Fractured digital identities, social conditioning and income from reputation. Participation is the Alpha.
How you became Pseudonymous
Remember how cringe your first couple of online aliases were?
Do you also remember thinking to yourself "boy, I sure am excited to create this pseudonymous identity that will act as an extension of my personhood in new digital economies of the future"?
Nope. Me neither.
MSN Messenger, Hotmail & Xbox were veritable hotbeds of cringe waiting to be unearthed.
You're feeling it in your stomach now aren't you. Cringe. Pure cringe.
Everyone has at least one online moniker that makes you recoil. Much like you didn't recognize the cringe of this identity at the time, you also didn't recognize these identities would be the formation of new types of digital agency. You unknowingly created a borderless, stateless identity capable of participating in new economies.
With that in mind, the current crypto environment seems somewhat inevitable. From millennials down, we've been conditioned to participate and engage with digital economies in everyday life. For many, they were (and are) our playthings. One reality traded for another. Popular Culture has conditioned us to be pseudonymous.
Don't believe me?
Picture this; You race home from school, fire up Pokemon on the Gameboy you got for Christmas and start hurling Poke Balls at the first thing you find in the grass. You catch a Pidgey and name it something dumb. Not long after, you log into MSN Messenger and start chatting to everyone from school.
Done. Without even knowing it, you and your new found digital agency stepped out of the meat space and into the pseudonymous economy, pets and all.
You were pseudonymous before it even had a name.
The culture of pseudonymity
Your new found Web3 pseudonymity is like embarking on an adventure into a game where little is known and even less has been discovered.
You learn as you go and navigation in this new world is hard.
The same goes for assimilating into the cultural environment - you'll find yourself having to rely on the pseudonymous to get by.
For people unfamiliar with internet culture, this isn't too hard. But for those of us who don't spend an eternity online (GM to all you readers out there), Web3 culture (and Crypto Twitter) must be fucking WEIRD. Even so, this pseudonymous playground is the cultural epicenter of the Crypto landscape.
The amount of technical jargon is dizzying. That's before you get into cultural lingo, which evolves even faster and is even more complex. These are your gatekeepers of the game.
Understanding this is part of that 'fucking MASSIVE time sink' required for Web3. You have to learn a new language. And as with all languages, learning how to speak it fluently is the hardest part. Knowing the language is how you sort imposters from the real thing. It's how you play the game properly. Getting there though, requires failure. And a lot of it.
What outsiders don't realize is that participation in Crypto is the advantage. The path is forged as you go. The trick is having the time, patience and tenacity to do it for long enough to get good. It requires a willingness to fail, lose money & learn.
You've probably already taken the first step toward doing that. Adopt your own pseudonymous identity, if you don't already have one. Become an adventurer.
The thing with adventurers is, they need to trust in people. Adventurers often know very little about where they're going; they trust in others and hope their gut (among other things) steers them in the right direction. A lot is instinctual - it's where your curiosity leads you.
This adventure and your curiosity necessitates you believe and trust in the unknown; the pseudonymous. Who are often appropriated, pop culture caricatures you'll meet along the way.
Degen Spartan, with a PFP of Leonidas from 300, posts poignant crypto insights amongst hentai and other cultural oddities. Stuff that would make the average person recoil. CL207 - a Cat - posts market insights at the same time they LARP about what a Cat might say. Not exactly accessible to the layman.
"All you do is look at hentai on twitter." It's literally my job.
Unlike the Web2 world, these people don't display credentials of authority. Their 'proof' is their participation. They have 100's of thousands of followers. The pseudonymous set the cultural agenda, kind of like the faceless people you played with online.
They are a wellspring of ideas - springing from the ether with no discernable source, sparking new narratives & innovation. The collective conscience latches to ideas. Narratives take form and identities gain notoriety. In a burgeoning, exploratory economy these narratives and knowledge are scarce and valuable.
I'm Pseudonymous in a web3 world. So what?
You joined the pseudonymous economy without even knowing it. Until recently the ability to explore the pseudonymous digital world was limited. The economies & games existed in silos, separate from the rest of the digital world. Assets were innumerable and easily copied.
Blockchain networks make it possible for these 'games' and activities to interrelate. They connect economic resources, plugging into, partnering with, facilitating, leveraging or even destroying one another just as they do in the real world economic meatspace. And, just as it does in meatspace, your pseudonymous activity has an influence in the digital space.
Like the political economic meatspace, identities in the Pseudonymous economy thrive off reputation. Unsurprisingly, MMORPG's paved the way. If you played Runescape anywhere between 2005-2009 you likely know 'Zezima' and why they're notable.
Online celebrity in internet culture goes way back.
Much like if you existed anywhere between 1970 & 2000, you're likely to know of Freddy Mercury and why he died. That's the heft of cultural reputation at work.
Generations of people have been primed for this pseudonymous age from birth. The pseudonymous economy allows us to capitalize reputation. Had something like Twitch.tv existed for 'Zezima', he'd likely be playing Runescape as a full time job. Your reputation can now draw a wage in a way that completely divorces your meatspace identity from the online one. That's now a legitimate career.
The person existing online makes the income. The person living in the meat space is paid to keep the pseudonymous identity alive, for fear of losing their reputation and therefore, their income.
Being online now means you can demand status. And demand for status means you get paid. In this world, online activity and reputation is work. The work is participation in the network. Your usage, the generation of fees (gas), is required to keep a network healthy and operational. With cryptographically secure & inbuilt scarcity, participation and accumulation becomes a virtuous cycle, for those of us willing to play.
You became pseudonymous without even knowing it. Somewhere along the line, your online identity gained the ability to have real world value. Your pseudonymity is now a powerful tool to wield in a brave new world. Realize that soon enough, learn the language and navigate that world well enough, and it becomes yours for the shaping. You can manifest it. Take control.
Cheers.
Chop