Daze with Willem — USURPATOR

The web came of age with the social platforms of the 2000s. While these social platforms created new forms of connection, in many ways they disappointed the early vision of the web as an open jurisdiction. While establishing norms for how we individually represent ourselves, social platforms also, in part, dampened the imagination of a pseudonymous... See more

In a presentation first given in 2019, Balaji described the potential for a pseudonymous economy – populated by persistent, non-real names that can accrue reputation, or as he terms it, “social wealth.” Fundamentally, he argues that pseudonymity will give individuals the ability to protect their social wealth, which is today vulnerable to canceling... See more

As we are fed more content, we are pushed deeper into algorithmic niches. In return, we are encouraged to engage with more extreme and polarizing identifiers because it is more labelable, more indexable by the machine — the creation of the “Island". On this island, the slang, in-jokes, and archetypes which emerge as a community develops in isolatio... See more