There is an old saying, shall we discuss the elephant in the room, which is clearly in the face of so many but is ignored and typically never spoken about.
If you have followed my blogs and Twitter, you know I have a big soft spot for the NFT space and especially its people. I have bonded with many, spending time with these people in a way probably more personal than their partners. Being behind a computer screen, a stranger sometimes allows people to have raw conversations. I have met some fantastic people in this space.
When I became a mod to the Foundation discord, I meet hundreds of creators. I looked at countless hundreds of works by them, listened to their stories, saw their meme posts want them mint, watched them list and got to experience their first sell.
However, I equally get to hear their sorrows, the sadness, the imposter syndrome. The doubt in their work. The inability to connect to people in the space.
So I watched and followed, listened to the Foundation’s future, listened to the prominent creators, and listened to the collectors.
I would hear this one thing repeatedly from everyone “community” NFT is about community. This space is all about community. Come on, guys.
So it’s about community, but why do I hear stories from creators about being ghosted, ignored, collectors leaving messages unanswered, shill posts just trying to build Twitter follows — creators making their own spaces, ignoring other creators. I saw threads go unanswered. I see people not getting retweeted.
I spend time on the discord to people worrying, stressing, and the frustration as it grows.
I love Foundation as an idea, and it has given me the chance to stand where I am now. I am only small 900 followers, but I share the stories of everyone who has come and gone in that discord.
I share their messages on Twitter. I share their worries about not selling. I have been here for a month and a half, so who am I? I hear people ask.
I have been spending over 12 hours a day reading people’s stories and living with them. You want to talk about the community. I breathe it.
I love Foundation, and I love what that platform may stand for, but have no mistake. I stand for the voiceless voice; I stand for every creator who makes fantastic art and watches it rot on a market place getting zero views. I sit with them, watching a Foundation Twitter feed push the same art by the same people repeatedly.
I stare at the featured artists who never change made one piece and no longer support the platform. I share their frustration at being told its community is all about community. Still, you can hardly get a retweet or a mention. The team seems more focused on pushing a celebrity than they do someone that pushes every day on Foundation, making the discord better, helping other creators, and in the same breath making fantastic art.
I stand for every artist who watches a collector tell them they are looking for people with stories, and they want to find the next up-and-coming creator to sit unanswered, lost in a sea of messages thinking, is my art not good enough? Am I not big enough?
If you want to know artists with stories, I could list you ten right now off the top of my head. I have LIVED these stories with them.
I could tell you their dreams to make art and what they admire where they want to go.
I KNOW their names I sweat with them I sit with me, share the 3 am sleeps with them, share the financial issues with them, and share the half-eaten processed food with them. I share the leftovers, the lack of mental care, the hussle.
You want to sit there and tell me you are looking for the next creator but don’t retweet or support anyone that isn’t already a name in the same breath. Where are you when it’s about the community?
I say we need to tackle the elephant in the room. Is this about the community? Is this really about creating a decentralized world where anyone has a chance to make it? The very Foundation of crypto was to take it out of the hands of wealthy, elitist, shitty business practices that made the real world such a displease to be in. To watch people fight over scraps, feed families to wake up at 6 am to go to a job decaying you slowly.
Is this space about community, is it ? We need to ask ourselves is it about the community when platforms only push certain artists. Is it about the community when you stand looking up at the Twitter followers’ wall, unable to climb to the peak where your message will get answered? When we want to make our own spaces to sell our stuff using our own tokens, is it about the community or just getting rich?
Is it about the community where an artist needs a blue tick to break through the window to sit at the table to share a coffee finally?
Is it community when I see people who genuinely support the space, buying art, dropping into discord chats spending time with people in this space, laughing with them, memeing with them, spending the most expensive capital we have TIME to then be ignored, not to rise, carried, or acknowledged by the very platform they are helping for free, costing their time, is that community?
Let’s discuss the elephant in the room. Is this a community? Or is it another place that will see a divide between the elites and everyone else who will build houses made of words such as community, support, love, freedom, and help to hide behind empty walls made from those empty words?
Who am I? I am the person breathing it, seeing it, I share no ill will with anyone I want the best for everyone; I want my brothers and sisters to raise with me; I want to allow the smallest voice in the world to shatter mountains part waves.
I want the creators who are pushing their whole lives to the limit to find a better way to make it. I will push the people who have lost jobs, lost loved ones fighting illness, their mental health losing their families to breathe this every day.
I want them to have a voice. I stand with them; I stand with anyone who sits there thinking they are not good enough.
I love Foundation as an idea, but I question its words of the community. How can you support featured artists who are not making art on the platform anymore? Yet the same breath as someone driving and minting piece after piece spending hundreds of dollars of their money skipping bills, skipping meals putting themselves at risk to push a platform they equally believe it. To then not support that artist with something as simple as a heart, retweet or on the artists’ page.
I love Foundation. How can you overlook a community of people making fantastic art and spreading positive vibes and retweeting other amazing artists and buying up art to be forgotten on Twitter and have the same artist for 3rd time be retweeted on a Twitter feed? This is not to take away from any artists. You are all making incredible art, but there has to be some kind of balance. If your tagline is the community, then that includes everyone.
I love Foundation and the idea behind it, and I see the future of where this platform will go, and I hope it’s positive. I see people from FND trying to make a positive change, and I love you for it.
But I stand with the voice of the voiceless.
You want to know what NFT and this space mean to me. The freedom to take freedom back to break away from the bullshit greed and other nonsense that has infected our world with fake smiles, fake promises, and made-up buzz words to sell you the next thing.
NFT artist space is not this. It should never be this. Kenn Bosak, I love you. You buy art; you don’t care if you buy what you like without a 2nd thought. It’s not always an investment to you. You don’t need an artist to send a CV or make a list of dreams or act like CEO to buy art. I love you for that. So is the NFT space a community?
I would like to know. I live in a community I have seen it. I have shared pain with these people. I have seen artwork that is easily on pare with pieces that sell for thousands. I see it.
This is for you. You know who you are because you feel it too. You are the people I want to support. You are the people who need to push this platform to places it has never been. Never stop, never back down.
I will always support you, and if you can’t speak, I will try. I promise that whatever I do, I have this at my core and in my heart. If people don’t want to make this space into something that I believe, then I will. It may take me years, I may never get there, but I want to create something that supports everyone that I can.
I am one person with a minor Twitter, but it doesn’t mean I cannot speak. It doesn’t mean that I can’t shake mountains and stand tall. It doesn’t mean I cannot dream and create something for everyone. I have no intention of stopping, and I never want to leave people behind.
This is to you. These are artists that I have seen grow, spend time pushing and doing whatever they can; there is real talent here, and I know I have missed people and am sorry. I want to help you all.
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