TLDR; Bearish on current crypto social media networks, talk about pfps and usernames and how it relates to identities, metaverse predictions will come true
Today I’m going to talk a little about digital identities and social media.
This article was inspired by seeing all the various social media networks that are being built on the blockchain. Personally speaking, I’m not very bullish on these at the moment. In my opinion, the only advantage to blockchain social media to web2 social media is that web3 social media users can profit off of it. While this is definitely an improvement from Facebook stealing all your data and cutting you a check for $4.20 after a 2 year class action multi-billion dollar lawsuit, I don’t think it’s a very good one. I think introducing money to social media will have serious consequences that people are either ignoring or haven’t realized yet. One inevitable is that wealth can now be used to divide users on these networks. Imagine being able to set your account so that only users of 1m+ on-chain net worth can see your tweets. Whether you think this is a pro or con is up to you, but one thing is obvious: it will be much easier to segregate/discriminate against users using wealth as a parameter. If you think a little harder I’m sure you could think of some other consequences of web3 tokenized social media.
One issue with all these various BSMNs (blockchain social media networks) is that they’re all desperately trying to gain traction at the moment, but there’s not a lot of users interested in crypto to begin with. In the same way that L2s are suffering from a liquidity fragmentation problem, these new BSMNs’ target audience is fragmented across many apps on multiple chains. Additionally, much of the cryptocurrency community is already on Twitter. It will be hard to get all these users to migrate somewhere else. Twitter is becoming more crypto friendly as well- NFT pfps with Twitter Blue were released today. I think it is more likely that Twitter will morph into a BSMN than these new BSMNs will overthrow it. Hence, I’m bearish on these BSMNs in their current state.
Speaking of profile pictures, you probably found this Substack through my Twitter account.
This profile picture of Shikamaru and the username ct_zpy is all you have to recognize me by. These two things form my digital identity (on Twitter at least).
Profile pictures are very important in a digital world because they allow you to convey an image as your identity. For example, from this profile picture that I’ve either watched or read Naruto before. If you go a little farther, you can assume that I am a fan of manga/anime enough to use a character to represent myself. If you’re at all familiar with Naruto, you would know that Shikamaru is a smart, carefree, and lazy ninja. Because I have Shikamaru set as my profile picture- it’s safe to say that I feel some sort of connection to this character. Maybe I look up to Shikamaru, and want to be just like him. Maybe I think Shikamaru is a hilarious character, and my Twitter is somewhere I like to roleplay as him on the timeline. Or maybe I just like Shikamaru and simply thought he was cool enough to serve as my profile picture. (The real answer to the question is that I relate to Shikamaru’s personality very strongly. I never once thought of myself as dumb, but when I was younger I didn’t try very hard because most things bored me and I felt just being above average was good enough to get by.) I’m sure most of you have put a similar level of thought into your profile picture. Whether you realize it or not, your profile picture is a reflection of some part of you.
Usernames are also very important. Many CT users have the same tags in their usernames. For example, Ethereum supporters have 0x or .eth in their usernames. Bitcoin fans use XBT. A common one is just throwing crypto somewhere in the username, but there’s also a lot of other subtle ways of throwing crypto references into a username: defi, evm, mev, cap/capital for example. These phrases would mean nothing to the average person, but any crypto-savvy Twitter user would recognize a username with one of these tags as a fellow enthusiast. Your name (not your handle), can also be edited to signify belonging to some sort of group in crypto. Examples: 🧙♂️⚛☢🔺⛓🐸✊🦇🔊(3,3). These things don’t actually mean much themselves- you just learned to associate these things with certain communities on Twitter.
I will not be explaining my username. :)
Profile pictures and usernames are products of web2. As web3 and the metaverse mature, digital identities will become more and more complex. The rise of VR will allow us to create 3D avatars and digital worlds we can explore and socialize in. MMORPG players are already familiar with these ideas and instinctively understand how digital goods can be valuable- we traded in Runescape partyhats for Cryptopunks. Humanity will don digital avatars of all shapes and sizes, anthropomorphic avatars will grow less and less common as time passes. Furries have arguably been a decade+ ahead of the curve, they were web3 people living in a web2 world and will quickly adapt to the metaverse. There will be VR brands in the future that convey status and wealth. The current world has Dapper Dan, the Antwerp Six, Rick Owens, Raf Simons, Maison Margiela, and Tom Ford. The metaverse will have its own fashion scene and social hierarchy. VR artists and creatives will be a dominant force in the metaverse; their creations will increasingly shape digital culture and trends. Established VR brands will release seasonal collections. Fashion’s Big Four: London, Milan, Paris, and New York will find themselves rivaled by digital runways populated by avatar models. The metaverse will have become lindy when a fashion trend originates from the metaverse and successfully bleeds into the physical world. Major brands today are already paying attention to this shift- Louis Vuitton x League of Legends was not a fluke.
Humans are naturally very social creatures. We instinctively seek out and befriend similar others. As a result, genuine friendships and groups have formed in crypto. Names like eGirl Capital and Waifus Anonymous have become analogous to the Kardashians and Jenners of the mainstream social media world. Many of the same people who look down upon watchers of Keeping Up With the Kardashians bought a Loomlock NFT and would buy a Waifus Anonymous sweatshirt if one released to the public (WA readers, pls do it). Many think TikTok influencers like Addison Rae provide nothing to society, but worship a panda named Fooo. I don’t really know what the moral of this is, maybe to just let people enjoy the things they enjoy? If it doesn’t directly hurt you, who cares.
In conclusion, profile pictures and usernames are two simple ways to create a digital identity that other people can look at and discern characteristics about yourself from. Future digital identities will be more complex, especially as the metaverse matures. Your digital identity can be as nuanced or simple as you want it to be, but you reveal more information about yourself than you’d think just by creating one. Subtler things like the memes you share and the syntax you use divulge more about your character than you realize.
-ct_zpy