The Rewiring of the Niche: Selling Out, Commons Databases, & NFTs

New technology can change our relationships.

When this happens, it both enables new ones to flourish while at the same time reframing or destroying old relationships. The former can be joyous, wonderful, and the latter can hurt and be depressing. A blockchain, a database in the commons, does both. New connections, new relationships have been forged while at the same time, with NFTs particularly, it’s ripping through old, established relationships. Besides the general critique against blockchain technology: environmental concerns alongside naked greed & speculation, I believe this effect - technology rewiring relationships - is a part of the unexamined nature of the unease. I can’t speak to the unease, since I’m a part of the former. They say that, at the end, it’s the friends we made along the way, and boy, is that true for me. So many new relationships anchored to a shared record.

Why and how is blockchain technology (particularly NFTs) rewiring relationships? Let’s start somewhere familiar.

1. Selling Out

We’ve been there. A niche band blows up and their next album is watered-down pop music for the masses. No longer a dark dive-bar band. Now, they are selling out stadiums. Ultimately, we should be happy, right? The band we obsessed over got success, they’re getting paid, and thousands of new fans can hear their new and old records. But, why do we feel unhappy? Music makes us feel something. When that crowd is small, it’s even more poignant, because the language the music speaks is only a few know. When you see someone in the street wearing that band’s t-shirt, your heart skips a beat. You can speak with each other without saying a word. You both know what the music made you feel, and so you can share that feeling. It’s intoxicating. It’s why there’s people who perpetually delve deeper into niches. It makes us feel less lonely.

So, when a band blows up, and ‘sells out’, gaining a much larger following, it can feel shit, because 1) they won’t be paying as much attention to the early fans anymore, and 2) the bigger reason: it’s destroyed the meaningful relationships you cultivated. No longer does it make you feel understood, because if everyone sings the song you once sung with a small sweaty crowd of people and cheap beer, it then only serves to remind you of the relationships you lost. “Selling out” and “blowing up” not only means that it changes the relationship between the band and the fans, but also the relationships between the fans. It’s a feeling of rejection. The band moved on and it left a hole that kept you all together. The reality is, not much has changed, but the room simply got bigger. You can still sing the songs with your old friends and early fans. The old music is still there. You can still buy new merch and so forth, but… it just isn’t the same. Now, the soul that was the glue to your emotions has become the machine.

In short: the more niche a community, the stronger relationships within it.

So, when the band “sells out”, you move on. You find the next thing that makes you feel something to the stranger next to you.

2. The Organization & The Database

Organizations run the world and databases run organizations. For much of modern history (I’d wager since the advent of double-entry accounting), any meaningful database relied on an accompanying organization to persist and maintain itself. Your money, your identity, your online life, your hobbies, much of it is mediated through an organization sheltering a database.

This combo is the reason for much of how our current relationships are structured. Think of a novelist and a reader and all the databases holding your hands in-between.

In a traditional publishing relationship, take the following example:

1) A novelist signs with an agent. This agency has a database.

2) The agent sends the WIP novel to publishers. The publishing house has a database.

3) They get you a deal and advance you money for the novel. You receive the money through the bank. The bank has a database.

4) You finish writing the novel.

5) While the in-house editor at the publisher polishes the book, the publisher engages with marketing firms. The marketing firm has a database.

6) The marketing firm uses its usual campaign for sci-fi novels and advertises through social media. The social media platform has a database.

7) You see the ad on Twitter. Up your ally. It takes you to Amazon. Amazon has a database.

8) You pre-order the book using a credit card. Visa has a database.

9) The publisher sends the book for reviews at media houses. The media houses has databases.

10) You receive the novel. You love it. You sign up for the novelist’s email newsletter through Substack. Substack has a database.

11) You give it 5 stars on Goodreads. Goodreads has database.

12) You go to reddit to talk to like-minded fans. Reddit has a database.

All these steps to publish a book has databases at many, many levels. But, it’s not just databases that matter, but the relationships. Throughout this entire chain are MANY relationships. Industry relationships. Writer relationships. Fan relationships. All across this stack.

