Being at NFT NYC and meeting so many of my online friends irl has been a wake-up call. On Twitter or even on zoom, it’s very easy to reduce people to one-dimensional models. This person gives good mechanism feedback. This person has a lot of NFTs. This person tweets hentai. 2/

It turns out (surprise!) that there is a lot more depth to all of you. And you are cooler and more interesting than I ever could have imagined. In fact, this community is the most interesting one I’ve ever been a part of. 2/

We have all the most curious and driven people from finance, media, gaming, rationality, EA, vtubing, 4chan, etc. Before this conference I modeled every anime PFP as a slightly nerdier version of myself. Lol. Lmao. I’m the nerdiest fucker here. You guys are superstars. 3/

One thing that really hit home is the fact that crypto truly is a giant LARP. This isn’t a diss for me. When you get a bunch of creative people together and give them roles and objectives and permission to deviate from their normal identity, fun stuff happens. 4/

Typically for a multi-day LARP a bunch of people will gather in the same location to pursue various subplots, common goals, and conflicts. Organization is typically based around “factions,” subgroups who share a similar identity and a dense web of relationships. 5/

Your faction is your home base. You’ll often start and end the day with them, or meet up when nothing else is going on. If there’s a big set piece — the @egirl_capital party, for example — you’ll dress up in matching outfits and roll in together. 6/

I won’t belabor the point but I hope the parallels are obvious. About the only LARP staple missing was a meta-game concluding in a major vote to serve as fuel for drama between factions. Builders and creatives: if you want to make this happen for a future con, I will help. 7/

My own pattern at LARPs is pretty consistent. I like to kick off subplots that take on a life of their own and give others an opportunity to exercise creativity: start a cult, spread a curse that makes people blurt out secrets, that kind of thing. 8/

What I don’t tend to do is spend a lot of time with my own faction. I like getting a full nights’s sleep and generally need a ton of alone time to recharge my batteries. So, I miss faction events and people make memories without me. 9/

Over the course of a weekend, this is not a big deal. Over the course of a lifetime, I’m realizing, it might be a serious mistake. As the brilliant @smaroo told me on my first night of venturing indoors, “people are plants, not machines.” 10/

@_Dave__White_ aw shucks dave

@_Dave__White_ Was great seeing you sir, you are incredibly appreciated & a genuinely good dude.