Thread by 6529

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1/ On The 6529 COF (Cultural Object Framework)

So I have a framework on how I think about cultural objects.

I will share it. It is neither right nor wrong, like all frameworks it is just a tool.
2/ Let's start with Dunbar's Number which is the concept that we can only have about 150 stable social relationships.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
3/ Researchers argue about whether the number or the mechanism is right, but I think none of that matters.

I think it is pretty clear that you can't have 4,945 stable relationships.

The number for most people is a 3 digit number, probably a lower 3 digit number
4/ Even if it is not a brain processing limit, it is for sure a physical limit of a different type:

Time

There is never ever ever enough time. Nobody has enough time to spend quality time with thousands of people.
5/ With a very optimistic view that you have 12 hrs/ day that you can dedicate to relationships of all types, that means 360 hours a month.

At a couple of hours per month and perfect utilization of all your time on socialization, that is 180 stable relationships.
6/ There are variations of this idea: that you can have up to 1,500 loose acquaintances, that you can have 10-15 really close relationships that account for most of your time, and so on.

The details don't matter so much. The key is we have cognitive or time based constraints.
7/ My proposed COF is that something similar exists for cultural objects:

✅We have a limit on how many cultural objects we can remember
✅We remember global, national, community, vocational objects

The result of this is fractal power laws for cultural object success
8/ There are global cultural objects that most people on earth know:

Coca-Cola, United States of America, Mona Lisa, Donald Trump and other similar cultural objects (brands, ideas, myths, memes)
9/ There are national cultural objects. In the United States, they may include:

The Super Bowl, the Star Spangled Banner, Taco Bell, keg stands, the American Dream, Paul Revere, "I have a dream"
10/ There are local cultural objects.

In downtown Manhattan, they may include:

"South of Houston" (SoHo), steak frites at Raoul's, the Halloween Parade, Keith Haring, the SoHo loft, soup dumplings, a schmear of cream cheese.
11/ There are work (or hobby) related cultural objects.

An investment banker might know "Liar's Poker"
An photographer might know Ansel Adams and the "the rule of thirds"

But a typical banker would not know "the rule of thirds", nor a typical photographer "Liar's Poker"
12/ Wait, an objection, these are just "things"

Sure, they may also be physical things, but a steak frites late night at Raoul's in SoHo is as much a vibe as it is meat & potatoes.

A schmear of cream cheese is an idea about NYC that is different than 87 grams of cream cheese
13/ I believe everyone's brain, at any point in time, is full of cultural objects.

But they are not unlimited.

I think it is a few thousand, maximum low tens of thousands of cultural objects for most people.
14/ I think most people if they started writing down, unaided, all their cultural objects they can remember will not get to hundreds of thousands.

In any case, it is certainly not unlimited.
15/ I would love to know the cultural objects of Akureyri and Xi'an and Gitega.

I would love to know the cultural objects of lobster fishermen in Alaska and pottery makers in Morocco and farmers in Sri Lanka.

But life is short, we are bound by physics, I will never know them.
16/ So to recap, I believe:

a) Everyone knows a few thousand, max low tens of thousands of cultural objects (memes)

b) Everyone's cultural objects (memes) are split among global, national, local and work/hobby cultural objects
17/ True global cultural objects (memes) are the "power law" winners, there are very few of them, maybe a few dozen or low hundreds is my guess.

If a meme has made it to 25%, 30%, 50% of the world population's minds, it is immensely powerful and valuable.
18/ National cultural objects in any decent sized country are also quite important, quite powerful.

There also follow a power law distribution at the national level.

The same applies on a smaller scale for local / job / hobby cultural objects
19/ You can summarize this as:

cultural objects (memes) follow fractal power laws

power laws = winners take most
fractal = the same pattern repeats at different scales
20/ Now we know what we are playing for.
21/ New mediums, new distribution channels open up a portal for new cultural objects (memes) to gain traction.

Today, NFT land is fighting over the global power law meme winners.

Which collections, artists, memes may make it into the global pantheon of cultural objects
22/ It is why the battle for social construction is brutal and has just gotten started.

My guess is 5 to 50 NFT based memes ever make it into the global pantheon of cultural objects.

Those that do will be immensely powerful, but competition will be utterly unrelenting
23/ We know we are still playing in the 'global space' by the absence of serious national competitors.

France has 67 million people, is proud of its language and I can't think of a single big PFP collection in French.

Some day there will be dozens of big French PFP collections
24/ With this in mind, if you are an artist, you are a creator, what should you do?

Go big or go focused.

Nothing else is going to work and, in particular, any half-assed effort for "global" is dead on arrival.
25/ "Go big" means you want to be Coca-Cola, you want to be Nike, you want to be the Mona Lisa, you want to be Andy Warhol, you want to be the Queen of England.

I wish you luck, it is a bold mission, and 99.999% of collections/artists are NGMI at this mission.
26/ "Go big" needs a lot of things to go right

✅In tune with the current vibe
✅Resources
✅Execution
✅Some idea on how you will leverage the network effects of the internet
27/ You can see how different collections are trying to play this.

"Commercial rights"
"CC0"
"Utility"
"Great art"
"Team"
"DAOs"
"Metaverse"

etc

Nobody has figured it out yet, but the rate of evolution is very very fast
28/ "6529, I am just an artist, I just drop art, I don't do any of this"

OK, maybe, but every artist who inspired you, themselves won a global power law outcome.

The artists in the art history books memetically, one way or another, "defeated" 99.99999% of all art ever made.
29/ The alternative is to focus where vast opportunities exist, still completely untouched.

You don't have to make a global brand to be super life successful, both in impact and in economics.

And so far, that territory is unexplored in NFTs
30/ The key here is that being successful at the national, local, community, industry, hobby level is NOT the 2nd prize for failing at the global level.

It is a different thing altogether. It requires focusing each part of your efforts on a more specific, narrower target
31/ To take a silly example.

If you want to be the leading French language PFP collection, you make your collection in French, you get French influencers on-board, you outreach to the French community and you probably should be French to hit the vibe right
32/ My advice in this thread is mostly this - for 99% of artists and creators, it is better to focus to win a niche than to do the 489th best effort to go global.

the 489th best global project is NGMI

But hundreds of thousands of projects will make in aggregate
33/ And the trick to winning a niche is making something perfect for that niche, even if everyone else hates it.

Of course, you have to pick a good niche, you need to understand that niche, you need to speak to it.

Still hard, but more doable for most than "global"
34/ For professional collectors*, well the theory is easy, the execution is hard.

With a global/national/local/industry lens, who makes it in 2025, in 2030?

It is a feel mostly, but...

* Amateurs should just buy what they like for fun
35/ ...the battles are just beginning.

All the simple rules are going to fail. It is going to be harder and it will take some luck to be honest.

The collections that make it will be unimaginably valuable and powerful. But most are NGMI at all
36/ So that is it, this is how I see it, it is the most exciting thing in the world right now, the battle for the cultural objects, myths and memes that run our societies.

And a chance to see if we can architect them to better outcomes
37/ As always

SEIZE THE MEMES OF PRODUCTION!
38/ If you are coming here for the first time, there are a lot of tweets about why an open metaverse is important here


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