# PO-AP-ing 'Em Out By [POAPs Gone Wild](https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild) · 2023-01-23 --- None of my “friends” knew jack shit about crypto or NFTs, and definitely not POAPs, until one of them got married and I gave out a POAP at the wedding. At the time a lot of them joked around and teased me, oh is this some scam that kind of thing, but I checked a few weeks later and it actually got quite a few wallet mints despite everyone initially reserving with an email address. I did a boatload of onboarding that day thank you very much. I felt pretty proud of myself for a while, a bit vindicated. For years I had tried to impress upon these plebs that Web3 was the future. Maybe they were finally seeing the light. My vindication grew the first time one of them, let’s call him James, took it a step further and actually hit me up on how he might create his own POAP. A week or so later I got an email from James with a mint link; celebrating the birth of Oxnard Carrot Mills (again, not the real name, but it was just as stupid as that). My heart sank a little. I hadn’t known, and _this_ is how you tell me? Through _email_ with a link to your POAP? Though, if I’m honest, it wasn’t really about the delivery method (no pun intended). James could have knocked on my door and personally delivered a box of See’s chocolates to break the news, and my heart still would have sank. James wasn’t a best friend, but was one of the holdouts, a circle that seemed to grow smaller by the hour as everyone sat around bored during COVID and decided, fuck it, may as well bring _more_ people into this world, aye? And, so, that was just the beginning. The little cum dribble on my chin before a series of blasts up my nostrils, my eyes, a sticky mess tangled in the hair I have left. James spread the word and pretty soon everyone and their mother (well, not literally their mother, though some of these sheep seemed suddenly so desperate for offspring I don’t doubt they may have considered that if it was the only option, some fucked up sci-fi shit where only biological mothers could birth their offspring’s offspring, some _Children of Men_ meets Roger Corman) was emailing me mint links to baby announcement POAPs, baby shower POAPs (fuck off you’re too old for presents and I’m not going, you should have sent this to _only attendees_ read the goddamn POAP Issuer Guidelines), gender reveal party POAPs (fuck off I hope it’s the one you don’t want, and again not going don’t send me the goddamn mint link ahead of time), sip and see parties (not drinking that Kool-Aid! Oh, you don’t have Kool-Aid anyway because your precious baby can’t be within 100 yards of artificial colors or flavorings? Fuck off! They’re going to grow up to be as weak as you). One person just emailed me a URL to the app.poap.xyz page for a POAP that commemorated their babymoon. I couldn’t even mint the damn thing. It was their trip. I guess they just wanted to let me know they made a POAP to commemorate the last time they were ever going to try and have fun. Thanks, and fuck you too. After a while I just stopped minting the things, even for stuff I was eligible (though I continued to receive plenty of mint links to parties I never intended to attend). Who wants their POAP collection, the digital keepsakes of their memories, full of reminders of the time your friend decided they could never again take a weekend trip or even grab a goddamn beer after golf? Or at least not until we all have one bad leg and our neck gets stiffer than our junk and we’re too lame to drink champagne in the morning, or watch 12 straight hours of tv, or hide in the bushes and shoot paintballs at Teslas, or play basketball at the park, or eat dinner at 11PM, or just fucking do anything besides prioritize your beloved, life-consuming babe. Well, _you’ll_ be too lame. I’ll still be kickin’ it, while, once your kids are grown and gone, you fumble out of the house and shield your eyes from the sun and try to remember what living was like and when you stop and look around there is nobody there except the cleaner if you could afford one and the former babysitter who doesn’t really think you’re cool but pretends to because sometimes you let her and her friends use the barbecue on the deck in the backyard and you kind of realize that but just like to play along anyway because you’re that lame. Them, and all your other lame ass kid friends. That’s basically what I told James, when he said, hey, some of us noticed you stopped minting the POAPs we send you. He didn’t appreciate it. And I told him to get fucked and we stopped talking. Then James told a bunch of other lame ass friends how I had realized how lame they all were, and now I don’t talk to a bunch of them either. Actually some of them just said it was funny, so they’re still cool. --- *Originally published on [POAPs Gone Wild](https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild/po-ap-ing-em-out)*