah. In this Forbes article I found, which is a thousand times better than me, it lay into article like even though it's written by someone I think who's also into crypto, it's just it actually it asks some of these questions we've been talking about UM, and it cites David Hoffman, who's the CEO of a of a token ized real estate platform UM, on what

he sees as some of the problems. Like what he, as a guy who's supports aspects of this kind of thing, sees is the problems with us and uh it's yeah one sec UM Hoffman, returning to his core problem with the personal token model model, Hoffman re emphasized that the assured is an utility that come with some of these tokens don't exist, for with with certain kinds of tokens don't exist, for like these personal tokens. How risky this

investment is is completely defined by the individual. In his disclaimer, he's and he's talking about one of the guys who's token himself, this guy named Kerman. In his disclaimer, he says this is a highly risky investment and that you could lose all your money, which is a terrible thing to say because with personal tokens, the issuer is in complete control over exactly how risky the investment actually is. It's largely up to them whether there are risks or not.

Which is like a kind of illegal securities trading that I don't think we've ever anyone's ever done. Um, Like it's this, it's this fascinating new con where you're literally the you're you're doing securities trading, but instead of it being over a company, it's just you and technically there's no consequences if you just take the money and run.

Like I don't know what kind of contract, Like you couldn't have a contract that says that you could say, they're that you're obligated to pay out your future earnings, but you couldn't have to work, Like that's not enforceable. You can't like contractually obligate someone two to like work, like you're allowed to quit a job. I mean, I guess you could put penalties in it, but I don't,

like none of the current ones have anything. I mean, or they could go to The other option is is that they could go to jail for fraud if they try to shot, if they try to not follow through on the investment. If you say like, yeah, I I invested in you and you said that you would do these things, you didn't do them, Now you can go to prison. That is the other Yeah, and I think that will at some point, like there will be scams

and some of that will come in. But like, none of these current ones, none of them are saying here's my specific I'm going to make this special. It's not like like if you like with a Patreon, right, You're you're paying a little bit at a time on an ongoing basis for a very clear product. Generally is so far these aren't that they're just like I'm gonna try to do something that makes money and if it does,

you get a cut of it. And that's it's so much like there's nothing that's stopping mass Metch from saying like hey, my, my and my attempt didn't work. Uh so we're done. No no money for anybody like that, and I you're not. There's no accounting requirements, there's no there's a bunch of ways in which it's sucked up from a financial except it's not it's not his it's not it's not you're not investing in his business. You're

nesting in him. So even even if even if he takes another job, they're still it seems to be contractually obligated to still get that of his income. Yes, And I think that's that's the area in which I think it would be abusive for the person being token ized, because most people aren't gonna like most people don't make

that much money. So they raise someone manages to like raise five or ten grand and then just winds up for years giving a cut of their income that winds up being more than they got initially to a bunch of like it's almost like a like a payday loan that you've blockchain. Yeah you know, Okay, so this is

this is what I'm thinking about. Because so there's I don't know if I talked about this on the show, but there's a thing in China where they've been kind of cracking down it now for starting nineteen like literally every single app like had a like had a pet a loan thing in it, so like like your flashlight app would have would offer you a pet a loan and it was basically it was yeah, they were there.

Was originally tied in with like people who buy um, you know, I was originally tied in with like like the the services that like their version of Amazon for example, would like, oh, hey, we'll give you a loan so you can buy this, you can order fried chicken. And I was always wondering when this would come to the US, and I think it might never hope, I mean hopefully it never does. And I think it might not just because of how like powerful our petty loan industry is.

But it's like we've we've now invented. It seems like it's gonna happen, but like dumber, like our our version of it is like this thing which is just you know, it's what what if what if paid a loans but on the blockchain? Except you know, I mean when I guess this is the everything you know that that we've been getting at, is that the difference between this being a paid a loan, and this being you scammed a bunch of people is what the enforcement mechanism looks like.

And you know this this this comes back to some other things I think you're interesting about this one is that you know, so the whole the n f T drift right is based on convincing people that there's value in ownership right there, like ownership itself has inherently has value.