Any threat to how novels are written and how readers read them, is also a threat to the relationships that exist here. An important thing to remember is that many creators also form relationships with other creators based on these relationships. It’s the same relationship that fans have among themselves to a band. When a fellow writer gets a publishing deal, we connect with them, because we understand the struggle to get there.

And thus, here is the crux. What does the world look like when we change HOW databases exist? Fundamentally, what if databases (and public records) could exist and thrive outside organizations on a large scale? How would that rewire our relationships at every level? When that change happens and we aren’t prepared for it, it tends towards the latter: it hurts.

What a blockchain does is that it attempts to bring a database into the commons: a shared record outside an organization. It won’t replace every database, but it is fundamentally rewiring many of them.

3. The NFTs that’s destroying relationships

When a novelist, having built all their relationships through old organizations and old, sheltered databases suddenly decides to make all their work free and sell signed collectibles as NFTs to make a living, it can hurt. It not only bypasses existing relationships in the industry, but also the writer/fan relationships AND most importantly, the fan/fan relationships.

What it feels like, is that your favourite novelist is “selling out”. At this stage, it feels like they are taking money from not the usual people (“Some of them only want to speculate on your amazing work! They aren’t even fans! Sell outs! Just out to make money!”) It also changes your relationship with the writer. Previously you might have paid a handsome sum for a deluxe hardcover, but now, the writer might not have to anymore. That payment is an emotional investment. It’s just normal cognitive dissonance. We like things we paid for. Now, if the content is free, does it feel like it detracts from the experience and value of it? “If I want to feel what I felt, should I buy an NFT?” Now, your relationship changes such that it’s not a connection to the writing itself, but something else? A token? On a shared database? Then, it also changes your relationships to fans. You built relationships based on the medium, but now the medium has changed. “Wait, all the fans who bought NFTs are now posting in Discords? Will they still hang out on Reddit?”

Although the stories might not have changed, the relationships did. This is particularly the case why the furry community has pushed back. For years they were the only ones who sported animal avatars on Twitter and revelled in digital art commissions for each other. Now, they are being steamrolled by crypto and NFTs and that can cause their identity to be lumped together into a community they don’t know. The furries don’t want to be seen as the same as the bored apes because the relationships they built weren’t mediated in the same way.

4. New relationships can also hurt

If you are suddenly faced with this new reality, it can be incredibly scary. Lots of future shock. Loud crypto bros on Twitter. Looks scammy. Doesn’t feel right. It’s safer in the cocoon you’ve built with the people you’ve already met. The reality is that a commons databases (with NFTs being culturally front-and-center) also rewires your own relationship to your own work. An artist, spending nights and weekends creating art and sharing it online is suddenly faced with the possibility that: “I can actually make money from this? Above and beyond from commissions?” It takes a lot of guts to jump that fence. Because now, your work might be valued, and you don’t want that. “What if people think it’s worthless?” You might see other artists making a success from their work, and you feel that you could too. Heck, what if you could quit your job? But, no. It’s scary. What if it’s all just crypto bros pumping and dumping this stuff, using us creators like fodder for their games? And once this fad is over, you’re left with your own set of destroyed relationships: the job you quit, the friends who think you sold out, and the lost connections to other creators. It could all end a mess, and that’s scary. The technology gives you new opportunities as a creator and to wade in, is risky: to yourself, and your community.

The only way this works and makes sense is that you bring your friends along with you (which isn’t a guarantee), or you form new relationships. New relationships with new artists and new fans. But, that too isn’t what everyone wants. “We have our niche already. We just want what we’ve got.”

5. Rewiring the niche

So, at the end of the day, blockchains and particularly NFTs - it being embedded in cultural and social contexts more than just finance applications - is rewiring your niche. It will rewire many niches because commons databases outside organizations inevitably will, and that’s both a very exciting, but also difficult process. Some things won’t be the same anymore.

I’ve met so many amazing people, creators, all because there’s this shared database that allows us to create a shared story. This will continue and in its wake we’ll have new and wonderful things, but we’ll also have the detritus of old relationships ripped apart by sheltered databases that fell out of organizations.

It’s important to be kind because at the end of the day, all we really have is the people around us. Technology is disruptive.

Peace.