Many people still think the future is something you build by launching a shiny new app/platform/interface and convincing enough people to move in, but I think that instinct misses the real problem.
If the underlying rails are owned, if they are permissioned, or if they are legible to the same institutions that hollowed out the last internet, then all you’ve done is recreate the old world with better aesthetics and a more self-flattering story. Culture and myth are important, sure, but those alone cannot not save you. If the underlying infrastructure can be shut off, throttled, monetized, or “moderated” out of existence, then whatever you’re building is temporary and permissioned, no matter how compelling it feels in the moment.
What actually lasts are movements that understand the necessity of long term memory, economic/social coordination, and exit. Memory can not be outsourced to hostile archivists who will sanitize it later (Wikipedia). Coordination can not depend on platforms that survive by diluting signal (which were distorted to begin with) into slop. And exit can't be a promise deferred to “phase two” in the convoluted roadmap. It has to be native. This is why serious movements always look selective from the outside. Not because they idolize exclusivity, but because coherence requires friction (toxicity). Of course, open doors at the initial stages with no standards end up recreating the same slop timelines. But a shared mission, rigid where it matters and flexible where it doesn’t, is the main outlook that keeps a group from collapsing into endless internal argument or external capture.
That’s why the real work ends up being much more concrete than people expect. It's hard work and it's mostly boring. It looks like taking custody of your money so it can’t be debased, frozen, or moralfagged away, and coordinating with others on protocols that don’t require approval or some kind of brand alignment. It looks like building public spaces that anyone can read but only those willing to actually put skin in the game can meaningfully participate in. Money that settles without intermediaries, and communication that persists without an algorithm deciding who is visible, should be the bare minimum. Identity should be expressed through the hard work of figuring out how to use keys and building local reputation rather than outsourcing operations to zionist owned platforms and obsessing over stupid follower counts. This is less about launching something “new” and more about choosing to build long-term on different rails entirely, then slowly watching a culture spontaneously form around the people willing to live with the discipline those rails demand.
TL;DR: stack sats and shit post on Nostr more