And yeah, but but this this is not that this is this is you know, this is going back to know your value value is built on labor, right well, yeah, it's like labor and like like personhood, like like you as a personal brand is the thing that they're trying to get at it. And the thing the thing that's missing here though, is that in order for like you know, in order for like labor to produce value right in this way, there has to be like there has to be a way for you to force them to pay

you like you need you need coercion for it. And if there's no coercion, then you know, you just take a bunch of money and leave. And and that that I think is like this this is going to be the battle over like if this becomes a thing it's going to be you know, the people who buy these things are gonna wind up like trying to you know, I think they're gonna be the ones you try to put your regulation because they're gonna you know, they're gonna

go in. They're gonna be I want to get my money back, and that could end really really really badly, right if you know, I mean it probably will. I like, I don't know how popular I think this will be because I think that I hope this is a maybe if there'd never been like a Patreon or something, but the actual use case of this seems to already be

well served by the existing capitalist infrastructure. Like people, I think more people wanted back a creator's Patreon than they want to like own pieces of a person's time and earning potential like that. That seems like a more niche and weird desire to people than just like, oh, yeah, these guys make a video I like every week, so I'll throw them three dollars. Well, I think I think the difference though, is that pittureon money gets you money

for normal people. This gets you money from like tech bros. And that Yeah that's always yeah, it's it's a grift designed to And I want to dive back into this Atlantic article because it's so bad in such a comprehensive way that I think it deserves analysis. That's what put a pin in what you said. But I want to start with, like how the person writing this this Rex motherfucker, like his his concept of the the history of the Internet. Um,

because it's completely wrong. Quote. We're on the precipice of the third era of the Web. The Web's first era was about information flowing freely. Think Google giving you access to the world's knowledge. Most of us were passive consumers in this era. The second era was the social web Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. People began to create their own content, and that content became the lifeblood of the big platforms. We became active participants,

but the platforms devoured all the profits. The promise of the Internet and the Internet was to erase the gatekeepers. Instead of waiting for a record label to sign you, you could share your music on Spotify, instead of asking a publication to share your words. You could tweet instead of being tapped by a studio execut You could become a YouTuber. What happened is that these platforms became the new gatekeepers. The third era of the web is about

writing the ship. Social capital becomes economic capital. Value no longer accumulates to brokers and intermediaries. That's number one, completely wrong. But one thing. Yeah, the first era of the Internet, I would say, was about the idea that information should flow freely. And Google came in like a decade or

more into that period. Like I had been on the Internet five years before Google hopped into that ship, and Google was actually the start of of the end of that period um And it's it's the idea that, like

the social web, was people creating their own content. Most of the social web's initial capital, and like all of its initial money, came from taking content that people were being paid to make on legacy platforms that had existed before social media, taking that content, putting it on social media, and then monetizing that without paying money back to the

people had made the content. The money in social media did not initially come from people making their own content, and the way that they mean it, like, yeah, you at college humor or whatever, We're making your own content and sharing it on social media. But you've been doing that before social media. Social media just actually made it less profitable eventually. Like, the way he summarizes this is

so wrong because what the social web actually did. And the other thing I'd argue is that the first era of the Internet, the like early days when things are happening on like forums and weird little angel fire websites and like even my Space, um, which I think is kind of my Space, kind of straddles the first in second eras uh, that was fundamentally much more an era of people creating their own content, because the the lifeblood of uh social media today isn't people really making their

own content, it's people reacting to content that other people made. Um. And again it just shows the fact that he's he's summarizing it this way in a way that I think is so wrong and inaccurate to how things actually developed. Uh. Is characteristic of his attitude towards this stuff, where he's kind of seeing the only real meaningful evolutions in in in the Internet through the corporations that monetized it. Um, which is just telling of like how this guy actually

sees the way the Internet has developed. And you will not be surprised to know, Uh, this motherfucker is an investor at Index Ventures. Um. Yeah, Like he's he's he's a guy who's business is capitalizing things, um, and so that's the only way he sees the development of the Internet, even though that's not the accurate way of looking at

how the Internet evolved. And I think I think that there's one more really important thing that he leaves out here, which is that because you know, like we're talking, oh, this is the third age of the Internet, Like no, the third day of the Internet started like I don't know, the mid early mid tends. When I would say when gamer Gate hit is when I would I would I mean, it's going to be a little off, I depend it

depends what it depends what you mean by age. So one of my friends worst in advertising, and he was talking about this where you know, can we can we can talk about like gammer Gate in the sort of fascist moles, but there was something else happening back end, which was the Internet of Things stuff and the Internet things stuff like you know, like nobody it's kind of a I don't know, like I think we mostly think about it's like it's kind of a joke or like

it just sucks, But really what it was was that that that was the period in which people figured out that the thing that the actual money and be made on the Internet was some selling people's personal information and that and there and and the Internet things like just dramatic, like just indescribably increased the amount of data that you

could extract from people. And that that was that's the actual that was the actual change of like like that that that's that's that's the thirty of the Internet, and that the earth of the Internet will last basically for everyone until we destroy it, which is that you know, the commodity is just all of all of the information about who you are, where you go, like what you buy,

who you talk to. That just being sold off to two advertisers is you know, the thing that he's very very carefully not talking about and instead focusing on, Oh, it was users creating content. And it's like no, they the internet just they they sold spying on the entire world. Yeah, And I think there's there's two good ways to to divide the Internet into ages, and the ages would be slightly different each way. One is kind of how you're doing it is the way in which it was monetized, Right,

