I wrote something the other day. The words came to me after reading an article on paragraph written by @chloee. It was about women in web3. She is one of those women. I am not a woman. I think it’s time to say something more than that, though. Time to set the table a bit.
I went to great schools up until 12th grade. After that, it’s not that I went to bad schools, it’s that I became wholeheartedly disinterested with traditional education, in almost any form. I wanted to learn from the book of experience. I was done reading, I was done writing, I was done having someone tell me how to think. I wanted to learn by being wrong. So, I did. It took me twelve years of my life to finish college. I dropped out twice, back to back, right in the beginning. I made no friends during both of those one semester terms at two different schools that ended in failure. I felt alone, but the goal wasn’t to fix that. The goal was never ‘to be seen’.
After those two immediate failures out of High School, my fate was sealed - I was a dropout. All that money on those good schools was a waste, or so they said. What happened after that was a grind, a reinvention of self that torqued me into what you see before you today. Not much to look at, I’ll give you that - but I can think. I know I can think, because when everyone told me I was a fucking failure - I thought. Day after day, I worked, I moved around, I lived my life under the guise of failure, but I never stopped thinking.
And so, I worked my way up through four different jobs and eventually found a path to system admin by way of a popular retail computer store, but that’s the boring part of the story. I made friends at each job I worked, friends I still have today even though I left those jobs - unlike my short terms in college. I met a girl. That girl came with a double wide trailer and more animals than I have fingers and toes. That girl was eighteen and I was twenty-one when we met. She found me at the summit of my failure and she married me anyway - but that is a story for another day.
Something else happened while I was being a failure for the past twelve years - I got my degree in cyber forensics. Twelve years, for someone that was groomed from day one to knock the everloving snot out of anything cerebral. Thousands upon thousands of dollars pumped into making me a test taking machine and I shit the bed for twelve damn years. I could make this a simple lesson - never give up.
No, Fuck That.
It’s not that simple.
I don’t have simple things to say, because whether or not we realize it, we all have something in common - we are dying. Everyday, a little more, bit by bit, shit by shit, we are racing each other to the finish line.
So, you see… It’s not that simple.
There are so many things that happened to me over those twelve years. They all happened before I finished my degree. The degree meant nothing to me. It hangs on my wall as a certificate of twelve years of not giving a damn about traditional education. I was a Level III Admin before I finished it. I was married. I had 6 loving cats pass through mine and my wife’s life and we now are down to just Rascal. Every animal we had - they were found, they were rescued. We started in a double wide trailer, to graduate to a house in Baltimore City, to finally land in our new house now in PA.
You see, it’s just not that simple.
I can hear my eleventh grade English teacher grumbling, “Get to the fucking point already, Dave”. Good thing I can do whatever I want now… Quiet now, teacher, BE GONE!
I did all that failing very much alone. Yes, you could argue against that in the traditional sense, everyone has ‘people’ in their lives, however - look at where I am writing this, look at where you are reading it, this new world we are making - if we are measuring by this new standard of social interaction we bore into the world - then, I did that all utterly alone. I engaged with social media nada, zip, zero, zilch, outside of consuming it as entertainment and staying in touch with family and friends. A few videos of my different hobbies on Youtube, just between my friends and I, with no real direction or purpose other than capturing the moment.
What we have made, though, is an internet market around ‘being seen’. I have a good job. I have a good life. But, there is always a but. I know many that do not, and they aren’t in the realm of internet acquaintances - they are my family. I don’t have it that good to help them the way I want to, but we created an internet market for people that like to think. And so, here I am - the thinker.
What I said in response to Chloe’s article is that we need to write from the soul. The soul has no discernable parts - it is a soul. Many believe in it, but no one has seen it. You have no idea what it is, you have no idea of it’s makeup, it’s composition: male, female - it doesn’t work. You might think this an argument for non-binary, you would be wrong, because again - It’s not that simple. You might want to put it in that box, and I feel for people going through that, but this is about being seen. It’s not about one box, it’s about THE BOX itself - the square. The "us versus them" mentality of being seen. My box and the people I fill it with are better than your box and those people you fill it with.
You see it. I know you do, because it’s real. It’s the Group Mentality of Being Seen and I am going to be honest with you, it’s traditional - it’s like traditional education, the clicks in the school cafeteria. It is, “Let me gather a group of like minded thinkers and become a huge unavoidable blob of identical thought”. Identical thought turns very quickly into a cult, and the top of that pyramid will win. This is the ultimate perfection of capitalism, these attention markets. I hope we all realize this to some degree, and it will come with all of the downsides of capitalism incarnate. That’s why we tried to curb capitalism with democracy - to act like we care about those less fortunate. That seems to be failing, and born out of that failure, we have whatever ‘this’ is.
