Avax Drama
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Every chain has their Twitter drama, and Avax is no exception. I’ve really only observed the Avax NFT subculture drama for the last six months, and it does seem to be getting worse, although I concede that might be recency bias.
I’ve tuned into the random occasional Space, and I voyeuristically listened to much of the recent Nacci ‘drama’ space and follow-up morning ‘complain about Nacci’ space for entertainment. My name came up a few times and I’d like to have participated, but I didn’t even have the ability to hit the react button when I was asked, so don’t expect to see me often.
On this post
I don’t really like Spaces anyway, though. I prefer to have time to collate my thoughts and carefully present my arguments. I don’t have the urge to shout at other people in voice chat, particularly on sensitive topics, several of which came up.
I will admit it is somewhat unfair for me to write this after other people did put themselves out there that way. Double unfair for me to not write this as a Twitter thread where they could directly respond. I thought about that but the idea of writing a 60 post thread makes me ill. I’ll post a link to this on Twitter, and if you respond to me there, I will get back to you.
CHD
I feel the need to start by clarifying that my opinions here are my own. I do not speak for CHD, nor does CHD speak for me. I have never posted from the CHD Twitter account. Like any group of people, I do not agree with every position of every person in the group.
A number of people in CHD have the opinion that ‘quiet is dead, controversy is better than silence’. While that’s not really the approach I would personally take, I will say that I am becoming more convinced over time that there’s something to the idea.
Side note, I can make fun of anyone I want in CHD here because they’re mostly illiterate and there’s no way they will read this.
Nacci and Gengar
I’d like to thank Nacci and Gengar for hosting the spaces. Although they both had problems and I think they could have used better moderation, they were both fun to listen to and I don’t think people appreciate the hosts of these shows enough.
Nobs
I believe one of the driving factors for the Saturday space was Nobs’ post about being ejected from CHD, although it got surprisingly little airtime. Probably because neither of Nobs nor VQ were present to discuss, and there aren’t many public details.
All I’m going to say is that I miss the Nobs from a few months ago; it feels like he got really dispirited after Ponz S1, which is really unfortunate because it was a great game.
Chef Goose
There was quite a bit of discussion about Chef Goose, which is fair, considering he was literally the only person trying to stir the pot (remember this space was deliberately about drama and gossip).
Some if it was really stupid shit related to Hoppers and Oopa. Hoppers was dumb and a scam, but it was gamefi and that’s literally the dictionary definition. It also seems to grossly predate him? Very unclear why this is coming up other than as a stretch by someone with an axe to grind.
I think Oopa is ugly and I made my position on some of the early art pretty clear.
I think y00ts looks better in every way, but just based on the timeline its obvious that it wasn’t even an inspiration, much less theft. They got so goddamn unlucky it has to be a record.
More airtime was given to his former on and off-chain sleuthing activities. There have been a number of well-publicized mistakes made (and admitted) by Goose, as well as many accurate facts published (although the relevancy of those facts are disputed).
Goose correctly pointed out that there is a ‘feeling’ that he makes too many mistakes but he’s rarely confronted with facts. On the other hand, he pressed for a verbal accounting of those mistakes live during the Space, which is also unfair to ask for.
Personally, my non-comprehensive observation is that his investigations have been mostly accurate; perhaps even highly so given the difficulty of the task.
I view this as something of a public service, similar to the news. The question ‘how much collateral damage due to mistakes is acceptable’ was raised and personally I don’t think he’s exceeded that level. It would be pretty stupid to say ‘the news is sometimes wrong so they should stop publishing it’. I was very confused to hear that argument.
It would be great if more people would do this kind of work.
Humps and Morfs
I forget the name of the phenomenon, but it’s been noted that things right on the boundary between two positions inspire the most debate and vitriol, and I think that’s what’s happened here.
From a legal position (IANAL) they seem sufficiently different to me. If they were on different chains and were completely different inventions by different unknowing people, I could see that. But given the context of being on the same chain, and aware of the prior art, I think the skepticism is understandable.
I also did not like some of the comments from the Googlies artist:
“I’m not a 9-5 artist” (neither is the morfs artist).
“Any 3D blob will look like this” (did not see similar accusations against morfs).
“Only Hurr can criticize me” (that’s literally not how it works).
humps_avax clarified: anyone is free to criticise but what I mean is that the person who made the artwork is the only one I wanted to hear from and he’s yet to talk to me
But generally speaking I think the accusations are a bit excessive. And although I’m not an artist, I am a dev, and I understand the psychology of getting attached to something I sank countless hours into and and being angry at criticism no matter how justified.
