Vibe Check with @dawufi -- episode 4 with @les
Aired Date
June 27, 2024
Series
Vibe Check
Episode
Vibe Check with les
Watch on YouTube
https://youtube.com/live/YXftsQUqc8I321 welcome to vibe chan with d'wuffy that's me and les gray the legend as far as i'm concerned at least with some legendary moments on farcaster already but i was talking to you les a little bit before we just we got this recording going and i'm just so excited to talk to you because i feel like you have this thing that pulls the best out of a lot of people myself included so thanks for taking the time welcome to the pod and i'd really just like to start off with maybe some personal history as it relates to farcaster who you are what you're working on because while i think a lot of the farcaster audience is you know homogenous and knows a lot of these things i'd be remiss if i'm not honest that i'm trying to include more people into a lot of things that some of us already know i wanna set the context for why this conversation is gonna be interesting and what what led you to become who you are particularly on farcaster
man starting off hard
no we're starting off easy it's gonna get harder
i i i think the way i normally when people tell me how i got on farcaster i i feel like that story which i revisited yesterday in miami forecaster community meetup and i always i always kinda go back to like how like simple it was to like okay i just asked dan for an invite he gave me an invite i logged on and like the rest is kinda like you know like like almost like uneventful like and then little by little i i was engaging in this community that is forecaster and as i did that i realized that i was engaging with a community that was like drastically different drastically like way further out there than than who i had ever envisioned myself to be and as i did that i started to like grow so who am i on farcaster i would say i'm like a a farcaster native i'm a farcaster grown
maybe even
farcaster like reborn kind of person like i've i've i have taken a lot of what i've learned about technology and just from farcaster a lot of what i've learned about web three the things that i'm working on even becoming a founder i would say stems from my interactions and engagement with people on farcaster like that that is the like to to think about who i am today is is like to me the epitome of saying like okay you went to a school you met a bunch of people you interacted with them and then when you graduated you are this person and and so like i've made this this joke many times actually before forecaster had this growth is like well i'm at forecaster u or like i'm on like like this is forecaster university like me talking to so many people in the community constantly on a day in day out like those things made me believe that digital communities can't exist like like they can exist they are very real and the people behind the keyboards are actually not just anons they're people that have actual value and when they are put in an environment that like they wanna put that stuff out there
it changes the other person on the other side and so like who am i is a big part of like who was early forecaster what did i learn from them like and and and i could probably like just give you a list of names of people that are those are but i don't think that's the point but like who am i is to probably say like oh that's i'm i'm early farcaster i'm now like a founder
i don't hold myself out as a founder anymore i hold myself on more as like an on chain creator and and i work in the space of fashion and technology
what's the difference between a founder and an on chain creator
what i have found is just that the word founder to me creates this resonance of like of like like how i think founders maybe look at the the role or the the title of ceo today
and you don't you don't resonate
with it and so it's not that i don't resonate with it it's just that i feel like there's friction when you talk about as a founder that puts you in a specific like like it it kinda pins you at a specific spot
does it come back backed trying to build a billion dollar company
correct incorrect and i think what on chain does is that it allows a a subset of that essentially of like you're on chain creator you're like writing history to the block right and and you're at a different stage you're managing a vertical like a a vertical integration of an organization and you play a bunch of different roles because you can do so much and so like it's just like yeah i see a creator and i see okay like this creative component of product development and you're doing things in a frontier which is like blockchains and web three and crypto and and you're also i also see like almost like a historian like because because we're literally some of the first people doing stuff on the blockchain like if you go outside of our circle i was having this conversation yesterday we go outside of our circle you say the word like blockchain they're like what what is that it's like oh ethereal i i think i've heard of that bitcoin yeah yeah i think i've heard of bitcoin it's like okay oh yeah the thing the price goes up and down and it's like never mind
like just like never mind i don't i don't have a
never mind
i graduated from i graduated from farcast to you i'm off to to phd
exactly exactly
