Emerging and evolving at lightspeed

A look at Web3 culture in entry 8 of a cryptopoet's guide to the metaverse.

A clock telling the right time for saying GM (AI-generate image)

With the speed of light, a new culture is emerging and evolving. As with every technological revolution, especially when related to computers and networks. This time it's powered by blockchains, decentralisation and artificial intelligence. This new culture brings new rituals, new references, new values. In this journal entry, I shine a light on some elements of this emerging culture, illustrated with some of the poems I wrote inspired by it.

Maybe the most eye-catching ritual of Web3, as this new era is often referred to, is the daily ritual of greeting the world with a heartfelt GM. Even if you know it lands in the afternoon or evening of some of your friends and followers.

If you have ever been to New York, and even if you haven't, you may know about that bull statue on Wall Street, in the middle of the financial centre. The bull that signifies the positive, growth-fueled markets, in which everything goes up. The bull has an oposite: the bear. The bear signifies the market in which all indicators are only going down, liquidity is limited and sales are slumping. Currently, in the word of web 3, we are experiencing a bit of a bear market. The bear, they call it. And we're all looking for the signs of the bull coming back to bring us infinite amounts of fresh crypto coins.

The bear of Paris and Ourobullbear poems

The fun of the bear market is, or at least that is what we tell ourselves now that we are in the midst of it, that it is a great moment to build. Build a new identity, a new image, build collections, an oeuvre. Build connections and communities. So that when the bull comes running back in, we are all ready to finally get rewarded with infinite increases in the value of our crypto coins.

Yes, we are building. And exploring. New technology, such as the infinitely scary and infinitely filled with potential field of artifical intelligence. All sorts of art is sprouting from our prompts to Stable Diffusion, MidJourney, ChatGPT and DALL-E. We are not scared, we see the potential, and are exploring it. To the brink. We even try to humanise it.

A new AIra & The human face of code poems

But for all the hype and fads and pixelated profile pics to which we mindlessly throw our crypto, and lose it all, we are still creating what some see as nothing more than glorified jpegs.

Poems Today's jpegs & Jumper

As we are trying to sell our work, find collectors for our creations, and forge those strong bonds we need for when the bull comes running back, we hang out online. In discord, and in the increasingly uncomfortable spaces of Twitter. Fortunately, emerging Web3-native social networks such as Lens and BlueSky are looking increasingly like safe havens for those of us fleeing the extremist violence that is slowly but surely taking over the land of the blue bird.

And in all this, we need to ask ourselves: to we really need to destroy all that came before us, to build our brave new world, or should we try to not go full-force-iconoclasm and keep the things that are good and build from there?

So, how are you experiencing this brave new world of Web3?

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