New Internet Communities
Internet Communities
Discord servers, Messenger, and GroupMe chats, for most of us, are just platforms we use to text our friends, classmates, co-workers or with friends we made online through video games. Everyone’s experienced this sort of community in some shape or form. I call these Internet Communities.
But a few years ago, we’ve seen groups like FaZe, The Hype House, emerge with the purpose of creating a collaborative, accelerator environment for creators. Many of which, under normal conditions would have never met, but did because of the thing they have in common - being content creators. In web3, we’ve seen communities like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins, and DeGods, come from what seems like out of nowhere and break the internet. But it wasn’t out of nowhere. These sorts of communities were brewing in the corner of the internet. I call these New Internet Communities.
There’s a difference between the two types of Communities. The difference being “the work” you put out.
For instance, you didn’t “earn” anything to be born into a certain region of the world. You were just born. But you did have to “earn your place” in college when you were working hard to boost your GPA for college applications.
New Internet Communities
People find themselves in these niche, goal-oriented communities by being in the “trenches”. In a boxing club, this means showing up at the gym and making sure you get some sparring every week. In a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), that’s hanging out in the general chat and discussing alpha. People who you connect with in these niche societies eventually invite you to their spaces with other like-minded people because there’s value to being in an active, contributing community.
You can just tell by being in these spaces that you’re surrounded by people that just challenges the status quo by virtue of existing. And the thing about these New Internet Communities is that they will change your life.
So let me tell you about a story about how several New Internet Communities changed mine.
My Story
Right as I graduated college in 2021, I had just started my job and quickly realized that there was more a career could offer. Fulfillment, market adaptability, impact, etc. I was exposed to new sorts of concepts I never picked up on before hopping on twitter, specifically “tech twitter”, “startup twitter”, “trading twitter”, and “crypto twitter”. There were all sorts of impressive individuals on this app who were more ‘themselves’ outside of LinkedIn - such as investors, operators, etc. Twitter gave me some insight on how these people operate.
I fell into the productivity, mental models, trading and investing framework rabbit holes, and eventually did the same with cryptocurrencies and NFTs. As a result, I was making serious money, which made me reconsider my career path. I knew I had to reach out to people who knew better.
Eventually, I reconnected with an old friend of mine from high school who was “OG” in the cryptocurrency space. This just means someone who was around since basically the most significant part of its early history. Anyway, I had just come across a Facebook story he posted - shilling Solana, so I took the chance to re-connect. I brought him into my group chats with other more “native” individuals I met earlier who were also in the space.
How I got connected with the “native group” was a funny story. It happened because I stole some meme off Reddit, posted it in a shared Facebook group, and was asked by the creator to give credits. Apparently, the person I stole it from on Reddit, stole the original creator on Stocktwits. After some conversation, I learned he belong to a larger, experienced seasoned group of people who were also more senior in their careers. I asked to join “the community” he belonged to so that I’d learn more.
Anyway, my “OG” friend let me know about a project that was minting from some other people he knew building it.
That project was DeGods. I was there on that faithful day the project minted (in other words, when it started), and have an OG member since Fall of 2021. I’ve met lots of people, seen just as many go, but got connected with some notorious members of our super niche internet community.
Around the week Twitter Spaces went live for the first time, DeGod’s founder Frank hopped on the spaces and just talked about everything there is about how he thought about emerging technologies. I just about connected on a lot of things he spoke about - philosophy, technological advancements, and I found the way he perceived life in general was interesting.
But the most important thing he mentioned was that he dropped out of college, did a coding bootcamp, and started a career in software engineering. I felt super inspired to do the same considering I was in a similar predicament - not feeling fulfilled from whatever I was doing.
Months later, on some podcast I watched, he talked about how “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” changed his life, and I wanted to see what about it was that did that for him. The two largest takeaways for me were to:
1. Learn how to sell, and
2. Learn how to build.
I realized at that moment that I needed to acquire real skills, even at the detriment of my income and current career path. I left my job and then I picked up sales role with a significant pay cut for the purpose of learning how to do sales.
A little over a year later, I decided to was time to learn how to build. I, again, took another career risk and went on with doing a coding bootcamp during the worst time in the tech market. Fortunately, things have taken off from there.
Reflections
All because I:
Stole a meme and posted it somewhere,
Got curious about twitter,
Hit up an old friend,
Got involved with a highly volatile asset class known as NFTs,
Was a part of several communities,
And was got curious about people’s life experiences,
And took the right risks.
These New Internet Communities have seriously changed my life. Like ‘the butterfly effect’, small, several, changes led to large difference in outcomes in my life. My life went from “could be” to “is”.
Funny how life works.