i love you i respect everything you do but it's like it's literally like me trying to talk to like a theoretical physicist with a phd right they're like quarks and stuff i'm like i'm gonna go watch i'm gonna go watch the ten minute youtube explainer and like that's that's good for me right like i have an interest in it but the deep understanding is different yeah it's interesting that you say that i was actually talking to devin about this and i don't know how much of this stuff you follow it'll be fun to get into these things that's been one of the fun parts of the conversation so it's like digging deeper and have an excuse to like learn about my friends more but we're talking about how like you know the all in podcast and the vc sort of like messaging today is very much like ai is gonna change everything blockchain is gonna change everything there's gonna be these small scrappy businesses that are like $10,000,000 run by three people seed rounds maybe that's it like no more like but then like you look at what's getting funded or how people feel about the term founder and it's like okay everyone's still trying to raise their big money vcs still have billions of dollars to deploy and they're not gonna get it done like 1 or $2,000,000 at a time so it's interesting to see how long or how difficult it is to shift like a giant community's perspective and giant in the sense that there's a lot of people but also there's just a lot of capital and like emotion invested into this like thing web two like these are the way things are done and i find that it's pretty rare to find people who not only think outside of that box but are willing to act on it and i think probably that's one of like the most bullish things about farcaster is even if there's more noise now even if there's more meme coins and no matter what you think about that although that might be interesting to talk to you about actually in a second no matter what you think about all those things and like you know signal to noise ratios farcaster is still today without a doubt in my mind the probably anywhere online or offline highest concentration of like truly orthogonal thinkers the people who are really not just like intellectually like waxing poetic about what the future could be but like genuinely trying mhmm what can only be described as crazy shit like absolutely off the wall stuff and i feel like you've got something to say about that
yeah so i mean there's two things you that i think you're saying there one is like the the vc thing and so like i was trying to hold that in my thought and then the second thing was like that kept coming to me is like what is this farcaster community and as a matter of fact adrian's probably gonna be doing a a lightning talk i think at farcon about this like the senius yeah
senius yeah yeah yeah
senius senius i i butcher words all the time so forgive me
and i think that i think what you're saying on the second point there is kind of goes more towards what she talks about and then i normally kind of comment in terms of like what i have experienced as an outsider coming into this seniors and like learning what i have learned
but hold on like there's literally no one besides you that would consider yourself an outsider at this point i think it's fair to say right like i got dunked on at the first part and then you're a very kind person i don't think this was you but there were some other people that i'm holding near and dear to my heart that were dunking on me pretty hard for having a four digit fid at farcon one they're like dude what could be so long
yeah like i yeah that that is true that that is very true and farcon one and farcon two feel like drastically drastically different eras
already how you're feeling about it
about farcon two or farcon one
the difference one two whatever farcons in general
so so i'm
see it actually
i'm i'm like i'm shocked at i'm shocked at going from what farcon almost like a hundred people
i think cam said he ballparks it at 70
70 alright so let's round it up to a hundred people let's get it you know let's give it third 30 extra people with some passes and now and now i just heard a number that it's seven fifteen a thousand like you know is that is that growth the same to where we were at at farcon one in terms of farcaster where i don't know maybe like 30,000 fits were registered
and then now we're at over 200,000 bids registered so like are are those equivalent like how i feel about farcon two really is is that i i i was a bit behind the scenes earlier on i kinda dropped off because i wasn't properly contributing and i think i was kinda just holding the team back and the way i feel is like the the the people behind the scenes have busted their ass to make like give like one of the probably an amazing experience and and and i think the size of the number of people that are going is reflecting that i think with that comes some trade offs that it's like it doesn't have the same community feel
yep
but at the same time you know you you you kind of look at that and it's like well does it actually deserve more you know and so like it's it's not for me to answer that it's like community for to answer that right and so like it's like does it i think there's a future where like both of those things can exist where you have like these massive like they're not very community sensing although the side events try to pull those things together but like trying to get there and to do all those events it's just it makes it very difficult like i wanna spend time with everyone right but at the same time i wanna slow down yeah that's my view on that so i think far con two is a very different experience and i think it's gonna be fascinating to feel like how the community thrives on that particular experience and then people that are gonna be there from farcon one are gonna compare and they're gonna be like well maybe something in the middle is gonna be more my vibe you know and i think that's what's gonna come of those kinds of experiences as we grow i mean forecaster's only like what three four years old you know so to have this scale of interaction this scale of interest the scale of people wanting to go to an event like parkcon too i think is like fantastic like it's like the like i would definitely say it's a success for the team that was planning it
