Culture begets community
Community rallies capital
Capital enables capabilities
Capabilities draw confidence
Confidence attracts cats
Cultured cats create culture
Cycle renewed
Catnip achieved
Crypto happy
In crypto, there is an exceptional focus on capital and technology, for good reason, since capital is something that can be summarized in a $ sign, and technology is a mysterious magical weapon that can be used by techies, influencers, and regular dudes to wield like an imaginary magical sword - âTHIS IS THE FUTURE!â - regardless of how feasible something might be.
Culture, on the other hand, is simultaneously much more subtle (therefore un-understandable) yet much more obvious (therefore harder to sound smart about). As a result, it is often sidelined or misunderstood as being the same thing as community.
Culture is very, very different from community.
Community is made of people, culture is made up of shared memes, community can be transient, culture is much more persistent, âcommunityâ can be formed with a free airdrop, culture can only be formed with a sustained commitment to creating a common story.
The term community has been utterly abused to hell, with every dogâs project giving free tokens to attract a ton of random people with no connection, commonality, nor shared context apart from trying to score some free internet money to dump later.
Culture is much harder to even start creating. It requires a deep sense of belonging, deep belief in the ability to overcome challenges, and a common philosophy and spiritual alignment between a critically large group of people. You cannot meme this context into existence, you cannot buy it into becoming, you cannot force it into creation.
The most clear indication of a real culture is a self-referentialism, where basically the participants will not stop talking about themselves.
The entirety of their identity, for a few years at least (thank God for girlfriends), revolves essentially around that topic non-stop, creating an incredibly annoying situation for all their friends (or soon to be friends), where everyone around either ignores them or gets sucked in.
Participants create names to refer to themselves, constantly refer to buzzwords no one understands (if you think crypto is bad, consider crossfit - AMRAP, ATG, BS, CFT, CFWU, C&J, DFL, DNF, Fran) and generally display the kind of passion usually only seen by girls for boybands.
They refer to folk legends, key historical moments, slights by other communities, have a tremendous âworld against usâ identity. Being an underdog is not a problem, being criticized by everyone else is seen as a source of pride.
Fads, FUDs, and Fuck Yous (my fave 3 Fs) from others are eaten for breakfast and used for fuel in rallies.
Money, power, and status play major roles as well in culture formation - as people seen as pivotal to the culture (aka cultural power) get elevated to standings usually reserved for those with hard power - just like the ancient shamans, priests, or the modern ayatollahs.
For good reason, since the people who wield the symbols sway the masses, and there is nothing more powerful than the masses.
And for good or bad, culture lives on forever. The original Nazi community is long gone, but you will have no problem finding a vibrant one if you try looking - sustained by all the core cultural artifacts of the past.
Culture is immensely powerful. A common set of memes, stories, and identity is the basis for every single major movement, Christianity, Bitcoin, Ethereum.
Culture marks THE start.