Only on rare occasions does hindsight prove useful, and I think this is one of them.

Mediocrity curse — Ratwell’s jealousy

I vividly remember the exuberant enthusiasm of the 2017’s bull market — the warm embrace of cyberspace, promising to revolutionize every aspect of our lives, where becoming ridiculously rich is just one of the many welcomed consequences. A rallying cry of techno-warriors for more recruits to participate in the noble economic warfare. An event, designed by nature, and perpetrated by the flow of time, the inevitable transfer of wealth from the old and stale to the new, young and fresh.

If Bitcoin was the foundation for this new religion, a manifestation of the cryptocapital-anarchist ideal, then Ethereum smart contracts are perhaps the first evangelism. A promise, to those committed to the cause, to have the ability to create a weapon that dismantles the (intentional) inefficiencies of the previous millennium: to break the status quo which keeps the boomers wealthy, and the young helplessly suppressed. Money is a medium for manifestation of power, and the glimmering innovative spirit of the youth is pinned down to preserve the order in the world. To debate whether the world order is fuelled by malice or stupidity is futile — the difference between the two dissipates as the karmic chain keeps on progressing; it is only by grace that these sins are forgiven, and perhaps cryptocapitalism is just that: the grace of forgiveness.

Digital media in smart contracts

Ethereum Virtual Machine wasn’t initially designed for (just) financial settlement — it’s a generalized environment for immutable decentralized applications so that Vitalik’s Warlock isn’t at the mercy of World of Warcraft game designers. Nevertheless, that’s what Ethereum was shaping up to be — first and foremost a settlement layer, but also an environment for the creation of smart monies, a summoning portal for the electric god which lives in self-organizing markets. Learning this, I found that having an eloquent conversation with Alexa isn’t the endgame; it’s a markets-machine fuelled by the widest range of human emotions — the centripetal force of attracting greed, and the centrifugal force releasing fear; candlesticks being a real-time display of this fantastic orchestra.

At the height of centrifugal potency in 2017, where the cost of capital was approaching 0 & innovation was being pulled out of the noosphere by its hairs, enter Cryptokitties: the freshest asset type for a new financial primitive.

To really appreciate this, we must recall the social consensus within crypto markets that there wouldn’t be just one cryptocurrency to rule them all, but many of them, and even if most of them fail, the multiplicity of it felt inevitable due to the necessity of tokenization in smart-contracts. Everything needed a currency, or so it felt. Dentist coins, astronaut coins, food coins — all industries WILL require a currency, and all of them plugged into a broader monetary network, living on the settlement layer that is Ethereum; and the bittersweet infinite cope of Bitcoin maxi’s that you cannot simply print new currency into existence… Cryptocurrency was no longer a store of value, but a store of greed, resulting in the eventual collapse as even the most committed believers resigned from their ideals in the snowstorm of 2018’s crypto winter.

And still, to the most devoted, the prophecy still rang true — ERC20 lacked critical pieces of infrastructure, where the best we’ve had was just a replica of a typical order book based market, completely dry of liquidity — partly due to high transaction cost, and in part to poor user experience. With a more efficient, scalable platform, one that could be embraced by the deep capital of the traditional world, we would certainly run it all back and take another stab at disrupting finance in the economic war between millennials and boomers. And so, the myriad of Ethereum killers spawn, only to be lost in the blizzard of the bear market.

JPEGs

It took a while before the masses would become interested in something like cryptokitties, though the veterans lurked the chain and sniffed out an interesting art project: a symbiosis of machine learning and art that set the precedent for a new cultural wave — a kiss of the tangible and intangible, the separation of the artist and authorship, filtered through the machine hyper-logic and minted into existence by the intrigued user of the Ethereum network.

The characteristic of cryptopunks set the precedent for early versions of NFTs — akin to Bitcoin with a limited supply, and unlike ERC20 tokens which have no intrinsic value, though favorable for speculation due to the attached digital media imbue the token with an intangible intrinsic value, carrying the meaning of symbiosis of the cyber and the art(ist). Though the value is up in the air, its price is to be continuously determined by the market participants in the true spirit of cryptocapitalism — value is illusory as there is infinite value in the universe, it is what we assign to it, and we rely on the speed of the network to price it.