If I put myself in an objective mindset, I’m not sure which side I would come down on. But in general I lean towards being permissive if in doubt, and I think this qualifies.
Hankz
I think I probably agreed with things Hankz said 50% of the time, and disagreed 50% of the time. Whatever I’m not doing the math.
But for the love of god, tone it down. You literally scared my baby shouting one time. I can’t adjust the volume properly to hear you and still hear other people.
Being loud and passionate does not make you any more correct than being calm and even. In fact, I’m more likely to discount things you say.
I also did not approve of you interrupting people and then later saying ‘let me finish’. Not that you were the only person to do this, and I disapprove of the other people doing it too. But you were SO FUCKING LOUD. Use your indoor voice man.
Nacci & Posted
I think the fact that Posted is a degenerate troll is not really up for debate.
Criticism of Nacci allowing Posted to remain in the Space received the large majority of the air time in the following space. Kind of a really excessive amount of time, similar to the unnecessary dwelling on the googlies thing from the previous day.
And I think that criticism was fair. I believe I understand Nacci’s position on why it was allowed, I just don’t agree with it. Trolls are part of the discourse and maybe they should have a chance to say something, but I don’t think there’s a justification for letting them remain.
Generally, I think the Spaces could use a bit more moderation. Someone said ‘if you don’t like it, leave’. Which is a fair argument.
But someone else (pardon I didn’t catch who) made a very interesting and convincing argument about how the Space was too big to ignore given the size of the Avax NFT scene, and it’s not reasonable to expect people to skip it. But also not reasonable to expect them to deal with sexism and harassment.
I found this pretty convincing.
Hypocrisy
There was a very interesting discussion on hypocrisy, spread across both spaces. A number of people were accused of persecuting ‘the other side’ and letting ‘their side’ go uncontested when committing the same sins.
While the concept of discrete ‘sides’ is hilarious, I think it’s fair to say that groups of people have naturally aligned themselves. And I think many of the accusations are objectively fair, even against the people that I know and am friendly with.
This is pretty natural, I think. I have observed myself self-censoring or privately conveying my disapproval of inappropriate behavior for people I am friendly with, instead of publicly calling them out.
I don’t think this is great, but I do think it’s human nature. I think it’s both understandable that people do it, and fair to criticize them for doing it. Don’t expect it to stop.
DonMega
Speaking of hypocrisy! I think pretty shortly after the pivot off (fairly) dumping on Nacci, DonMega once again made a few threats of violence. Hilariously, this came immediately after claiming that he had never made threats.
For those unaware, DonMega likes to make ‘plausibly deniable’ (debatable) threats of violence against people. This includes saying in a group chat (that he thought was private):
He also likes to talk about how he has military experience and is willing to use his skills on you. I’d love to link you to the tweets, but for some reason he keeps deleting them. I wonder why he does that?
He has on several other occasions made similar statements but I don’t happen to have receipts available, so he does seem aware that he shouldn’t be leaving them around.
Anyway, in the space today he happened to mention how if Chef Goose talked shit to him IRL he would attack him. “Fuck around and find out”. Apparently he thinks this is not a threat of violence because this is an “if then” statement.
I’ve already kind of decided that he must have some kind of mental issue, so I would normally just ignore this. But it is kind of hilarious in the context of the rest of the Space, namely the pillorying of Nacci for not moderating sufficiently, and the later discussion of ‘people need to speak up’.
Basically the only person to publicly comment on this was humps_avax@, kudos to you for being the only person to basically stand up and say that it’s not OK to threaten to assault people.
Zarda
Towards the end of what I had time to listen to, Zarda came on to discuss sexism in the Avax community, and specifically called me out as being a bad actor.
Systemic sexism and the experiences of impacted individuals are very complex and frankly risky topics to discuss, particularly via writing where tone doesn’t come across properly. I’m not even going to try, before I get canceled like VQ.
But I am going to note that I thought it was really weird to slip “I’m a Muslim and I don’t think sex work is OK” into the middle of a tear-filled complaint about sexual harassment.
Zarda disputes this statement: “I LITERALLY SAID I'M A MUSLIM WOMAN AND IM NOTTT SAYING SEX WORK IS NOT OKAY!!”
The seriousness of Spaces
You people take this all way too seriously. Touch some grass. Make some friends outside web3. We’re all just waiting for the bull market anyway, no one is going to remember any of this shit when Avax is going up again every week.
Man its crazy how your speaking my mind, some few loud ppl are so butthurt in avax eco. Cant wait for more users to come in to dilute them so we just hear à fly buzz when they talk their drama 😂