yeah it's i mean it's abundantly clear that ted graham erica and i know there's some other people involved but those are the ones who i see pop up the most graham b mcbain have like pull off something i don't even to be honest i i don't get the i don't get the impression that even they expected this right which is like always how it is
i'm sure
it was the same thing with grin and grin and cam they like they didn't even they did not expect 70 i don't think i think they like you know they did their research and they did their best but it ended up being considerably more and and more interesting i think and i'm curious to get your take on this too one of the very interesting dynamics that have been noteworthy i think playing out
are the farcaster
influencer k o l whatever right that are not farcaster native i would say and i'm not that's not a judgment that's not like a good or bad thing but there seems to be some sort of bifurcation or more than two ways that it the community is fragmenting and that's natural as it grows right yes totally but there is this like the rebirthers and the fc grown folk right of which again we don't need to like name names and then there's sort of other groups of like that have come from outside but have found new homes on farcaster despite already having a home elsewhere right so i sort of define that there was like almost everyone didn't have a twitter following wasn't like working on the protocol right didn't have any connection to dan or v and then that's starting to shift because i was looking at the guest list and there's like you know what i would call like minor celebrities like gonna be in town basically right and it's gonna be very interesting i think to watch what people do instead of what people say because what people is found outwardly they want this is dan's this i'm i'm remiss if i can't get in a reveal versus stated preference like
rather than
that that's that's a good sign
yeah
yeah do you wanna be at the hundred person dinner i you know go off king queen like do what you wanna do are you looking for like deep connection with like three of your friends like no one's stopping you it's it's not a real conference in the sense of like you know what i mean it's an unconference still i think that that stays and what you said about the the middle ground i'm sure there's gonna be like i'm actually positive at this point there will be multiple farcons a year there'll probably be another farcon this year would be my guess and then by next year we're having three to four or five per year for different communities mhmm and it's like are you going to farcon east or farcon west this year oh i'm going to both right like like are you going to far con singapore like like it's it's happening pretty quickly but yeah funny you
say that because i had the same similar thought i was like oh we should just have a far con miami and yeah so yeah
chicago's talking about the same thing chicago definitely chicago is funny because we're we're a huge city with no presence like this is just like the midwest like thing right just like lelo grow some corn like that's that's the vibe we always have people forget like what a large city we are i think sometimes so we'll we'll see how that goes
i want to take this idea of like there's different tribes and like different communities and fractioning and i think a big part of what i wanna get to on this podcast is definitely the insights that people like yourself have into sort of finding a tribe finding people that want to hear what you have to say i have a feeling we'll start to dip our toes into the authenticity conversation at this point which i think is extremely important if you could just just wax a little bit about
if you've done anything intentional to sort of cultivate a community around you whether that be for world builder jacket or otherwise if things have been serendipitous and then work really well that you did not set out to do something but you found a voice and audience on forecast i think i think there's a lot of people out there that are sort of searching or curious about how to do that and my hot take just to and maybe it's not even that my take is very much that because the identity is so prevalent when you tie effectively a wallet but let's call it what it is it's like a it's a it's a historical lore of what you've done over the past to your post history you lose a lot of the troll incentive you lose a lot of the the negativity you lose a lot of the add on stuff because there's so much value in having an active badge and getting an og nft or something like that right like people are now incentivized to be a little more authentic as my take but anything that you have to share and and riff on that topic i think is is part of what i wanna get out into the world with this
yeah