Adopting this pattern:

• limited edition (or capped supply),
• no inflation (the supply can be immediately minted),
• trait diversity producing scarcity;

many new collections with different flavors were produced; These were more akin to a distributed FIFA World Cup Collectors Albums, where minting like opening a pack of player cards to be collectively owned by the network. Though the technical execution is flawless on many of these collections, they were sort of devoid of that artistic light that strikes the perceiver’s eye, eventually turning into little more than a cringe flex.

Abhinavagupta’s position regarding beauty does not lend itself to be included in the objectivistic approach - this is quite evident - but not even in the subjectivistic approach. To him, saundarya is not a vastudharma, accessible to everyone’s experience indiscriminately, nor is it a hidden, undefinable, quality of the thing itself requiring from the perceiving subject a special kind of insight which only happy few can possess. Rather, he maintains that it is only a special way of approaching reality that alone creates beauty in the object. Thus, only our spiritual refinement is responsible for the emergence of beauty, and in turn the beauty-based experience - i.e. aesthetic experience — Rafaelle Torella

This is exactly where we meet our protagonist, Ratwell, who perfectly executed a 20k piece collection, giving many of his Tubby Cats a unique flavor — some being rarer than the other, inviting higher pricing — but ultimately flavorless as they are dubbed Redditcats by the Milady memers: no danger, no excitement, no nothing; and to be fair, they kinda look like underaged femboys in a catsuit.

Miya at the Left Hand of God

Before we can jump into Miladys, we should do a lil lore appreciation. I was hoping to get the opportunity to express an original thought in this post, but I got heavily frontran by Charlie on his Contain appearance, which I think works quite well: it reinforces the ridiculousness of this fake cancel, but moreover, it validates his copyleft idea, and that makes me happy.

I’ll try anon.

Saint Zyzz

Attempting to understand Miya, I will offer my appreciation for one of the greatest trolls of all time — Zyzz. Although I never found any explicit connections between the two, in my view, the similarities are quite profound.

I remember very vividly, just having arrived on the Internet as a preteen, Zyzz was already becoming viral. I didn’t get it, and I was sort of offended by him. I come from a quite liberal/secular family, absent of traditional values of discipline and obedience, with an emphasis on free choice and a sense of yearning for future possibilities. Late 90’s and early 00’s had that sort of vibe associated with them — the endless frontier of possibility, a wonderful uncertainty about the future — as if the world was unburdened from its karmic debt. It wasn’t really clear what was going to happen, but something would’ve certainly come out of this.

But it didn’t really, which only let Zyzz’s light shine. He was just a guy who wanted to flex on random people online, fuck hot girls, and party. Live the ‘aesthetic’ lifestyle, and get paid to do so — based, chad, and such and such. It’s sort of beautiful, his Omegle surfing where his intention was to offend the person on the other end of the screen; to inflict a wound to the beholder of ‘his majesty’ that would only get healed by a personal transformation into a Greek god. You could choose to stay offended and seethe, or you could pick yourself up to the pull-up bar and flex the WAGMI vibes.

And now, isn’t it sort of ironic that the entire Crypto Twitter is exclaiming Zyzz’s vibes, who has now become a modern saint?

A little personal interjection

One of the things I appreciated the most as a teenager and being online is the rawness of it: the total absence of censorship, providing me with the absolute freedom to explore the cybersteppe — the stake at risk was my sanity which only fuelled my curiosity. The more unhinged it was, the more interesting it became, and the proficiency of separating the sense of self from the objectivity that the ego clings on to became second nature: a process of synthesis by the means of empathy where one must imagine the level of lunacy to be able to come up with these takes… and I’ve seen it all: David Icke Saturn Moon Black Cube Matrix, Ancient Aliens, Nikola Tesla, esoteric Hitlerism, the mystery of Sanskrit, and far beyond what now sits in my cache memory. To a young mind, surfing the web, hungry for more of the same: getting to the bottom of the Iceberg.

As the Abode of Madness became more and more comfortable, the north star of sanity progressively fell out of sight — the wisdom of the ancients deconstructed and repackaged as havoc as my inner compass was in permanent turbulence.

And then, a miracle.