That's that's that's one way too. And then if that's the case it's going to start with, it was not at all. It was an entirely public project and everybody on it was on it through like a university, and like people did not pay to access it. Other than that you had to be at an institution or a university.

And then like we get to the kind of the dot the era before the dot com boom and of the dot com boom, and then like the early pre social internet stuff like something awful and like having stumbled upon and and whatnot, and like those sending traffic to sites like where I used to wear, cracked and um.

And then kind of the social media, which is the start of as you said, like the data being monitor monetize like individuals data being the thing either that's being directly monetized or it's being used to deliver like target it adds to you. Um. And then there's like if you think about it in terms of content, it's it starts like for the first era wouldn't even involve Google because it would be like the start of us neet up to eternal September in nine and then you know

on from there. Um. But either way, this guy doesn't like everything he says about the history of the Internet is dumb. It's just a very simplified version and you don't actually look at like the interocking systems, um. Because I mean, yeah, I don't know why he describes it this way, because it is it is like it's accurate if you squint and don't think about it. Um. But it's weird because like this article is like it's four

tech bros. So I don't know why he describes it this way because I feel like he could describe it a lot more accurately, um if he if he wanted to. Well, it's something I'm gonna get into. I'm gonna say this point like twice eveniod. I'm gonna get into the neoliberalism episodes and I'm writing, but one of one of the key features of neoliberalisms that they lie is that the neo liberals have to have two versions of what they believe.

They have the version that they tell everyone else, which is completely a lie and is not what they believe at all. And then it has they have the version that they tell to each other, which is what they actually believe, and they completely they contradict each other completely.

They mostly believe things. Everything they say in public is just a complete lie, and that I think that's what he's doing here, which is that this that like that history of the Internet is the one you sell the but consumption because yeah, that that's that's that's the lie you tell people to take money from them. And then he has a thing that he believes but which he will not ever tell you because you know if if if he tells you what like he actually wanted to do,

you would run screaming from the room. And you can you can read between what he wants you to believe. I think is made very clear by how he divides, by the fact that when he starts like dividing up the ages of the Internet, he says, the first one is the time in which people wanted information to be free. And what he's kind of saying by doing that is saying like that was an infant stage of the Internet. And obviously the natural evolution of the Internet is for

every single thing on it to become monetized. And because I also believe the Internet should be every aspect of our lives, like this is a megaverse guy or a metaverse guy, like I think the Internet should should be involved in every aspect of life. That means every aspect of life should be financialized. Um, and that's extremely radical, but it does not sound that way. When you describe

it that way, people's heads go. But like what he's saying is deeply radical, and I think also, like again you want to talk about like the first and not just the early age, because the first people who kind of built the backbone of the Internet were mostly like very radically anti uh capitalizing on Like there was this idea that like it absolutely should be as free as possible.

Like Steve Wozniak, the guy who functionally invented the personal computer, had a background like as a phone freaker, like literally literally robbing phone companies to get like free phone calls and stuff like these, Like most of the early Internet pioneers were like some kind of criminal um. And the early ages of like Internet content being monetized mostly started with people doing ship for free. Like that was how

the people who made money on it. That's how all of my bosses and that's how fucking I got started. Was like you would just start making ship and you would put it out for free, and eventually like that would get enough traffic that you you you you draw

ads to you and whatnot, and you'd make money. But it was always like all of the content that that made the Internet, and all of the content creators who are huge now mostly started um doing something like even it was just like throwing up videos on YouTube, right

or like going on. And that's that's less the case with the zoomers now because a lot of them got started on at things like like Twitch, where the idea is to from the beginning be trying to monetize yourself, and while you're like building a brand, you're constantly monetized.

But that's a really recent change, and I actually I find it kind of unsettling because that was I don't know, it's a mix because I'm certainly not of the I'm not of the of the mind that like, if someone is asking you to do work, you should be getting paid for it. But if you are trying to if you are trying to like build a life as a creator, the best way to do that creatively is to just make the things that you think are cool and then make like if if other people like it, you make money.