i don't know i don't know if my my situation is unique or not i really don't i normally approach
yeah i'd encourage you not to worry about what's unique or what's helpful just say what just like say your experience
yeah
give your authentic take on what's what's been happening with you because not every this got it's not gonna be for everyone but i promise it'll be for someone is is yeah
but but here's here's why i'm actually saying it i i i think it's less to do for what you're what you're talking about i i i think it has more to do with the like what i'm gonna kinda follow-up with which is like the reason i'd i'm starting with like whether my take or my approach is unique or not is because i think that is that underpins the idea that i haven't really intentionally approached this in any specific way i have just kind of felt my way through the landscape as i have moved and i don't think it was until more recently that i have started to say okay i need to be more intentional i need to be more precise i need to be more pointed and not so much at a destination but more so at like at a direction
yes
alright and so you know ever since i got onto farcaster i would say i always try very hard to be authentic even though i wasn't intentionally trying to be authentic and i think one of the reasons that i felt as connected to farcaster as i did in the community was because when i when i was authentic there i felt like there was a feedback loop and the feedback loop was just positive and and i don't mean in the sense of like people actually telling me things i meant even in this absence of things like people would not engage on your stuff if it sucked people will engage on your stuff if they had a take people will respond very lightly if they're pressed for time but they like your stuff you get me like the signal in farcaster very early on was very very nuanced in a way where like that kind of contributed to my my own authentic self which is like okay i wasn't searching for anything in particular but i resonated with people within the community i said like and this is where i think memes like we could probably go off on a tangent with memes on this it's like yeah this is this is where memes are so powerful it's like i respected people on there because of the conversations that were being had therefore i mimicked some of the stuff found what i found useful internalized those things that i found useful and then i just continued on that path like dun dun dun dun dun and so that's kind of what's led me to the founder path obviously there's personal decisions on my end that's kind of what has led me down the path that i'm in with like fashion and bridging it with technology like i can't i i i remember i was at farcon before farcon one i had a lunch with chris carrell and i was like chris what what advice do you have to give me i have a presentation and he said this he goes dude just be authentic and and and i'll be honest like i said i heard that i'm like cool simple like you hear that all the time right you hear that all the time and and you don't really like in my mind i never really understood what it meant like i really didn't i would probably say until the last four or five months and i went and i did that presentation authentically i mean you gave me like one of the kindest feedbacks you know you're you're like you you essentially said something to the effect of like i've never seen anybody put a presentation together minutes before they give the presentation and i never rehearsed any of that presentation
i wanna be that won't listen to it like you rushed it i wanna be clear
no no no no no no it the but like you don't even need to make that disclaimer because i i didn't rush it like the story is constantly evolving and that's what i'm trying to say yeah yeah the point was the
story was so like whenever you see a presentation you feel like so often it's rehearsed and it's like trying to get you to do something and that's that's fine for like a ted talk like you want polish this was something different you literally had pictures from that morning i believe from like literally ten minutes before you were dropping in you're like this is this is the story that we're building today i just thought it was i thought it was brilliant i still do
and and and and to me i think that is the essence of your question which is like am i doing anything intentionally i think the most intentional thing i'm doing is putting things publicly and what i've realized through the course of my whole time on barcaster is that every time i have done something public to include this presentation to launch the jacket to announce something
yep
yeah
and the thing i would say that's most intentional for me is like and this is something that i learned from from literally like the farcaster team like when i used to attend their product meetings like all across the board it's like building public okay and what happens when you build in public you it forces you to be authentic because people are gonna shun you when you're not authentic and then what i realized about that whole authenticity aspect of it is like you have to find the flow of your authentic self and that's what i have found through like the process of being on farcaster and i mean i sound like a farcaster go boy at this point but
but i think to your question about like what what about my story kind of lends to the authenticity argument right
yeah
