GoldenSunFox⁷⁷⁷

I've got an Ethics paper due by the end of the day that I haven't started, but I need to get this out (apologies for messiness): Increasingly convinced that, until we get a more ubiquitous and fair online social platform, cryptoart as a movement needs to shift far more to IRL interaction/communication/networking/enjoying. What I mean: X as a town square is not equal. This platform, like all social platforms, is *algorithmic*. Artists cannot simply produce and sell their art, because they're not just competing for the money of collectors, they also have to compete with the algorithm just to be seen. You could even say that much of the NFT market, art or otherwise, has been dictated by the fact that it exists on X. It's no coincidence that all of the PFP projects were forced into building hype - because this platform, the one where all of these communities and activations exist on, is optimized for virality. It seems nobody has taken the time to examine X/Twitter's impact on the history of this market as we know it. The benefit of of art existing on blockchain was always 1) bringing provenance to a digital medium, and 2) destroying previous barriers to entry for art - anybody can acquire art from anywhere, without permission. It was never to do all of this - playing the game of trying to stay relevant in this small community for as long as possible. Just because we believe the world will continue to become more digital, and that digital art makes sense as a result, doesn't mean we should be optimizing for our current digital environment. We need to think from first principles again. I mean, people, think about it, nobody is even seeing any of this art outside of our walls. And while, yes, "one day they will" it's probably on us to start trying to get to the "they" that we speak of so often. Have we forgotten that XCOPY rose to popularity as a result of posting his art to normies on Tumblr for something like 10 years? Do we forget that the case is very similar with Beeple? As a result of existing digitally, our art is more accessible to the common person than fine art has ever been - yet we choose to stay confined to this small community, letting the few decide what is and is not significant. It's why we get situations like what's happening with Matt Kane and SuperRare, where people are fed up with this merry-go-round. It's why there is so much emphasis on being "first" to do something in this space - so that when the masses actually come in, there is something that makes work objectively valuable. It seems everybody in cryptoart is a) producing for what they think the community that's still here wants, and b) in a way that can beat the X algorithm so that their work is actually seen. I think both of these assumptions are wrong. And in fact they're incredibly small minded, We need to be a) producing for natively digital people who exist outside our world, and b) with way more IRL focus There's a reason, and anybody who has been or was most recently there can tell you, that going to Glitch in Marfa was such an awesome experience. The connections you make are so much stronger, and the art is enjoyed together (and in better specs than you'll see online). We're letting this platform dictate the social fabric of an entire art movement, and we're wasting valuable time we could be using to make real progress as long as we continue operating with the belief that NFT twitter is the extent to our universe