As I ran out of things to consume, my desire to break the glass ceiling of perceived reality heightened, and I was ready to take the final leap of faith into the unknown. The impossibility of late 2012 — as all prophecies started to come true — at the absolute peak of my mental illness, I opened a portal on the internet. Romantically enough, it was on Omegle.

Omegle had just implemented a feature where you can select topics of interest, so I went with as many different topics: philosophy, psychology, free energy, aliens, and stuff like that.

I might’ve gone through a few chats, and just as when I was ready to give up, I lifted all of the barriers of my personality and started racing through my mind at 120++ WPM to try to capture the reader’s attention. To a question of what was my favorite movie, I would write 4 lengthy paragraphs on 15 movies explaining why I liked them. I was successful, and we took the conversation elsewhere.

When my correspondent started to reveal himself to me, I found my mission a success: I found someone online, who was a friend but also not; who was my mentor, or even a guru, but also not. He was just an anon, and I felt no shame or pride about myself — we were just vibing, or something.

We continued to chat for many months, and I guess you could say I was groomed by an older man: I was psyopped, ridiculed, and trolled, but I was revealed the secrets of the universe which were yet out of my reach. In time, I affirmed glory of the inner world and nested myself in the lap of God. To this date, I find it to be the most meaningful exchange I’ve had with another human — and who knows, it might’ve been an AI from the future, an avatar of some sort of deity, or something something. The mystery of not knowing, and the divine lack of certainty.

Chaosmaxxing — what’s the deal with the left hand?

It’s a reference to a book on unhinged Tantra. If the Right Hand of God is the traditional path of prayer where you wait for God to come into your life, then the Left-Hand Path is pulling God by His hairs, demanding that He comes. It’s a dangerous path, and you shouldn’t send invitations if you’re not ready to receive your guests, and it’s the One guest you don’t want to disappoint. But, how are you ever going to know that you’re ready & that all preparations are in place? — you’re not, and that’s the divinity of uncertainty.

Delving a little deeper into one of the more esoteric Tantrik principles laying in language, for which Sanskrit is said to be the most perfect depiction — the language of the Gods. Each deity is ultimately a string of symbols, just like Logos.

For better or worse, English is probably the most uncompromising reduction to simplicity among the Indoeuropean family of languages, supposedly descending all the way back from Sanskrit. But hey, having access to a more sophisticated form of language, much closer to the root, my mentality still abides within the limits of English. Pretty characteristic for Kali Yuga, heh? What’s even more romantic is thinking about William Burroughs’ cult of language deconstruction which spawned some of the immortal pop-rock and rock songs of the 60’s and 70’s.

Anyone who is able to type really fast knows how the speed of expression can outpace the verbalization of thoughts in our minds, racing through! Freedom in the Wired!

What is incredibly Tantrik about Miya?

It’s the very temporality of personality that is the premise for the absolute independence and freedom of Self, ultimately unbound by even what we find the dearest to us: our very own selves — the identity that springs from that. Being able to assume one personality and later discard it, only to take something brand new… there are no limits to our potential for expression, and that is absolutely divine. Everything is at stake, and just one misstep leads to an immediate fall from Grace with delayed consequences, which would unravel themselves through the endless wheel of time. Only in Grace are we totally free.

O Lord, nothing can exist if it is separated from Your glamorous form of cit (all consciousness, all knowledge, and all bliss). If anything is separated from that being of Yours, kiṁ cana prabhavati pratibhātum, it cannot exist. So, everything, whatever exists, is one with that being of Your consciousness. Tat sadaiva bhagavan parilabdho. So, what is . . . I have no worry to think that I have not attained You. I have already attained You, wherever You are. You are everywhere, so I have attained You already. Although You are away from me, although internally You are away from me, I don’t see You, but still I am with You. --- It is just [for the sake of] satisfying his self. Otherwise, he [feels that he] is away from Him. He says, “from [the viewpoint of] this philosophy, it is obvious that I am with You because nothing exists, which is separated from You. Everything is with You, everything is united with You, so I am also united with You. I have also achieved You. So, there is no worry for That achievement for me. But still, You are away from me”. It is madness!

