In the wake of the blue3dao incident, whereby an innocuous individual was unjustly and harshly accused of being a misogynist creep, I started thinking about cancel culture as it relates to crypto. I was very active in my defense of brown backpack guy, having made numerous tweets, retweets, and replies about the situation, but I found myself making strange bedfellows as others took the opportunity to express views that I felt diminished his defense and provided legitimacy to the gist of blu3dao’s histrionic and attention-seeking claims - that the crypto space is misogynistic, racist, and needs to be more inclusive.
I said as much in a little-received response to gainzy, who seemingly tried his best to prove the culture crusaders at blu3dao right by posting a photo of the chief instigator and commenting on her appearance:
I don’t want to spend any more time rehashing the incident. My views are very well-articulated by @defigirlxoxo in this thread:
But the incident dragged out a lot of culture warriors who seem to make victimhood their identity in the opposite way that blu3dao did - that they are constantly marginalized for their views, that all views should be tolerated, that nobody should be canceled for what they say, and that “woke libs” and “cancel culture” are seemingly at the root of every problem in today’s society.
For the remainder of this piece, those are the issues I want to address.
Opinions are a product of thought. An audience for those opinions is the market. If you don’t achieve product-market fit, I have news for you - it’s your fault. Do better. Don’t be a whiny little snowflake about how people don’t like your product (i.e. tolerate your opinions). Read more, have more dialogue, and do what it takes to refine the product.
In the outrage expressed by the anti-woke crowd in the wake of the blu3dao incident, a common theme was evident: that cancel culture has no place in crypto.
However, I think the opposite. At the heart of crypto is a quest for freedom - for free speech, for free markets, and for a society that tolerates it. To that extent, we must marginalize those who seek to encroach on that ideal. blu3dao is one such collective of individuals who have apparently been canceled. The anti-woke crowd may deny this - it’s “canceling cancel culture,” or whatever such rationalization they make for the fact that blu3dao individuals have been (rightfully) marginalized from the space following their actions and lack of accountability. But it’s still cancel culture - it just happens to align with their views this time around. This time, it’s their cancel culture, not the wokeists’.
If freedom is at the heart of crypto, certainly people are free to make choices with respect to how they spend their time, money, and effort, and with whom they interact and do business.
Someone who trolls or holds fringe views may publicly lament the fact that they are unable to gain the audience they desire for their opinions or their work. They may blame cancel culture or woke Zoomers. This is cope. Either their opinions, their work, or some combination of the two are not sufficiently refined to achieve the product-market fit they crave. This cope is anathema to a key crypto-centric ideal - that the free market should decide who succeeds and who fails.
When boycotts work, it’s because of the power of the free market. They are not artificial. Even when seemingly artificial measures are taken, such as in the case of a sponsor dropping a spokesperson who espouses fringe views, the sponsor is making their decision with the market in mind. Ultimately, the sponsor performs a cost-benefit analysis where they attempt to forecast the market’s response to their decision.
In this vein, cancel culture is, in fact, entirely compatible with crypto. People are freely deciding how to spend their time and money based on their priorities. Cancel culture harnesses the power of the free market, but just as in trading, many market participants don’t fully understand the markets in which they participate. So, as in trading, my advice is to not trade in markets that you don’t understand, including the marketplace of ideas.
i like 2 constantly talk without any regardfor my position and this ironically gifts me the position of both no power and no profit but a light heart and a free mind :D