The dystopian token

As my wife and I "window shopped" in a furniture store where we couldn't afford to buy anything, even if we needed it, I mentioned how I do not see the value in most of the stuff people buy anymore. Then I half-joked, perhaps I should buy a Playstation and sit on the couch gaming.

I say half-joked, because I reckon it is what many people may be doing to pass the time these days. After all, we live in a weird world where many people would rather watch people play a game than play the game themselves. I understand the getting of tips and tricks, but how many hours of staring can there be? Yes, I know it is similar to watching a sport but, gaming has a much lower barrier of entry than playing a sport does.

Maybe it is that people would rather watch someone play the game who is better than them than play the game themselves poorly and feel disappointing. If that is the case and you have a beautiful wife or girlfriend, do you pay someone else who is better in bed?

Luckily for me, I am pretty good with the joystick and know which buttons to push.

But it is interesting to think because while gaming raises trillions worldwide through many different funnels, for an individual it is a relatively low cost alternative than many other activities, including socializing - as drinks are expensive. What this could mean is that people will spend their time in front of the screen instead of travelling, partying, active hobbies and essentially anything that bears a cost. If you consider that a game might be 50€ and provide thousands of hours of entertainment, it is very, very cheap as that is the same as two people seeing a movie and buying csome candy these days.

Factor in the fan-side and communities of gaming, and people can feel like they are socializing over something in common without ever having to leave the house. This makes the resource consumption and environmental impact for an individual potentially lower than an active person, as while it does take electricity, most will play in the darkness anyway and barely get up to go to the toilet.

At some point, the gaming experience is going to be so immersive and compelling that many people aren't going to want to do much else, as doing something other just becomes too much effort. And, since there is very little skill development through gaming, a player will get less employable over time, even if there were jobs available for them, which is unlikely given the shifting workforce trends.

There are other factors in play I could mention, but all of this points to good things for me as a non-gamer as it means that global consumption on some goods will go down, but on others they will go up. In the same way that many home owners will spend money to make their place like pretty, those who can't afford to own a home will instead pimp their digital lives, something that the blockchain is ideal for as well as Non-fungible tokenization to track authenticity.

The reason a star gets a dress given to her for the red carpet that is worth 10 thousand dollars isn't to sell $10,000 dresses, it is to sell $30 underwear and $80 dollar perfume. Dolce & Gabbana might sell a handful of expensive dresses in a year, but they will sell millions of units of cheap to produce accesories that make people feel like they have a piece of luxury.

Why buy a leather Natuzzi lounge for 5000 dollars, when you can get the digital version for 5? Why produce and sell 1000 couches that require a high rate of investment and risk, when one can sell a million VR and AR couches that cost close to zero? And because people feel they are socializing online more and more, a woman might even be impressed by the tricked out Lamborghini the guy owns - in Need for Speed - Pwner

"Someone's getting virtually lucky tonight!"

How I see the future is that many people are going to have to scale back their consumption habits due to economic crisis, job shortage, environmental constraints and a general lac of earning potential. However, this doesn't mean that people do not lose the human desire to collect and stack, to have unique and rare, to own - it just decreases the reach into reality.

But the digital space is unlimited and an ever expanding playing field of opportunity to create and own, and with the capabilities of blockchain and tokens, that ownership is just as relevant as owning a plot of land and likely, even more secure than it as it is encrypted and highly mobile. While this might not be a great outcome for most in society from today's measures, it could be an adequate result considering the direction we are headed with resource distribution or rather, the lack of it.

Can someone count themselves lucky and happy if all they do is sit in an engineered fantasy world that has been created to entertain them as they do not have the necessary skills to do otherwise? Yes. Contentment doesn't require ideal conditions, it doesn't require anything much at all other than a person feeling that what they have is good enough for them, and what is good enough is relative to experience. With the growing trend of compartmentalization and informational silos, it is likely that engineering demand for pretty much anything by making it feel valuable and pushing it into the eye line is going to happen.

Perhaps crypto is not going to be successful because it frees people economically, maybe it will hit its stride because people are so financially crushed yet unwilling to do anything inconvenient that they will adopt it to feel like they are part of something, whether it be a game or a social movement greater than themselves.

Got a token for that?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]