# The Need to Be Seen

*From Cave Walls to Blockchains — A Timeless Human Pattern*

By [jonathancolton.eth](https://paragraph.com/@jonathancolton.eth) · 2025-11-09

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**Part 1: The Spark**
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This afternoon, I saw a post from Geoff Golberg.

He shared a memory: the day Jack Dorsey unexpectedly shared his Periscope stream. No prompt. No context. Just sudden visibility.

Geoff felt _seen._

And it hit me — this wasn't just content. It was a **cultural signal**. A feeling so universal it wants to spread.

The like from someone you admire.  
The reply you didn’t expect.  
That electric moment when your existence is acknowledged by someone who matters.

And I thought:

> **This shouldn’t disappear into the feed. It should live on-chain.**

So I acted.

Screenshots. Canva. A token image.  
I launched **$DOPASEEN** on Clanker v4 — two hours after seeing the cast.

Not a strategy.  
Instinct.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/db2922aabff4a8ec053d58a6575718702fb5328d905be6eeaf4491e9d9238b4c.png)

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**Part 2: The Question**
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After the rush, a question lingered:

**What did I actually do?**

It didn’t feel like a joke token.  
It felt like I had stepped into something older than crypto — older than the internet — something human.

So I followed that feeling.

* * *

**Part 3: The Discovery**
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Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ (1976).

He described memes as **units of culture** that evolve just like genes — through:

*   **Variation** — ideas shift as they’re shared
    
*   **Replication** — they jump from one mind to another
    
*   **Selection** — only the ones that resonate survive
    

Once I saw this, it clicked:

Memes aren’t internet toys.  
They’re the mechanism through which culture has _always_ moved.

*   Folk stories changing village to village
    
*   Proverbs refined over centuries
    
*   Rituals, songs, and recipes passed through generations
    
*   Cave paintings in Lascaux mark: _I was here. I saw this. Remember me._
    

This is the oldest form of cultural inheritance.

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**Part 4: The Pattern**
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And one of the strongest memes of all is simple:

**The need to be seen.**

When Geoff was seen by Jack Dorsey, his brain lit up with the same dopamine a young hunter might have felt when the tribe’s leader nodded in approval.

Recognition once meant survival — status, safety, belonging.  
It still does.

Writer Eugene Wei calls this **Status as a Service** — social networks grow by letting people publicly earn status.

But Web3 pushes it further.

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**Part 5: The Shift**
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For 10,000 years, memes spread invisibly.  
You couldn’t _see_ belief travel.  
You couldn’t _measure_ cultural value.  
You couldn’t _own_ a moment of recognition.

Now you can.

**Web3 makes cultural transmission visible, measurable, and ownable.**

So when I launched **$DOPASEEN**, I wasn’t just minting a meme coin. I was:

1.  Capturing a cultural moment — _the feeling of being seen_
    
2.  Writing it on-chain — permanent, public
    
3.  Letting others hold and replicate it — through ownership and spread
    

Recognition now leaves a ledger.  
Attention becomes traceable.  
Belief becomes a shared artifact.

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**Part 6: The Meta**
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I didn’t think any of this when I launched it.

I acted on instinct. Only afterward did I realize:

This is how humans have always worked.

We imitate before we explain.  
We transmit before we understand.

Meme coins aren’t new behavior.  
They’re old instincts — finally visible.

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**Finale**
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We’ve always wanted the same thing: to be seen, to be remembered, to matter to someone who matters.

Cave walls. Folk songs. Tweets. Tokens.

And now, for the first time, when someone _feels seen_, it doesn’t have to vanish into memory or get buried in the feed.

We can capture it.  
Write it somewhere that you won’t forget.  
Let others hold it, trade it, carry it forward.

That’s what **$DOPASEEN** really is.  
Not a meme coin, a receipt for a human feeling.

We’re still painting on cave walls.  
We’ve just moved the wall on-chain.

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*Originally published on [jonathancolton.eth](https://paragraph.com/@jonathancolton.eth/the-need-to-be-seen)*