NFTs and the sovereign writer: A weird experiment in Freak Power
You’re about to enter an experiment. Reader discretion is advised.
The hypothesis of this experiment is simple, though testing it will be complex. Specifically, I want to test whether NFTs and Web 3.0 (W3) have the transformative potential for writers and writing that I think they have.
I caught the NFT bug while listening to Tim Ferriss Show Episode 542 with Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon. Research for a consulting project pushed me upriver into this highly weird internet backwater. I’ve stuck around because I think something powerful is happening here, a force that could revolutionize publishing and change the lives of writers. That, and this murderous guy named Kurtz won’t let me leave.
There are some strange bedfellows in W3 Land. Bored Apes. Crypto Punks. Generative artists. Conmen. Speculators. Maximalists of every legit and shit coin and blockchain you’ve never heard of. And capital--lots of capital. This volatile mix is part of the alluring magic. The whole thing could explode or alchemize at any moment.
The operation seems to run on high-octane Freak Power, the same stuff that sent Hunter Thompson on a drug-addled burn through Las Vegas. The sixties died, but the ghost haunts W3, the same ghost that birthed the internet itself (pay no attention to the turtleneck the apparition is wearing). The Freak Power traces in this moment are no different from the ones that thrummed through the veins of Neal Cassady, John Perry Barlow, and Steve Jobs.
What’s an honest writer to do but turn on, tune in, and drop out. What, however, are we turning on for and tuning into? Perhaps the ascendancy of truly sovereign, independent writers.
The last days of the middlemen?
Web 2.0 (W2) may have been the best and worst thing that ever happened to creatives. On the plus side of the equation, it made sharing our work at scale easier than ever. On the negative side, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and the rest convinced us to give it away for free. For the musicians among us, Spotify conditioned us to accept pennies for the gift of “exposure.” Most of the musicians I know played enough free upstairs Court Tavern shows for exposure, thank you very much.
Things are and were slightly different for writers in W2 land. While W2 eased access to mass audiences for journalists and writers of non-fiction by removing the traditional gatekeepers from the equation (for good and for ill), little changed in the world of fiction. The fortress manned by literary agents and major publishers remained intact. Independent authors had and have few viable self-publishing options beyond Amazon. The creative realm of fiction largely remains controlled by middlemen. It’s an editor’s and literary critic’s world. We just write in it.
How often do these taste-making middlemen miss the next McCarthy, Hempel, Ellison, or Prose? And for the writers who manage to get published, how many can actually make a living from their work?
The new Freak Frontier
Maybe, in a W3 world, fiction, self-published as NFTs, can get us there. Maybe the storytellers among us can actually make a living doing what we’re called to do--and do it sovereignly, on our own terms. The question is, how?
That’s what this experiment will be about. I’m going all in on fiction as NFTs, and I’m going to document the process. The more I research the subject, the more I think we are standing on the edge of a new frontier. There are no maps of the territory. Maybe I can make one by publishing some fiction as NFTs and documenting the experience. Maybe we can all learn something in the process. Maybe I’ll just make a colossal ass of myself. Only one way to find out...
So, westward ho the wagons under the glorious Freak Power banner! We’ve got to reach the new frontier before they put up a Starbucks and build subdivisions! We’ve got to keep it Free and Weird!
So, you in? In the words of the late, great Dr. Gonzo: Buy the ticket, take the ride.
P.S.: Like the 8-bit image of Hunter S. Thompson at the top of this post? It’s an NFT.