#oneaday Day 1016: Cyberpunk dystopia

I've been feeling for a while now like we're legitimately living in a cyberpunk dystopia, only without all the cool-looking neon-lit rainy streets and robotic prostitutes. (Although those are very much on the way.)

Right now, I feel like we're living through that chapter in the book where a mysterious and strange quasi-religious cult rises up as if from nowhere, singing praises to their all-powerful lord and master as they attempt to convert everyone to their bizarre way of life with what some of them earnestly believe to be love and tolerance.

In fact, of course, the "all-powerful lord and master" is not a deity at all, but rather someone who has mastered the art of manipulating stupid and/or gullible people into doing things that are bad for themselves, but good for the manipulator.

In this case, the cult — which is seemingly divided into multiple sects — is the NFT movement, who appear so utterly convinced that paying thousands of dollars for imaginary money with which to purchase imaginary pieces of paper to prove that they own an imaginary piece of artwork generated by an algorithm rather than an actual person is a sensible way to spend one's time and money in 2021.

The cult-like behaviour arises any time they are criticised. They pull together and talk about their "amazing community" while displaying no real evidence of actual meaningful human interaction. They offer up the name of their lord and master Ethereum as the one true solution to all life's ills. And they unironically believe that one day we are all going to live in a Metaverse of man's own creation, where the woes of the world will somehow simply cease to exist.

The latter part may well be true to a certain extent one day — I'm sure within the next century or two we will figure out something along the lines of "digital consciousness" — but even if it were to happen now, it's not going to magically solve the world's problems. Imagine if everyone hooked themselves into a "Metaverse" right this second — where's all the energy to power said Metaverse going to come from?

We're already having problems with energy and the impact that the generation thereof is having on the planet — something which NFTs aren't helping with, it should be added — so how is making humanity completely reliant on technology going to help? And who manages said technology? You saw The Matrix, right? It wasn't an aspirational movie.

The amusing and/or scary thing about everything I've outlined above is that none of it is an exaggeration. There are legitimately people out there who feel like investing thousands of dollars in a terrible pixel art picture is a good way to spend their time. Ethereum — which is, I believe, the name of an NFT or cryptocurrency trading platform or something — is genuinely invoked as the solution to all manner of problems by these people. And they do not see that they're being really weird.

Their usual argument is that this is "technological progress", but their suggestions are falling on deaf ears for the most part. And so, frankly, they just come across as batshit crazy and a little disturbing right now.

Still, at least it's nice to have a group of people that the entire rationally-minded part of the Internet can agree that it's okay to bully. Just as long as they don't end up with SHODAN on their side or something.