and i think it's the building in public the the like just put it out there kind of mentality that enforced this like feedback loop and it wasn't me just chasing anything specifically because i definitely wasn't chasing fashion i'll tell you that there's something that led me to that i wasn't chasing technology and how i'm approaching it today there's something that led me to that i wasn't chasing being a founder there's something that led me i wasn't chasing to be a creator something led me to that and so like all these components of just being my authentic self learning myself learning who i am learning what i'm doing learning it with a community growing with a community i think that is what allowed me to emerge into this thing that i'm working on now and and and it's really about being i mean vulnerable to a certain degree so like you know and i think that's the hard part like that's the hardest part it's like shit like putting yourself out there is is being very vulnerable especially when you're building the story like i had to write a lot of dumb shit on farcaster to to to figure out what people what people did not like like there's people that unfollow me because they're like what the this guy just posted a ton of shit but just a ton of notes right and and i get that like but i can't stop doing that if that's who i am right and so like i get some people are not gonna like it and that's very respectable like i can totally admire that they would even be willing to unfollow me because even that in itself is like you're human right like man i don't wanna tell this guy he's a piece of shit but sorry think you know and i and i and and again i think that people on on forecast are so respectful that they would rather not do that but they're very considerate of their time and attention right and so like because they're considerate of their time and attention to their authentic self then you it harvests like this community of people that are just hey you know you be who you are and shit will kind of unravel you build in public and guess what maybe i don't like you today but in six months you might be a you might not be posting crap and i'll like you then you know and so like so like it's it's it's really a search like it's con it's a constant search it never stops yeah it's it's like you you have to lead into that authentic self just long enough to get over the hurdles that it's gonna cause a ton of pain i will say that like i've i've gone through it i've i've gone through and i'm still going through a ton of pain but i will say that all of that journey that i've had through all those pains and continued pains like all of them have been some of the biggest biggest lessons i've learned like yeah unquestionably unquestionably it's like the path the obstacle is the way kind of mentality like that is that is absolutely true through the authenticness of like being in a an authentic community
i couldn't agree more man and like i find this popping up more and more and like i'm starting to believe in it it's just like a truth of the universe type thing where like whether you're talking about cast whether you're talking about your product whether you're talking about a podcast that you decided to launch for some reason i don't i i still don't have full genesis of why i'm doing this thing but like
vibes bro
vibes just vibes yeah just straight back it can't be it can't be for everyone like it's an insane idea right like sure i mean maybe part of this goes back to like the fundraising and like you know the value extraction of like web two data models and stuff like that we can get very concrete but i think on like a vibe here like just like hand wavy type thing like it's insane to think that everyone has to like you or should like you or should follow you right like it's actually if everyone's following you then it's it's nothing right like then it's then it's it's completely washed of its value like what you excise what you remove is critically important whether and again like back to like art like you know if you're creating a clay sculpture whatever it is like what you are taking away is just as important as as what you're leaving and in an effort to be more vulnerable excuse me in effort to be like more vulnerable and like authentic on my own podcast like yeah sometimes i look at other people's follower account i'm like what the shit like dude i thought my i thought my stuff was pretty good but apparently it's not and then you know i'll take a breath and i'll meditate and i'll think to myself no the people who are following me are following me because they want to follow me and chasing numbers or something else will only create like the best case scenario is it creates an inauthentic audience which doesn't have value to me or them right like then it's flighty it booms around this is like part of the problem with like meme coins and capital
just like sloshing right it's like it's like fully just like riding extremely short term waves in in in hyper speed mode i think there's some value there in terms of like lessons learned but my guess is the arc of history will not be particularly kind to flashes in the pan of purely monetary results broadly speaking you know we tend to hold in very high regard things that impact culture a lot more and like money can do that for sure but like i don't think farcaster is gonna get remembered for better or for worse for making a lot of people rich i suspect deeply that if it's remembered for the long term then you know there's a book written about it or whatever the fuck we have in two hundred years it will be remembered as something that sort of switched the incentives on for authenticity online in in a way that's like to be blunt as someone who's sort of perpetually online i don't think we've seen it before i think that's i think that's something that that is sort of the genius of dan that goes under underappreciated
