I was reminded of an old YTMND thing which shows people or drawings with the same face being cycled really fast in a GIF. While the obvious templating of most of the image data used in NFTs is pretty obvious, they’re not helping their case when they actually put a slideshow of those images, and then claim there’s a lot of “unique traits”. Of course at this point mocking NFTs for anything is pretty much beating some kind of dead bull, which has probably also been tokenized in some form. So is coming out with new ones despite the whole recent issue of the market being very unreliable yet still marketing them as “collectible” even if not using the lethal acronym anywhere in the info page, though the fact that any of them have to mention the blockchain because they apparently think that’s still a buzzword people respond positively to is a big red flag.
I also wonder what role those Funko Pop figures played in the market of “very similar collectibles”, aside from doing their own terrible NFT ideas in the process. Was this playing off some psychological conformist trait a number of people apparently have where they want to collect a lot of similar things, or did they train the public to accept this sort of thing? I never caught on with the whole Funko Pop idea and there are a very remote few of Funko items in general I’ve accumulated over time purely by happenstance and the fact that they’re not the exact same Pop template either. In whatever collections I have, the things are generally different enough from each other, even if they’re part of the same line or style, such as those mini Pokémon figures with the hollow bottoms in a quasi-chibi style though not entirely consistently, or Amiibo figures which all have the round NFC base but that’s where the similarities end, especially for those Yarn Yoshis where it’s in the butt of a plush instead. As an eclectic type my sporadic collections of whatever match that, even down to software, movies, and music.
As far as conformity, it’s also something I apparently like to avoid online as well. In the “meatverse”, which has become a sarcastic term I’ve been using for real life to play off that whole whatever people think a “metaverse” is, I’ve mostly been a “normal” person in public in relatively normal clothes because there’s not too much reason to do otherwise where I’ve been usually. Nothing overly wacky and it’s done for the sake of practicality. I’ve yet to even cosplay at a convention, though I have ideas for later. Online, I’m doing things like avoiding general social media, preferring a website of my own, and having avatars that stand out in a group and so on. In VRChat I notice a lot of anime-esque bases and designs based on those bases, and I’ve apparently made a point to not be that as much as possible just by default, including avoiding the whole “e-boy/e-girl” design set. Usually I’m running around as robots or lizards or such that I either made myself or don’t seem to have caught on with a lot of people so it still stands out as fairly unique. Even this one robot design which is apparently free to download and modify that I’ve seen a number of people use still isn’t too common comparatively.
I’m not a total anti-conformist, and if anything to tie back into the first bit, I’m conforming to the findings that crypto stuff isn’t a worthy investment and NFTs aren’t practical at all, but I do have this desire to stand out a bit more, and ideally people would be able to do that more anyway without being murdered in some cases. This standing out concept seems to show up more at conventions, where there’s certainly people cosplaying to get into the spirit of it, but I’ve also seen furries at those in whatever degree of outfit they have for that, even in a region where I’m at which has a notably uptight mindset. Maybe it’s a kind of “safe space” thing. Or maybe the uptight types are at least still having some average mindset of not getting into everyone’s business just because they exist, which is at least ideal if someone’s going to be unchangingly uptight like that. One would only hope they’re not total assholes online.
Of course whenever I do hear about a group online that has an enthusiasm for something I do, like cool or cute robots and everyone there’s being some kinda robot avatar for example, but there’s a language and possibly cultural barrier involved, I still feel like I’d want to somehow join up in that but know that it’s difficult if it’s even possible. Then again there is this weird desire in people to join exclusive clubs because they’re so exclusive, including cults. Some kind of standing out while conforming thing. I guess.