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The Problem with NFTs

Murkrow

Says "also" and "or something" a lot
Pronoun
he

The cult of speculation around crypto stuff has been increasingly pissing me off recently, seeming to reach a new fever pitch every other day. It may only be January, but in my opinion this is the most important video of the year. I'm posting it because I want to spread the word around as much as possible just how skeevy the whole operation is.
 
I have no opinion on NFTs and there's a very good reason for that.

I'm a reader. I read. Nothing about this graffiti-artwork based cryptocurrency appears in any of the books that I'm reading. I'm not even slightly tempted into joining any of it, because it looks like a rich-person problem. However, I have read a few books on how to deal with things that piss you off, but that don't impact your day-to-day life. Here it goes:

Ignore them.

Simple, yes? Except no it isn't: you need to recognise that exploding your blood pressure every time you see something related to the thing that pisses you off is bad for you. You need to remind yourself that you don't care about that thing every time it pops up into your news feed. You need to break a bad habit that impacts your physical health and mental wellbeing, because every time you get angry at the newsfeed and click on the headline you're giving money to the people who wrote it.

Yes, you read that right: you're literally paying people to make you angry every time you lose your rationality and click a headline that makes you angry.

That's how advertising works; they don't care how you feel about a subject as long as you're clicking that headline. Google will also ensure that more of that headline appear in your feed as long as you keep clicking. You are also literally advertising NFTs with this thread too, although you didn't realise it; putting up one side of an argument (whether for or against something) often persuades people to look the thing up. If you're this passionate about something, surely it's worth looking into, no?

Also, you should maybe switch to Duckduckgo for searches. It'd prevent social media from pushing headlines that make you angry if you keep searching for and clicking on things.
 
I don't know where you're getting most of that. I already use DuckDuckGo. My browser clears all cookies every time I close it and I use adblock and various other privacy-enhancing addons. I never log into YouTube. When I go on Twitter I use tweetdeck so I never see any algorithmically-pushed tweets. I don't follow news accounts on social media for the exact reason you stated, I mainly follow things via RSS because I can curate that myself.

You are also literally advertising NFTs with this thread too,

How are you supposed to warn people away from scams if you can't actually talk about the scams to warn them about it? I don't understand what you'd rather I do.

The reason NFTs get on my nerves is because they're being forced on us in many ways. Video game companies are starting to implement them in the same way they did microtransactions and lootboxes, except this time it's worse because they're propping up the value of a speculative bubble and are also worse for everyone than if they did the same thing with existing technologies.

Podcasts I listen to which were previously fine have started uncritically promoting them.

It's even popping up in local news; a few days ago people were talking about a Banksy artwork that was being moved from a place in South Wales to an undisclosed location and some people were raising money to buy it back by selling NFTs (why did they need NFTs for this?).
 
I don't know where you're getting most of that.
Assumptions. I mistakenly assumed that you were constantly being bombarded with articles about NFTs, and that this constant advertisment was the source of your ire. Please accept my apologies.


-snip-

You are also literally advertising NFTs with this thread too,

How are you supposed to warn people away from scams if you can't actually talk about the scams to warn them about it? I don't understand what you'd rather I do.

-snip-

That part is rather simple. You look for ongoing discussions on the subject and you warn the participants of your concerns. If there isn't an ongoing discussion, it is usually safe to assume that the community either doesn't know about the subject, or simply don't care enough about it to make a conversation. This ensures that you're not accidentally disseminating information that you would rather wasn't spread.

If people don't know about a thing, then they are hardly likely to go searching for it.

If people are already conversing about the subject, then they're more likely to need the warnings that you're already prepared to give. Places like the site that hosts the podcasts you listen to, or the comments section of the article that has been advertising them, or even in your own blog. If you know enough to prevent websites from tracking your browsing habits, then you presumably know enough to use basic SEO that will up the page rankings on your own blog, assuming that you have one.

If someone decides to debate your concerns, all the better. Simply remember that you're not trying to convince the person you're debating; your target is the invisible audience who will inevitably read what you're both saying. If your opponent is clearly an irrational lunatic with no idea what he's talking about, merely highlight this with reasonable evidence and move on. Don't let them gaslight you, push you into irrationality with insults, or dismiss you. Evidence helps to counter the first and last strategy, taking your time to compose your argument deals with the second one. If they fall foul of the inevitable logical fallacies that uninformed debaters are always plagued with, simply highlight this without giving the name of the specific fallacy, and move on with your argument.


Hm. I wasn't intending to give you a debating guide, but there it is anyway. If it's not useful, feel free to ignore it.


As for that last part of your post, it's probably safe to assume that someone is paying for all of this coverage. Whether NFTs are as untrustworthy as you say or not, someone still stands to make a great deal of money from them and have likely paid multiple platforms to give them as broad an awareness campaign as possible. The trick behind finding those responsible is to find the origin point: the person or group behind the first sales.
 
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