It’s another blog from Indra, and I dropped my new piece called drowning yesterday on Known Origin. You might be asking why KO and I will get to that later.
First, drowning is a piece that I wanted to create. It came to me, and I think it came to me because of my frustrations and own self-doubt. I like many, have worried. I have a lot going on personally, and this space to me is a chance to finally do something unique, rather than be locked up into a system that doesn’t care and would rather I will be a number on a payslip, and we are coming back to this later in the blog.
I think people see me and assume things are ok. I honestly believe in always trying to be positive as possible this. However, it doesn’t mean being fake. I stand up for things that I see as wrong or things I disagree with. If you have read my blogs or listened to my podcast, you hopefully will understand that by now. I, however, do have worries and have doubts.
This piece is my constant mental state in this space. The person in the middle of this sea of TVs and radios is me. I try to be myself and break out, which is symbolised by the butterflies escaping my face. I removed the face and didn’t want to show it because it’s than anyone it’s me, it’s you, it’s anyone who is struggling with the up and down mental rollercoaster of this space.
The TVs and radios represent social media; it’s a sea of it; you can see the Twitter logo on some. I wanted to create this tech industrial feel with wires that are overtaking everything. These are the social connections. You can see that myself has some growing out of the top of my head. This means I am losing myself and becoming something less than human and more robotic, and I don’t want that.
You can see it starts with hope, then bleeds into doubt, and you think you have failed by the end. I believe this is a lot of people in this space, not just me. Everyone is feeling this, and everyone struggles. We all put on our butterfly faces and try and spread our wings but then doubt creeps in, and we fall.
This piece is very much the next stage in my NFT journey. I have now created three pieces that are my journey, and each shows a different time in the space and how I felt at the time. I have always done that created personal pieces, and there is always something in each piece either unique to me. I sometimes don’t always explain it.
I hope anyone looking at this piece can relate and understand that many of us are going through the same journey. We all have these doubts. I hope this piece connects with people out there, and they understand they can see the struggle in themselves. There is always hope. The animation always ends and starts on hope. The bit in the middle never matters. It’s the growth of a person. This is the pains of growing, but it will always work out in one way or another.
I decided to drop this piece onto KO, and it’s time to be honest, and explain why. I am slowly distancing myself from Foundation. I love the community there. The people who are amazing the staff and mods are always so fun and happy to listen, but I can’t support it anymore.
I have spoken about it a little bit in blogs and podcasts where I feel there is a disconnect between what FND wants to promote and show and who the community is. I live and breathe the NFT space, I am in loads of discords, and I spread around. I see so many faces and names everywhere, but I never see the people who FND promote. I never see them in the discords; I don’t see them mentioned in art threads or people dropping their names. So either I am out of the loop, and everyone else is who I see and connect with or FND is aligned to other values, and these are the values they want to promote.
It frustrates me when I see two mods who work hard for the discord, and one of them even made them a custom bot off his own back. Ask just politely is there any chance of a retweet for their collab.
I watched both these artists work hard on this collab. It was terrific, and come drop day, did FND retweet it? Did they even acknowledge it? No nothing.
It got retweeted over 70 times. It was a big deal for both of these artists, and these artists are core members of your community, and you cant even retweet them? Like what is up with that. I have sat and tried to figure this out. Maybe they missed the message, but that’s not it. Perhaps they didn’t see the tweet. It was retweeted 70 plus times by people in the space, so that it couldn’t be that.
The only thing I can think of is they don’t want to. They don’t want to retweet it. They don’t want to support two mods in their community working hard. Before you say, well, they can’t be seen supporting mods, They actively retweet certain mods ALL THE TIME.
They push these mods and include them everywhere, so that can’t be the case of not showing basis. It has to be I don’t want to support that for whatever reason. I can’t stand this. Can we break it down? You do realise that the two mods are a human right. You do realise they spent a ton of time working on a collab. You do learn they work hard ON YOUR DISCORD to help people. ONE even made you a custom chatbot to automate a service, something he did off his OWN back.
These are two people who are excited to spread the word of their collab, they worked fucking hard on it, and they work hard on your platform. THEY choose your platform to showcase this. You cant even retweet it. Over 70 people from the FND community, including myself, retweeted it. You cant it didn’t land on someone’s timeline. You cant also say you didn’t see the messages they sent.
I don’t understand why can’t you retweet. It its the easiest thing in the world to do to support people who are supporting you. These are champions of this space. They have gone to bat more for your platform than anyone else. FUCKING RETWEET THEM just once it meant a lot to them. I SAT AND WATCHED both these guys making this piece working their fucking asses off to make it.