Like better things get made than that. That Like that that is the way the best art gets made. I think it's a few things going on here because like the way I think, like I think Actually the reason why he frames it this way is because he's trying to get back to his idea of freedom. Right. He describes like the golden age of the the Internet being information flowing freely. He thinks that the blockchain is a new version of that, So that's why he's framing it in

this way. The second thing is in terms of artists and creators. Um. If you think about like, yeah, like like the when the early age of what he calls like the of what we we kind of all been reframinged to it. Like the second area when like era of like when social media and like content creation like sites are a thing. That's like just use YouTube as an example. Um. Because there was a low saturation and content, it was easier for someone to rise up and gain

a platform. Let's say someone like Bo Burnham, right, who started as just a kid and now is like a very popular comedian. Um. But then YouTube instead of backing creators like that, um, which they did a little bit, but they did not as much. They instead started, uh, Like the thing that happened was like, uh, YouTube really incentivizing sharing like late night content and sharing like like TV clips of TV shows and like using like doing

using legacy media on their platform. And that's the things they really backed, that's the things they really pushed into your feet. It's like tonight show clips. Um. So a lot of those original original content creators kind of got left behind and now are now like just their own are running on their own personal brands. Some of them use Patreon for example. But it's also it's impossible to

do this now because there's an oversaturation of content. The only thing that's done this recently is TikTok because it was a brand new platform. There was again a new opportunity for a lot of kids to gain to gain a lot of audiences really quickly. I mean, I just I to based on what you're saying, I think that like TikTok is the closest to how cool ship happened on the Internet before everything go because because it is

like you're not starting from like everyone starts. I guess knowing you could make money, but that was the same way you start because you're like you're doing a thing, and if that thing takes off, then there's ways to monetize and like that. Yeah, I think that's why probably white bar to white is so popular general. Really, growth on TikTok is pretty Uh, it's pretty organic. It's not, it's not it's not boosted by big brands. Uh, the same way you know, stuff like YouTube is and now

it's probably gonna be edging in that direction. But it's it's it's it's not, it's it's not there yet. So and his argument in this is to get back to just being like a small content creator getting your stuff seen. His solution to this problem of like YouTube and stuff backing like these large like light night shows and backing

like these large like corporately funded things. His solution is that if you're a small if you're a small content creator, you should sell yourself as an asset to other people on the internet. Right, So, because like his his idea is that he wants to get rid of the gate keepers of the Internet and go back to how the Internet was. But his solution for doing that is just by selling you as a person brand to other people on the internet who are like tech bro investors. So

that that's why it's framed this specific way. So I think when we're all like talking about like why does he describe it this way, what's all this weird stuff going on. It's because that's how he's rationalized in his brain, is for how what he thinks being a free artist is, and he thinks this is going to be the new method to get there. There's another important sort of macro thing to think about this year, which is that the underlying basis of all of this right is the assumption

that everyone is an entrepreneur. Is that you know, like every everyone is doing all of their stuff at all times because they want, you know, in order to be a business owner. And this has been like you know, this, this has been the great ideological victory of the right in the last fifty years, is that they convinced everyone that like every single person is you know, like you're

I mean, it's not even temporary embarrassed Millonaire syndrome. Is like even people who like are working jobs, right, like working wage labor jobs, think of themselves as you know, content creators. And a content creator, you know, is a small business owner. And this has in a manly coercive while I've a course or two, but corrosive effect on you know, anyone working together to do something because you know, oh you're not you're not You're not a worker. You're

just like you're a content creator. You're you know, you're

a small business owner. You're like you know, you what and and and that's you know this, this is a very long running thing that much of incredibly posericial people have been trying to do really since like I mean arguably like the thirties, but the complete success of that and the way that you know, they're they're they're selling exactly the same thing that they were selling in like the eighties, but now it's this like, you know, you're

trying to get people to do it to themselves. And also they throw all of this like sort of nonsense tech jargon at you to get you to sort of like stop looking at the fact that this is just sort of you know, this is this is this is just the new, even worse version of everyone being a worker who thinks that they're like, you know, also going to be this owner someday. Yeah. I don't know, I don't have anything else really to say about it other than this, but like, I mean, this was a good

amount to say. I just think this is so I think it's such an example of kind of the way in which the worst people in the world are trying to steer the internet. Um, and by steering the Internet, steer the soul of like the human race. Um. Like this is a vision of the future this guy is sharing. And this article that I isn't isn't positioning itself as radical, but includes some like deeply radical ideas about how the

world should go. And by the way, I should also note that he's also just like blatantly wrong every time he brings up a number, um, like he taught he he points out in this article that forty six million Americans own cryptocurrency. The real number is more likely about one million kind of it at most, like by every credible I have no idea where he's getting forty six

million Americans own cryptocurrency. And again, the stat just came out, And that's part of his argument is that like, obviously people love the blockchain and these tokens and like this is this is inevitably going to get more and more popular.

