Do Good Work & Kindly Burn the Trolls.

Everyday we see new shocking highs in crypto art sales. It is on the cover of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Christies and Sotheby’s fight each other over who will host the next big auction. 75 year olds walk up to me on the street asking ‘have you heard the latest about NFTs?’. And, no surprise, now come the haters. Out of every corner, from under every rock, in every shadow.

“Oh but it’s unsustainable?!”

“Aren’t you just exploiting artists?!”

“It is a scam?!”

“Stop shilling?!!!!!!!1”… (Ok… some of you have to chill on this one).

Now imagine, like me, you aren’t satisfied with the early stage crossover into mass adoption being based on so much hype and hope, you might recognise that real utility for NFTs can build a solid foundation under what is currently a lot of speculation. Where art and fashion transition into gaming, is also unexpectedly where we decide what kind of community we will be.

And we might just solve a few sustainability issues in the process. (If you really care about sustainability, vote with your pocket. It would help if more people had money to do that.)

There is just one problem. I don’t know how long you have been a gamer. I’ve been one for quite some time, and I love gaming. But, too many of the communities are kind of toxic. And when they are it is real bad.

We are starting to see some of the same hostile culture show up in NFTs, Crypto Art and DeFi, too.

The sad part is, that these behaviours are usually unintentional. They don’t know what else to do that’s better and they often feel cornered. I’m not saying we should excuse their behavior — we should hold people accountable. But, it does point to a way to help move forward and prevent the spread of scarcity mindsets and the predatory systems that feed on them.

Building in crypto amplifies this exponentially. People assume that you are a scam from the start, and, you have to do a lot of good work for them to consider otherwise. In normal startups and projects, a more traditional approach is taken: innocent until proven guilty.

This would all be an interesting and worthwhile conversation to have on the sidelines if it weren’t for the urgency involved.

This is not a conversation that can wait for some casual resolution. We are dealing with the immediacy of the climate crisis and spiking hateful assaults on our streets against Asian Americans and so many others. Pervasive racism in tweet storms shaming marginalised artists for finally making money and our sex / gender identity used to tear people apart instead of welcome them in. There is no waiting on confronting these issues directly and calling people out for both bad behaviour and misinformation.

A real livelihood and more welcoming communities await the artists, gamers, collectors, and everyone else we can help lift up out of the toxic sludge.

And to wrap this up, I’ll lead out with a song…

Hey! I’m Emma-Jane! I’m a 23 year old fashionaut amongst other things

I am the founder of DIGITALAX and a bunch of other stuff in web3. 😆

Follow me on Twitter and check out my website janefuture.com