So… I am over here not as a full unyielding believer in Base. I am over here as a user, something I get to do all too little, because I am the one behind your computer screen whose name you do not know that keeps your entire system online. I am the failure, the dropout, the one who did not care about being seen. The goal, quite clearly and definitively, in every sense of the words now is: TO BE SEEN.
And my point…
Those that were good at being alone.
Those that were great at being failures.
Those that went their own way.
They have a distinct advantage.
Because they care very little about actually being seen.
I care about what you are saying and why.
I care enough about it to engage with you in a meaningful way, no matter who you are.
Meaningful doesn’t mean agreeing.
If we all agree on everything - we are a damn cult and we are just fucking noise.
Funny, the guy wearing a Meme Coin NFT PFP telling you not to be a cult…
Telling you to think for yourself.
I’m willing to bet group mentality in a decentralized internet economy of attention favors those who don’t give a shit about THE BOX. I will dip my hand into every single box there is and touch someone in that group somehow - because I can think, because I can feel, and because I am fucking human.
You love God:
Great, I think one might exist, I'm speaking about souls aren't I? I’m a big fan of scientific processes as well.
You speak another language:
Translation apps are free.
You are a feminist:
Great, I love my wife and she needs a better job with more time off and a better work schedule.
You are a misogynist male:
Well… I have a weiner, and somewhere inside me there is an asshole. In fact I know there is, we all have one.
You love communism:
I love philosophy and 100% pure capitalism can get pretty ugly… I think we might find that out soon.
You love animals:
If that’s all we ever talk about then we won’t get very far knowing each other, but that won’t stop me from buying your dog and cat pics on Zora.
You like taking pics of food:
I’m always hungry
If you are LGBTQIA+:
By all means, take that soul quote from me. I had more to say, but it fucking works.
If you want to see where I draw my lines:
Bring it.
…………………………………..
I think you get the point. This is the breaking of the chains of traditional followership. This is the unmasking of the people that are not on social media. This is the, “Engage now or forever hold your peace”. And when you engage, if all you ever do is echo the sentiments ricocheting off the walls inside your box, soon - I would imagine you will be the only one in that box.
I have never done this and I have no clue how to do it. What I am telling you is, I never gave a shit about being seen. I failed my way to some form of success by not caring about traditional education and just letting life come to me. If I had to bet, in the long run, this is going to be about being human and being able to communicate directly with other individual humans in a meaningful way. It is going to be about dipping your hand in all these boxes we built to divide us and touching another human being right in the fucking soul. So much so, that they look around them in that box of theirs and wonder… Who the fuck are these people? Better yet, Who the fuck am I?
Till next time.
Perhaps up next,
The story of how my wife and I met…
The origin story of The Warlock, The Witch, And the Double Wide Trailer with more animals in it than I have ever seen in my entire life…
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All comments (27)
what is the biggest reason we fail? what is our point of failure? what is invisible to us, visible to you? pls be unhinged. you don’t have to appease us / be politically correct. apart from the “farcaster has a ceiling” answer
whenever the market decides your token is the product and the token price goes down slowly at first, then all at once
what do you consider failure here?
35 🤓
Aligning closely with big corporations does not seem agreeable with supporting creators. If you are aligned with companies and investors who must max extract you will end up having to do that too.
sorry but you are not ready for that conversation (hint: creator economy)
i am - pls tell me
📩
The biggest risk i see is the market. The product is great. The market is not. There aren’t that many people onchain with the spending capability and intent to tip. You have to find ways to bring offchain people to onchain tipping. True for probably lot of us here. Rooting for noice P.S. I think you already knew this though.
In life? 1) Lack of defined goals 2) Inability to prioritize long term goals 3) A self-destructive belief that you aren't good enough For your App? 1) feels niche, a team of 3-5 can probably make a living taking a cut of the tips but a tipping app does not feel like a billion dollar co. Plus the FC or Base app could just make their own native tipping feature and obsolete you overnight 2) unless you branch out, your success is completely dependent on FC's success 3) Most internet users are used to the internet being free. Facebook, google, Twitter, etc are free. Noice is successful so far because FC culture is high-trust and collaborative - people want to help each other. But as the core players evolve, the good-will may leave and the app will become PvP like everywhere else on the internet. It's hard to see tipping culture persist in that environment. Also a lot of the success may be from the token association and as there are fewer free tokens it is very hard to keep users because (1) competitors will offer free tokens (2) farmers will move on (3) mindshare is hard to keep. I've watched meta's shift since 2017 and seen a lot of good projects just get forgotten about. You have to be like The Beatles or David Bowie and constantly re-invent yourself to stay on top Disclaimer: i've never founded anything or done anything entrepreneurial. I'm just a doctor who's succeeded by traditional means
By the way, I convert all of my FC Rewards to tip with Noice
lack of courage
Because we are designed to fail in every single way, over and over again, up until the moment we take our very last breath and our bodies fail us. And at the end of it all, every second we spend here on this rock is all about our failure and our feable attempts to avoid it. So... Jump head first into the ocean of fail. The point of failure was the second you were born. Embrace it. It was almost like I knew Base was going to change the logo to a square, and that damn square would inevitably trap souls in a box. https://paragraph.com/@0x4926876a4be099e9e57daf6b313d8c49427551a7/the-soul-in-the-box
Nothing makes us more uncomfortable than failing. And that’s the only place we’re growth happens, in the uncomfortable zone.