so the first thing i'm gonna say is i think followers are gonna be the new phone books yeah phone books are useful
we're gonna have to dig into that okay
yeah so so phone books are useful of course it's it's like the early days of of following i have your phone number you have my phone number it's a one way or two way kind of directional kind of interaction right i can call you but you can't call me until i call you back in the day you couldn't call me if if i called you because you you you needed to know but you needed to actually dial my number right you didn't have caller id right so some of you might not not not ever oh there you go
so but now you have a thousand phone numbers and you might have those phone numbers on your on you know those people might have your phone number you have their phone number but you only could dial 10 people yeah like you know like you look it up whatever and i think followers is gonna go the same way like you know yes you know like i think what you said there about about having everyone follow you everyone kinda liked your stuff is is it's too burdensome and i think what ends up happening is that
the protocols like forecaster the ability to literally parallel technology that enables very minute action driven kind of cultural behavior which is some of the things that like i i work on to be able to drive that at a like like at a closer to the ground like at the human level is is going to unlock like what you're saying unlock these these these design this design space that creates a very rich and interactive world that is between blockchains between decentralized protocols and like the stuff that we already know and do right now you know and so like it's it's about really like unbundling i think a lot of these things to create a new composition of interactions
and so i don't know where i was going with that but you took me through your own thoughts of like all those things and i and i felt like i was trying to like compress all of that down into like this like kind of small thing but like the yeah where where should we go with that
we should go because we are running a little close to time now and i'm trying to be cognizant of both yours and the listeners because as much as i love everyone on firemaster i i do think it's a little silly when people are like just drop the five hour video everyone should go watch it there's a ton of value in there so i'm trying to keep these digestible for people and and really cram in cram in the good content i want to talk about composition of interactions and i want selfishly for you to to pump your own bags a little bit because it's very on brand for farcaster people to not wanna talk about their own project like it's
like one of the hallmarks that
being farcaster native is you were trained not to show because you got you got shit
i mean i'm showing i'm show i'm i'm i'm showing i'm showing you're showing i started i started i started by showing
i know and i do appreciate that but we we need to tell a little bit i think because it's a podcast and on a podcast i do think telling is the showing a little bit like the point is the conversation sometimes and the way that i've been thinking about it and framing it is like okay none of my forecast or friends wanna talk about their own projects that's fine we're gonna spend the majority of the conversation having a very what i hope is interesting and valuable discussion and then that sort of bleeds into the last five minutes of hey if you've been listening to this and you think these ideas are cool you are nodding your head to a lot of what les is saying this is resonating with you and you wanna know what he's working on less what are you working on what is world builder tell me about the purple jacket give like give give give the people what they want they wanna know these things
and and i think very specifically it's definitely time if there's anything you want people to do and not like broadly like you know i want people to to be more authentic but i mean like if they're interested if if this is resonating with them should they reach out who who's your audience and and specifically as it relates to world builder what's going on on the inspirational side that that people should be looking at if if they found the past thirty minutes to be to be beneficial to their life in some way
yeah fuck dude that's that's that's a hard fucking question man yeah you got a lot of things there you got a lot of things there so let let let me just try to start somewhere
start wherever it is natural
