Charlie Warzel: Lessons From the Retro-Future of the Internet

So far, my experience with Web3 is different. A lot of its projects seem like unnecessarily complex and theoretical financialized tools in search of broader utility; “play-to-earn” blockchain-based games such as Axie Infinity represent, for me, a dystopian vision of leisure, if not a new era of “bullshit jobs.” Non-fungible tokens don’t personally appeal to me and, as some have shown, the technology does not appear to be fully decentralized.

Warzel describes the thrill and instant joy of previous technical revolutions, from talking to friends on Facebook to downloading music on Napster, and how he just doesn’t get that joy from all these web3…things. I agree with him wholeheartedly; everything I’ve seen (and I’ve tried to get into it, I really have) has had more of a “get in now so you don’t get left behind” vibe than something I actually enjoy.