Demoralized ----------- I got out of a very frustrating meeting this morning. The problem is two-fold, really. First, that people are still talking about doing in-person events right now even with everything happening with omicron getting bad and schools and businesses closing down quickly. Second, I was dealing with a bunch of people arguing that we need to get marginalized communities more involved in the metaverse and NFTs and I was just sitting there stunned at how, well, ignorant of the real nature of all of this people were. I can't even tell how much I blame them versus how much I'm disappointed. It's just really frustrating to hear people saying that the problem right now is that black communities are going to get left behind from this new and important space when I want to just scream at everyone "you're not getting in on the next big thing you're at best someone's downline and at worst someone's mark!" Like this is exploitation at its finest: they're taking people who want a way to even the scales of their inequality and promising them it's going to be the next big thing, the huge investment, an opportunity that can't be missed but you have to act now now now. One of the women at this meeting even talked about the importance of getting involved in this "digital real estate" and like actual real estate this is largely bullshit artificial scarcity of a small number of people trying to control what should be a public commons. I don't want to let this fight go, though, and I'm going to try and push back and rather than just act like a prophet of old and decide the city is damned I need to assume that the people I'm dealing with have good intentions but just don't realize the implications of what they're saying and why it's such a bad idea. I've already signed myself up to talk next month about why this technology is exploitative.