i i would say world builder i would say world builder is is once again an idea that i i extracted from the forecast for community and it's like like i have two kids i have a wife i have you know parents they're in there and i think about all the things that i've got that i've done wrong and i don't mean that in a like in a negative way i just mean like hey like you know i've i've i've done things wrong right like and and there's things that i've seen that are that i too easily kinda dismissed and that's why i started my farcon presentation with the big red wrong right like there's these these interpretations of the world that i've had that were in my opinion wrong and one of those things is fashion another thing was technology and so like as i have gone and explored those things and come on to farcaster the the farcaster they're seeing i extracted this world this this idea of world building like you know like if you see a world and you wanna build that thing like you go out and you seek the path to that thing and i and i learned that like i said from from barcaster and so like as i was kind of researching these two topics in fashion technology i realized like so many so many people shun this idea of fashion and to include myself and as i studied fashion i realized okay technology would not exist without fashion like it's like it's like fashion was all it's like the thing that came after humans were born you know put clothes on you know and it tells one of the most inclusive stories of civilization like they're like like if you look at fashion you literally remove pretty much every boundary of of of of anything like you sex change whatever like colors like it doesn't matter like you're telling the most inclusive story you can and like and so like for me world builder has become this idea of trying to build a specific world that i wanna see for like my people my family like you know like be be involved building a family business because my family's in this space as well and so like i merged that with technology and i saw this gap in technology that viewed fashion drastically different and so like world builder the actual jacket is like a a annual collection that i will be building to resemble like the design principles of what is web3 through close and one of the things that i'm trying to do is like how do i build like high end couture essentially apparel that creates this like deep classic connection with an interactive like online on chain kind of design with the clothes that we wear like if i if i were to go to a conference with my farcaster jacket you know like this one here you know could i without pulling out my phone feel luxurious in like being able to just hand over my social media or like a a po op or like anything right like but not without having to pull my phone out and so like it i'm trying to design this rich interactive space between clothing and on chain behaviors through obviously technology and it starts with like the world builder collection essentially like i started with these jackets because i needed the confidence that farcaster gave me by purple funding this jacket here you know and then i kind of went out put myself in public a little bit more you know and started to sell this jacket or this jacket and you know and that kind of that the support from the community is really what's given me like the confidence of like okay fashion is something that is desired there is a gap here right and so like i'm trying to fill some of that gap with world builder yeah i don't know i don't know if any of that works but that's what i'm trying to do with world builder it's it's it's a annual capsule collection o day to the farcaster builders ethos
is there a way to still get a jacket or you would be locked up
it's locked up maybe after this we can talk yeah
maybe we'll do a job for the the the couple of podcasts that i have and it'll be a truly truly a limited run of of of lore building stuff because that's the other thing that i've been thinking about just to sort of wrap this up i wanna get here your thoughts on this i find frequently that the magic is happening where we're not looking and that's like very like specifically sometimes
monetarily like with the og nft right like there's all this stuff happening i i got a oxen castaway because at the first ethdenver farcaster meet up they were like win this nft if you take a selfie with it and there was like i don't know a 50 people there and then oxen messaged me he goes hey only two of you did it so instead of raffling i'm just gonna each give you one and that seems with like almost half an hour or something i think right it's like to go back to the authenticity thing it's like i'm not saying you can't make money trading or anything like that there's a million ways to to make money but like truly like magical experience the stuff that like i'm emotionally connected to not in my wallet a lot of it is just like happenstance
i'd love to
on that thread though yeah so like i think that is the power of like meme coins because what what i think we're we're so easily like dismissing and i get into some of these design concepts like when i do stuff with like the jacket is that the idea is to be able to allow people to live their authentic selves more genuinely by being able to have this this sense of abundance that sense of abundance right now comes from money right like and what i think meme coins and blockchains are are are gonna start being able to do i mean this is a far out into the future but what they're gonna be able to start doing is they're gonna be able to gap like bridge the gap between this thing that we call abundance and this thing that we call money and people not being able to live their authentic selves because they're always focused on the money element but then when we abstract the money elements of these things by creating experiences by creating connections by creating by by essentially fabricating this like layer between interactions people can't get paid for these things and it's like it's it's unreasonable it's unreasonable to think that that if we really believe in like this idea of authenticity and and like being