“People from fucked up families do not owe people from ‘normal’ families the performance of ‘normality’ or happiness, especially around the holidays. The hot shame and terror you feel when people ask “What are you doing for Christmas” or say “But what about your faaaaaamily!” without realizing that their small talk is your stuff of nightmares is real, and I’m sorry. It’s such a shitty combination of feeling put on the spot, shown up for not being ‘normal,’ maybe with the stab of grief for the memories you *should* have had, and anger at the happy obliviousness of the questioner. Sometimes the best answer is a non-answer, like “we like a very quiet Christmas” (who’s ‘we?’ who cares?) and sometimes it’s “that’s not a very happy time of year for me, but I am glad it is for you” and sometimes it’s “haven’t really made a plan yet, but tell me all about yours?!?” and sometimes the best answer is the naked truth: “My parents are alcoholics and all my worst memories are of Christmas with them. I’m trying really hard to make a new tradition for myself, and thanks to boyfriend I’m happy to be a part of yours this year.” Whatever answer is your answer is good enough, and your holiday celebration (or “just another Thursday”) is good enough, and you are good enough, and there are a lot of people out in Awkwardland who feel you and get you and root for you and love you.”
Sometimes I go to myself “you know, I don’t understand what NFTs are” and then I go look it up again and discover, yes, actually I do know what NFTs are. It’s just that every time I read about them again I’m left going “this CAN’T be it, there has to be something else to make this make sense” and the answer is always no.
ALT
Seriously though, I still don’t get what they are. Can someone give me a dumbed down version so I can understand them????
okay so NFTs are a form of cryptocurrency, which runs off a giant, constantly updated, encrypted data register
imagine someone somewhere has a huge whiteboard, and whenever anyone makes a cryptocurrency transaction, they have to write it down on the whiteboard. except, instead of just adding it to the bottom, they have to rewrite the entire list with the new one attached. also they have to do it in code. and this has been happening since cryptocurrency started so the list is really really big
and this is why cryptocurrency is such a problem for the environment, because to rewrite lists that big and complicated, people now need whole warehouses worth of computers running constantly all day every day, chewing up more electricity than some countries, and making computer parts really hard for normal people to buy because they’re all being destroyed through overuse
NFTs run on the same system. except instead of updating the whiteboard to say “this person owns 100 fake dollars” or whatever, the whiteboard now says “this person owns this thing i made”, and everyone knows this, because they’re all rewriting the list over and over and over again every time anyone buys anything
i believe it originally started as a way to preserve ownership of digital art, because a real problem for digital artists is if you make something and post it, someone else can steal it and remove your signature and sell it, without you getting any money for your hard work
if you sell it as an NFT, though, everyone who can buy it knows it’s yours bc the whiteboard says so, and if they try to resell it, you get a little bit of the money
you may have noticed the flaw in this though, which is that this affects absolutely nothing for people who don’t own the whiteboard
(and, you know, the environmental disaster)
so this got picked up by rich guys who like cryptocurrency, and they’ve turned it into essentially a digital trading card/collectibles game - we get the computer to make unique images, and then if you pay me $8000, you own the only copy of that image, so you’re winning
and we know it’s yours bc we all have the whiteboard that says so
and apparently rich guys fall for this bc they have more money than sense and they like the idea of owning something no one else in the world has
of course, then they go and post the image
and people go “okay but i can just right click save this and own exactly what you do without paying $8000”
and then they get mad bc no that’s not the point and you don’t own it the whiteboard says i do
and some people make millions producing fake trading cards for these guys to buy while the rest of us would like them to stop ruining the environment now
Rich guys don’t fall for this. They buy into it, knowing that they have enough capital to manipulate public opinion… so they inflate it and then sell it off to idiot middle class people who are trying to make a quick buck.
It’s an MLM. They buy some and tell you how great it is and then you buy some and they get the profit form it. When it fails, you’re the one who bought all the product and can’t sell it.
At some point all of these bubbles are going to burst and you’ll see that all the hedgefund ceos all sold theirs just the week before… if somehow that doesn’t happen, they know the government will bail them out and not you.
Some sketchbook doodles for my new book THE LITTLE WOODEN ROBOT AND THE LOG PRINCESS. In good bookshops and online here: https://tomgauld.com/childrens-books