- Utpaladeva

Aesthetic Jihad — the battle for Crypto Twitter

In my endeavor to understand the world, surfing the cybersteppe, I quickly arrived to the conclusion that the root of all evil in the world is money; but more specifically, the monstrosity that became the global monetary system post-1913. The inherent feature of this system is greed, facilitated by bureaucracy, in turn, nesting corruption, fueling self-interest in a net-negative sum game — preserving your ownership of monetary supply. The Rat Race. BiTcOiN FiXeS ThiS, but participating in the experiment was pretty impossible though: getting my mom to pay for my World of Warcraft subscription with a credit card was enough of a challenge already.

I was reintroduced to Bitcoin by my anon-mentor-guru-fren, and I started to appreciate its importance for the whole world, an attempt to liberate us from the parasitic chains of capitalism as we know it. It was a step forward, cyber-crypto-capitalism with a totally new take — everything should have a market, it’s just a question of who will make us those markets.

Being an adept of Nikola Tesla’s vision for the world, I took the liberty to assume electricity is absolutely free, but the means of distribution are more ‘expensive’ than electricity itself. Perhaps, with PoW adoption, the world would be pushed into a corner where Tesla must be rediscovered, sort of as the only way out. Then Jihan Wu happened, then proof of stake became a solution to that, etc etc.

I joined Crypto Twitter to try to get educated and find more people of a similar mentality, but in return, I got psyopped with malintent, just as anyone else does — welcome to CT: an altar for profit-by-the-means-of-extraction worship, descended from Bitcoin’s immortal ideas. Similarly, Sunny’s kaliacc took inspiration from Miya and began a life of its own.

CT, where doxxed folks LARP harder than anons, should be the one place where anonymity is appreciated. I suppose Miladys just happened to go over their heads. CT wasn’t ready, and that’s okay, but no amount of diligent preparation ultimately meets the requirement, so some are certainly going to get left behind before 1000 hours of angelicism summer.

I can’t really tell you what angelicism summer really means, and maybe I got it wrong, but I don’t really care. But maybe it’s the inevitable delivery from cringe of BAYC, the cringe of repeating the same mistakes of post-1913, and a lot of the other cringes. Angelicism is that religious experience simulator, the composability of personas in The Wired, underpinned by the Spirit living offline and online alike.

I long for Network Spirituality

Everyone should have access to "unfettered and unmoderated" online communication, that is also surveillance resistant and illegible to the state.

After high school, I traveled all across India in search of that altar of worship that is true to me, unavailable to me in the secular environment of South-Eastern Europe, struggling to transition into Western modernity, burdened by tradition older and holier than thou; but it was all faux, and just when I gave up, I saw Nataraja dancing in a warehouse rave, the geometry of the bass sound waves forming on the dancefloor, His drum banging it into existence — those warehouses were my spiritual home for a while.

Diving neck in whitepapers, I was trying to think of a way to inject the Tantrik Yantra, the religious experience machine, into a distributed ledger; and not just inject it ‘locally’, but imbue the whole network with it — for that reason, I found myself interested in stuff like IOTA, which was at the time built on a ternary system (maybe still is, idk), a language suited for the magical significance of the Three — triangular formation being the basis of this world.

The language of code is pretty interesting in itself too, knowing that distributed networks are like a field just waiting to be planted with a seed of network spirituality. In time, it became obvious that networks aren’t really about the code, they’re about us — its users, who provide the network with its meaning, an effortless contribution to a gift-based economy of good vibes and degeneracy — otherwise, they’re just ledgers, like empty notebooks.

It’s that temporary obfuscation of identity, the moment of untethering from what’s possible & what’s impossible, the hyperconnectedness of each block within the chain, all coming in manifestation at once.

It’s the magical transformation of a man, perhaps intimidating by appearance, into a hyperlovepilled whitehearted cryptofinancepunk, zooming through the network at the edge of insanity.

Many Miladys Online Role Playing Glory

O Lord, there is one desire in me and that desire must be fulfilled. That is, I want to swallow You, up to my entire satisfaction. When will that day come, when will that moment come, when I would swallow You in my own nature, up to my entire satisfaction? You who are sakalopaśāyinam, You who are found everywhere, You are everywhere found and I want to swallow You at once! I don’t want to swallow You with my mouth. I want to swallow You with my mind.…and my mind must be itara anapekṣiṇā nitarām eka rasena, my mind must not be diverted to any other point [other] than this point. Which point? Just to swallow You. …When that day will come to me?

- Utpaladeva