Anonymous? It won’t get you a glass of wine at the bar, but the NFT communities embrace the status
I’m talking to a person who I know only from their pfp, or small, circular, profile picture on Twitter on LinkedIn: a Bored Ape, a cat, or even a pixely person (a Punk). If it were the early-2000’s I’d be locked up in an asylum. That, or I’d be on the very fringes of an entirely niché group that’d I’d suspect would be somewhere in the competitive gaming community where anonymity was accepted.
I can say, however, that I was an active participant of a Sims forum where I went by the handle “ducky2044” or something similar (what? I was 11-years-old). I was also a clothing designer in the early metaverse SecondLife where I went by the pseudonym “Brita Tang” and ran a clothing boutique business with my 9-year-old sister from 2005 to 2007.
It’s an unspoken, and much more widely understood, rule on Twitter and in all NFT spaces: do not use your IRL, or known as “in real life” name. Why is anonymity such an imperative?
An easy explanation would be that it’s a natural artifact from the gaming world where gamer tags, handles, or “usernames” would be used to refer to a person’s avatar by name, but there are some interesting psychological and sociological reasons why anonymity is the norm in the NFTverse. What is the social self?
According to a study on the self and social identity by Marilynn B. Brewer and Miles Hewstone,
…the study of self and identity (are) embedded in interpersonal relationships as embedded in interpersonal relationships and social group memberships...
Put simply, a person’s sense of self is related to those people he or she connects with others as well as his or her social group memberships.
There is a distinctive identity in the form of unique, typically limited-edition digital art eligible for display as a pfp to signal an individual’s membership in such a group.
Contributions Trump Looks
I recently interviewed @yuppieventures, an early member in the NFT space and owner of a few Apes, Punks, and Cool Cats. They advised,
[Just stick around. Be involved in the Community you’re interested in. Giving back is what’s important.]
Second, there is a sense of community through Discord servers. Third, there is the opportunity for collectors to build interpersonal relationships not only through active Discord servers but through Twitter Spaces. For example, the weekly town hall held by collectors of Cool Cats NFTs in Twitter Spaces: anybody is welcome to join and can speak, but a Cool Cat is always a moderator which is a person in charge of who may or may not speak. Twitter comments or tweets themselves are also encouraged as a way to interact with the Cool Cats.
Collectors of a Cool Cat NFT are thus part of a group
…[that is] a structure that embraces the individual…
It would follow that those who are collectors of and who have pfps of a Cool Cat have a part of their self-identity impacted through interpersonal relationships formed within that group in virtue of the Cool Cat community wherein he or she was able to form such relationships.
Anonymity in the NFT community is seen as an imperative. Using SIDE or “Social Identity model of Deindividuating Effects”, researchers have found that anonymity increases a person’s identification with a group.
This increased identification with said group encourages normative behavior.
Examples of norms include rules that forbid theft or breaking of promises, in addition to a wide range of activities. Indeed, NFT communities embrace anonymity. This article is an exercise in linking up anonymity and its role. It’s turned out to be that some reasons for acceptance of anonymity and anonymity itself include the maintenance and enforcement of norms that address morality specifically, such as prohibiting unnecessary harm.
In my experience, sustainable communities (and not rug pulls to be sure) hold a lot of values that are common to the traditional gaming community and are oftentimes listed on Discord servers.
Some common ones include: Be respectful, civil, and welcoming, no inappropriate or unsafe content, and do not join the server to promote your content. The latter encourages focus on the community Discord in question and respect for the members of the community itself.
Keeping anonymous encourages community. Is it all a bad thing? Not in my view. What’s to follow, by the way, are my personal thoughts. I remember being in SecondLife and having the freedom to create and discover without people saying, “Ah, she’s just an 11-year-old girl.”
Anonymity, in many ways, sparks innovation and removes stigmatization. Think of Homer, who has historically been accepted as many people. Even Socrates who, through the study of pieces of parchment of shakily-translated Ancient Greek, inform academic interpretations of the man himself.
In fact, we only have record of him through comedies and satirical pieces. Which isn’t a bad thing.
I wouldn’t mind being remembered, a lá Dorothy Parker, for witty sayings such as a recorded quote from a pupil of Socrates’ commentary on his own wife,
… I know full well, if I can tolerate her spirit, I can with ease attach myself to every human being else…
