when i posted this in… 2019, it struck me as indicative of how upper middle class people had rationalized their “economic anxiety,” the realization of visible, tangible achievement marred by the post-2008 reality of its precariousness compared to their parents or older siblings.

but looking now, i feels it better captures the nonsense behind crypto and web3—a whole cohort of people roughly my age who missed, by virtue of age or being in school, the spoils of both web 1.0 and 2.0, who had arrived at well paying tech jobs just a little too late for the golden equity offer, felt they had accepted the right job at the wrong startup, or just not exited as early as they had hoped and who desperately wanted, needed, to find a way to manufacture a movement they could helm, that would lead them to the kinds of prosperity they had seen as just out of reach during the years they were still struggling to establish themselves.

https://nsfmc.tumblr.com/post/184259789624/its-good-to-be-in-something-from-the-ground

i guess what's so hilarious and pathetic about it in hindsight is that it was so nakedly thirsty in the way that we lampoon midlife crises: web3 was the red sportscar of a whole group of mid career techbros who were living (or could picture in the near future) a dull corporate future that they hadn't signed up for and signaled their diminished relevance. so web3 became a solution for doing something, anything, as impractical as getting milk in a cherry red dodge charger so loud it wakes everyone in a neighborhood.