RETWEET IT. It takes 10 seconds of your time. It’s not even the first time
JL Maxcy put together an art gallery in Minecraft. They spent time building it up, got the community involved, and showcased FND artists. They did this all of their own back to help the community of FND. It even leads to some artists getting bids.
THEY asked you to help support it again it’s a retweet she ASKED more than once. Did FND retweet it? Did FND say thank you for supporting artists on our platform….No nothing, she was ghosted.
Again they are human. They spent time……TIME that you can’t get back, but they finished it working on something that benefited other people. These are the people you want here, they are not just talking the talk and saying they want to help people or support people blah blah, but their actions never amount to retweeting friends or a select few over and over again.
They did something that helped artists get bids. They should be fucking congratulated, and guess who retweeted it me, people in the space guess who didn’t FND, and anyone they promote or at least I didn’t see it.
Christiana Tudor has asked many times for help from FND, and I have seen them asking questions and again ghosted or ignored. Boxhead is another one they asked for help from a gallery many, many times. The most she ever got was, oh, we can’t help but get the community to do it. I knew they wouldn’t help.
Strange Cintia is a person who tries hard in space and sufferers from a medical issue, but she tries hard and is a great member of the community. She has tried to raise money to pay for a treatment that could fix her life. We have asked outright if FND could help with this to nothing.
These are four women. Hardworking women out there doing amazing things working hard but at each step have been ignored in some way or another. What happened to lifting women in this space. It costs nothing to retweet. It costs nothing to help people who are ACTIVE in your discords, and on tweeter, Boxhead is out there every week on stage and helping wherever she can. She has asked for help with her fashion or someone to talk to, and she asked multiple times about the gallery, and I don’t care what anyone says.
It’s a blow every single time you get some half-arsed response. Do you have any idea how much boxhead was stressing over that event, trying to make it unforgettable, and FND couldn’t even help? Instead, they now want to do it themselves…
This isn’t the only reason I also have personal issues. I applied for two jobs at Foundation. I am in the middle of moving to the point where I could end up homeless. I have no family here and no close friends. I am by myself with my dogs. I am living on savings to pay my way through school.
So I applied for a job, I don’t care if I get the job or not, but I have waited and waited. I have put my move on hold. I have put my life on hold, holding out just in case I hear something. If I get the job, it’s the difference between me moving to an area that is a little more unsafe for me by myself to living somewhere that is better for my doggies and myself.
So I held off and held off, and did I hear anything no nothing. This again goes to a human thing. I’m a human right; I have a life going on. If I don’t get the job, let me know. I can then make plans and move on.
Instead, I have been left in a state of limbo. I hate this; just tell people to be human with people. Its not hard to do. Understand that it’s people on the other end of the communication.
I’m not saying FND did this on purpose, but they know if I have the job or not. People have asked them enough its been brought up plenty of times. Just say, email me so I can plan my next step.
It’s like FND finally threw their weight behind something this week, and look at the result. They put up a banner across their webpage. Everyone tweeted it out. FND got behind it, heavily promoted it, and guess what it led to bids.
Congrats to all the artists involved in that but FND should be doing this all the time. This should be the norm for FND. Why aren’t you doing this every month, spotlighting everyone equally and putting light on sci-fi artists, pixel artists, your name? Then, you could build up a campaign around it.
But they won’t. I can’t ever see people on that discord being selected and promoted like that. I hope I can be proven wrong with this.
I am frustrated massively. I am loyal to the people I love, and I am dedicated to people I see working hard. all the people I talked about above are fucking human. I respect and love all of them for putting in the hustle, and I can’t stand people reaching out for something as simple as a retweet or something, and they can’t get that.
It kills them inside; you start thinking, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get a retweet? It then turns to anger people start hating you and your platform.
I can tell you that something is bubbling, and people will only take so much before they snap before seeing it as an injustice and act out. I fully expect to stand down as a mod or be kicked out after this.
But I entered this space being true to myself, and I have to stick to that. So I dropped my piece on KO, and guess what KO retweeted me heck. They retweeted me before I was even on that platform.
That’s not to say FND has not helped me, I have been on the front page, and I have been retweeted, and I happy for that, and I am always shocked at that. That’s the thing it’s something I shouldn’t be shocked about. Like all these artists, they are blown away when they get a retweet because they are used to not getting anything.
I don’t feel like that’s a good look. Can you retweet everyone? No, and can you support everyone? No, but the examples above have helped and supported a platform they have gone above and beyond to help or support the community they deserve attention.
Frank is another one who spent a lot of work building a google form and spending time getting results from the community and what they would like to see and what they are angry about.
I was in discord with them while they built this. However, they spent hours discussing it and turned it around in no time.