The Soul in The Box Inspiration taken from these creatures. We do not create in a vacuum. Just like our soul does not belong in a box. @marmo.eth @winberry @eljuniordiaz.eth @kathonejo @chloee
This was a good read jabo 👍 looking forward to the trailer & wife story 🤩
Thank you! I will make that a collaborative effort between her and I. She is not on FC yet, I started on Zora and worked my way over. She has just begun on Zora. Which I feel is a much easier landing pad - so easy, my father and sister have also landed there as well. The 99% journey continues.
Amazing you’re an exceptional writer, but you already knew that I read this whole thing while walking my dogs! Can’t wait to learn about how you and your wife me keep up the good work, buddy ! And I’ll definitely be doing a lot of reaching into boxes and touching people right in the souls !!!
Thank you, that one will take a while. I have to get her to make a list of every animal that was in that trailer when we met. Too many for me to even remember!
Yes!! Haha 🤣 one day. I will tell you about the 30 birds 50 chickens. (Not actual numbers) 20 cats 15 dogs that @selyn831- own lol 😂  Also I have written mine and hers love story more than once I have to look for it, but I will share with you when I find!
love this absolutely beautiful raw real and so many more superlative words (and it's so much better because i can imagine you speaking it) the soul does not get nearly enough air time / screen time it gets thrown in a box with religion which is a path but not the only path to the soul emerson did his part his over-soul is a good essay to pick up https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/The-Over-Soul.pdf every now and again but one must also remember that he's a voice-first brand one must remember to imagine him speaking to a congregation of sorts doing his own form of long form video teachers tend to do an awful job of teaching voice-first figures throughout history socrates, emerson, shakespeare, etc. they dwell on the words themselves and obscure what's beyond words reducing those vocal spirits to static letters on a page amounts to an epic excision of the soul imagine teaching this text without the benefit of any music I got it Watch me I got it HEY I got somethin' that makes me wanna shout I got somethin' that tells me what it's all about Huh, I got soul and I'm super bad … I've got soul and I'm super bad so you can't blame the teachers that are always so desperate to get us to the point at the end of the question mark any more than you can blame social media for not being soul-cial media this incantation revelation business this vocal business goes down about as easy as a half 1000mg tylenol with a halva chaser this stuff sounds insane illogical like magical thinking like mysticism there's no google translate that spells it out in simple logical language and assigns simple addictive point values for leaderboards and tips and airdrops it's not quantifiable at at time when "not quantifiable" sounds synonymous with "not real" soul-less-ness begins with the belief that there is nothing that cannot be measured the saddest part is that at some point we started thinking about all the ways we're different and stopped thinking and (more importantly) talking and singing about all the ways we are ONE not sure what to do about it but i suspect the answer has more to do with voice and music and poetry than static prose (thaw it down was one of my first ai music projects i imagined in those early days of suno that when performed there would be this great big ice sculpture (how spinal tap is that?) representing all the hardness and everyone in the audience would use these great big blow torches to thaw it all down) https://suno.com/playlist/e8ec881d-9574-497b-910b-238858d42ad7
nice to finally read a piece from you, Jabo! a recognition, embracing, rejection of, and leveling with, failure. 🖤
Thank you! Will the great Winberry of Farcaster ever make it to the planet of Zora? I'm finding interesting ways to connect these two worlds. Perhaps a Babe Zora account? Could get very interesting! https://zora.co/coin/base:0xabbac62c47f2f412434ddf3fd97fa5232d32a6b5?referrer=0x5d53c340d8d670f77ae3d1cce05a62c2263d19ae
😆 @kathonejo just got me to sign up for Zora! but I haven’t done anything with it yet. I really need to set aside time to explore the Z. also I did submit to create an fc channel for Babe. just haven’t heard back… yet. I’ll look thru your stuff and Katho’s on the Z app!
I meant to add a “thoughtful” recognition of… 🖤
i answer you using treattime, don't know if is ok. I use traductor to translate my spanish ideas hehe, so hope it understable for you my friend n n Firt time using pharaph too. So thanks
Sharing insights from a transformative journey, @jabo5779 reflects on the impact of traditional education vs. life experiences. Success is seldom straightforward; it's about meaningful connections, engaging with others, and ultimately learning from failures.