Um And when again, the reality is that every real thing that's happening on the on the blockchain is pretty much versions of a security scam that the government has just announced they're going to finally start regulating but yeah, I wanna so that the stat the study that just came out today was that analysis of six point one million trades of like four point seven million in f T s. It shows that the top ten percent of traders were responsible for of trading um, which again is

more evidence that all that's happening is people boosting prices. Also, the average, the vast majority, like more of an FT sales are for less than two hundred dollars. Some of them are for just pennies. Like what the stuff that you're hearing about is all ridiculous outliers, and its outliers specifically because people are pumping stuff up in order to

try to call on someone um. And that's the whole basis of this guy's the structural argument, the reason that he's attempting to our you that like there's actually desire here and that this is in fact, the future of the Internet is based entirely upon like numbers that are either bad or he's or he's deliberately using he's deliberately lying about the numbers, because there is no credible number evidence I've ever heard that forty six million Americans currently

owned cryptocurrency or even have ever owned cryptocurrency. Yeah, and I think the other kind of nail on the coffin for this idea and why I don't think it's going to catch on the same way these guys think it

think it does. And this is something he acknowledges in the article is like not a lot of people know how the stockic change works, like very like he he says, I think it's like I don't know like he I forget what number he says, but um, but he says like not not tons of people actually use or know what the stockic stockic changes. Um. And the reason why Patreon was so successful and why it's so useful for content creators is because it's a very intuitive system. It's

very clear how it works. It's clear what you're doing. There's no really questions about where your money is going or what's happening. This I don't think this is ever. I don't think this whole personal investment thing is ever going to actually go off because people don't understand what the blockchain is and it's too much work to explain it to them. Um. And just because of how much work it is to wrap your mind around, like so where is my money going? What do I have to

set up how does that work? That's way too much of a headache, because in order for this to actually work, you need this to break out of the tech bro bubble or else this is just gonna be this small tech bro thing of people handing over the same one hundred dollars to all their friends in a circle, um, which is what it is currently. And I in order to break out of that circle, they need to get you know, your grandmother to learn what crypto is and

how blockchains work. And that's not gonna happen. Um. So I think that is the one other nail in the coffin for this type of idea is like Patreon is easy. Patreon makes sense this thing. It is not nearly as intuitive for supporting a YouTuber you like, yeah, oh okay, cool. I actually found evidence on where that forty six million

Americans number comes from. Yeah, so basically number one. I found like a fucking crypto news source pointing out that, Like when people started tweeting that forty six million Americans is based on a study we'll talk about a second, but like when people started tweeting about this, like the immediate response in the bitcoin subredit was like well that's not fucking possible. Uh. Like one of the people in

the Bitcoin subred it said, sounds very high. I don't know a single person who owns it, and this says woman, six or seven people own it. Yeah, And and it comes from a study conducted in January by the New York Digital Investment Group servying a thousand participants with incomes over fifty dollars, so that that seems valid. Wait, they just said it's over fifty This okay, this method, yeah,

this this method. You will get a few like Pew released to studies suggesting that like six of Americans have used cryptocurrency at some point, and like all of what's coming out as kind of sketchy, all of the data, there's like reasons to be kind of unsettled about it. But also one of the things that you studies showed is that the vast majority of Americans have heard of cryptocurrency, uh, and most haven't used it, Like the vast majority have

not chosen to get involved. Like, however accurate you think this is, Like, there's another article coming out that says that came out and I guess May of this year, that's said that's based on a Gemini study, which is Gemini is a crypto exchange that over fifty million Americans are likely to buy crypto in the next year. UM, which doesn't seem to have happened. Uh, Like, I just

don't see. There's all sorts of like weird little studies commissioned to buy weird little groups, but it really doesn't. It seems like it's it's again kind of part of the grift. Like I'm not seeing a lot of rigor in any of this. UM anyway, whatever, We've talked enough about this ship. I just I think we all as soon as we read the article were so like appalled by it that what we should probably we talk about this for forty five minutes. Yeah,