Has anyone spoken to frank about it? Have they looked into what the community wanted to voice, as far as I know? No, they haven’t.
This is even something FND asked the community to do.
So I don’t get it, and I don’t understand something that doesn’t align with the people I see and the people FND promotes or what their plan is. I get they are a platform, and I get they are a business, and you can’t always promote small artists. I GET IT.
The people above, though, are not these. Are people who are actively making FND better by doing things that have helped you. I cant deal with it.
These are my reasons why and I stand by them, and I will give the fucking voice of these people. I will tell you where you went wrong and where you acted shit.
They don’t show you they are upset. They don’t show you there disappointed but trust me. You disappointed them. I am very close with FCC and T3D, and I was so excited for them and their collab and how hard they worked and how hard they do things for the community.
To see you blank them and not retweet it is shit; you disappointed them, you forgot they are human. We forget we are human. We are not our fucking Twitter handles we are people who are a mess, and it’s ok to be a mess we don’t have to be perfect we shouldn’t have to be a certain way or in a particular group or be chosen by anyone to be a treated as a human.
Have we forgotten that we are broken, flawed and scared people? We all have doubts, fears. We are mentally destroyed. We are living in a minefield of social media. We are struggling to make money. We are fighting for our kids. We are trying to find a small piece of joy in a sea of every not knowing who the fuck we are anymore.
What’s real anymore? It feels like we now live in some hype stylised cartoon version of real life, where we are not allowed to be treated like a human.
What are we doing in a world where an amazon employee has to take a shit in a bag because they are scared of missing deliveries to lose their job. What the fuck are we doing? That that is a thing. Amazon even tell drives to check your van to see if there’s a piss bottle and report it?
What the fuck are you doing where you accept that as something normal. I would rather pay more or have my item delivered later if it meant my driver didn’t have to degrade themselves. These are people doing this. They have even had to change their menstrual pads while on the road.
I don’t care if this is only a handful of drives as amazon tries to right it off, but they have internal letters talking about this. What is happening? You have to draw a moral line at some point, and that should fucking be it. FIX IT, don’t be telling drives to check for piss bottles. FIX IT.
How can you be a manager working with these people under you, knowing this is going on? Why are people higher up in the company not saying something because of money? These people are fucking human. Do you think any driver who has had to do this is happy with their job? They are happy with doing that. Do they not think they feel embarrassed.
They are doing this all to make sure they deliver you a fucking bookcase that you need in 2 hours.
We are living in a hyperlinked version of reality. We have to be to allow that to happen.
Equally, some kids are 13 in Africa picking up rubbish that we dump there because we can’t be bothered. These are countries dropping it their TVs, fridges, laptops, toxic elements and complaints, and a 13-year-old kid is picking it up to get paid a few dollars to grab some food.
Where are his parents? They left him there.
Is it their fault? No, they are doing what they have to do to survive, but in what world would we let this happen I know a hyper-stylised version of reality where we are obsessed with greed, tv and celebrities dictate to us what we should all enjoy and like and act.
Want the white wedding dress…why because you like it or because the countless movies and Disney stories have made you want it. What is real at this point.
We don’t see people as the human behind screens. We see them as a Twitter handle or a discord username, and we don’t get that they have feelings they are messy. They are reaching out for help.
One small action could change their whole day, making them happy making them feel that the hard work they did for you is worth it. It means something.
Humans want to mean something to someone and feel they are doing things that people notice. I notice a lot of what’s happening. I retweet a lot of artists, and I am vocal for many people.
I get the struggle myself. I have been trying for weeks to get someone to listen to me about my ideas, making a fundamental change to people’s lives here and giving you guys another option to make money and help, but I can’t get anyone to pay attention.
We are not human. We are instead being follower counts, friend groups and ignoring everything else.
This is the reason I have distanced myself. I can’t support it anymore, and maybe it’s a mistake moving my work to KO, but I love the community, and I love the discord and everyone in it and will always support them as much as I can.
However, I can’t let things that I feel are small human things that should be ignored.
No one is perfect. We are all a mess, and that mess makes us unquie and beautiful, but we need to see when people need a lift.
fuck pickles and other things that designed to try and make someone rich and forget people in this space who claim they are excellent or like to talk themselves up without actually doing anything.
People speak loudest when they are trying to convince themselves and others of things they lack. Instead, see people who are doing something and reach out and be human.
Otherwise, like my art piece, we are all going to drown in a sea of social media, which strips us of us being human and instead makes us only see the benefits of a follower or money.
I don’t want my art pieces to feel this space become darker; I want to give people chances and help people. That’s all I cant do the hard work for you, but I feel you should if you want it to be given a chance, it’s up to you to work hard for it.
Thanks for reading, and as always, I love you all.