genuine that that authenticity doesn't have value and then the only thing we we describe value with is a dollar sign or a or you know an emoji or you get me like there there has to be there has to be there has to be something that bridges the gap between abundance and money and i think that is technology to a large degree but at the same time that technology comes in the form of like other types of money and other types of money are things like meme coins they're they're like the ability for like very expeditious interactions to have monetary value and so like like i don't think it's out of this world to say like hey money still plays a like money is absolutely gonna play a factor how we monetize things is still gonna be a very big factor the question is how we monetize them i don't know if i just said the same thing but like how we monetize them is is gonna be the thing that feels different
and you know nfts you know crypto tokens erc $7.21 z 9 50 5 whatever you know
no
i definitely don't wanna shy would not wanna shy away from the idea that like it's not i would i i wanna lean into the idea that it is okay to monetize like even if i i struggle with the idea
like a monetize yeah you're not gonna be able to create more is that right like you
you can't
like you're not gonna be able to share more if you don't monetize and i think people get caught up in the web too like extracting value out of systems like you know this whole like give it all away for free take everyone and like that's the way it work but the true like and this is the way i think about like business development and sales as well it's like the true way to think about the world is that like if you're putting in work you're creating value and just because there's exchange of value happening you know left right up to down does not necessarily mean that it's not accretive it doesn't mean that you're not generating something it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be rewarded for it you should you should be rewarded as much as you possibly can be for especially for this authenticity especially for great content especially for fashion that lets people tell their own story the way they love to like people if you create something great like people should be like absolutely fucking thrilled to pay you for it and you should be excited to get it because that's today it's dollars and it's got sort of an icky feel around it but like that is really sort of the basis of like connection and value exchange
mhmm right
and like there's a lot of different ways to do it but yeah like reward yourself get a ton it's it's proof for the world that like great things can happen from from like sharing value with the community with your loved ones with whoever it may be
i'll try to wrap my own thought around that which is
the like i haven't made any money from my last year of of my like my creative endeavor business endeavor at the same time i don't think i was really doing the best job at creating that money i however was creating something internally on myself that allowed me to be more authentic which is what goes back to like the thing that i said like i just kinda really like i really learned the whole authentic thing in in about like last two or three months there's a whole other story there but i think the important part that i wanna highlight is that it wasn't until i found this connection with that authentic self that allowed me to actually wrap my head around the monetization value of that authentic self where before i couldn't see the monetization value and i had to bridge that to be able to understand the okay the monetization is okay to exist and the reason i just bring that up is because it's not about monetizing today it's about monetizing the right authentic self because if you monetize too early you lose yourself and and you're done like you that authentic self doesn't emerge because now you're dependent on that capital and where that capital comes from is is is is is like i mean i'm reluctant to say this but it's it's almost modern day slavery you know like so so it's like if it's the job you know like even taleb talks about how how the current world employment world works which is connected to like he he says slavery and stuff like that so like but if you go down that lineage of thought it's like when you become this free self like the most expressive free self and you connect yourself to that and your identity to that and you realize that hey this identity has value and the way that value is gonna needs to be represented for me to continue to live it it's through this thing called money there is like there i think you really start creating like this this other level of freedom that that doesn't come from money that comes from like creativity and creation and destruction and and and world building
yeah
so yeah
absolutely man i think that's i think that's the bombshell that ended on this has been a pleasure get out there be authentic charge for it is the is be authentic and charge for it is the is the name of the episode lesman thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts absolute pleasure dc's open i assume that's what most people say if if you wanna ask you a question about something be helpful be kind be nice take care of the network it's the only one we've got until we get another one but yeah man any any closing thoughts or are you good
i wanna thank you for always always being a good friend so
i appreciate that deeply sir see you all later
peace