Decentralized Media In web3 Is Not What You Think It Is

Let me start by saying what decentralized media is not: decentralized media is not decentralized content creation.

[https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1544353722259628032?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ](https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1544353722259628032?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ)

Decentralized content creation is a skeuomorphic mental model that we ported from web2. Web2 social apps already provide the conditions for decentralized content creation. We can look to the meme and narrative network effects enabled by web2 social as a starting place for web3 decentralized media, but we shouldn’t glorify decentralized content creation as an end. Decentralized content creation can be a component of decentralized media, but it’s not a precondition.

Let’s talk about what is decentralized media in web3.

[https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1542866865126522883?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ](https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1542866865126522883?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ)

**Media in web3 is the meta-container for everything related to the DAO or Tokenized Community’s narrative network effect. This means Media is responsible for ensuring the narrative and POV (vision), brand (strategy), and marketing (execution) are aligned across the entire community ecosystem.**

Functionally this stack includes media creation, media curation, and media distribution. By media here I mean anything that the DAO or Tokenized Community outputs. Editorials and podcast episodes are obvious examples, however we should broaden our interpretation of what we consider media; a governance proposal is a great example of media. (Side note: I believe we should treat governance proposals as media to ensure narrative alignment. If we create governance proposals with the community’s canonical narrative as the first principle, then the proposal will have a greater likelihood of success.)

Progressive decentralization of media starts at the bottom of the stack — distribution. The community supports the narrative network effect through peer-to-peer sharing. This looks like someone Tweeting about a piece of media, or even about the community itself. Decentralizing distribution is one way to engage the community in storytelling.

[https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1543965424437661697?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ](https://twitter.com/cryptohun3y/status/1543965424437661697?s=20&t=uaA9IHcKdjeDs5K0DgD1YQ)

At the top of the stack is media creation, the facilitation of which should live within whoever is closest to the vision and strategy. This is usually the instigator, founder, and /or core team. These stakeholders should develop the initial narrative and POV and codify it as canon. This canon then provides the necessary guardrails for decentralization progressing down the media stack. If the DAO or Tokenized Community narrative and POV are clear, compelling, and actively practiced then the community will be more inclined to distribute the narrative through their own experience of it in action.

(For more on the role of canon within decentralized communities, listen to this [episode of web3 with a16z featuring Rob McElhenney](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decentralized-creativity-collaboration-with-rob/id1622312549?i=1000567796018). McElhenney demonstrates one way in which progressive decentralizing starts with a canon through the creation of writers rooms in his project [Adim](https://twitter.com/Adimverse).)

Finally, curation lives in the middle of stack. Curation allows community participation in the DAO or Tokenized Community’s media while also ensuring quality assurance and narrative alignment.

### Why DAOs and Tokenized Communities Need Media Verticals

I argue that DAOs and Tokenized Communities should stand up media verticals in the way that we stand up working groups, guilds, or teams to facilitate other critical outputs such as Product, Community, Operations, etc.

In web3, we’re engaged in the unprecedented exercise of shap

The Function of Conflict; Conflict as a Tool

*This is **Body Language**: a weekly web3 serial about human-scale interoperability, and the existential tensions that flow from this pursuit. [Subscribe.](https://cryptohun3y.substack.com/?r=14eaa0&s=w&utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web)*

### The Function of Conflict

The function of conflict is sense making. It’s our fumbling attempt to determine who we are in the relationship, from the interpersonal to community, organizational to nation-state. One way to perceive the function of conflict is to understand it as a quadratic spectrum of clarity regarding the nature of the relationship, with deeper connection and firmer boundaries occupying the X and Y axes.

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/hJG5oGCfeMD_I6ClLGwCy.png?height=600&width=1200)

The takeaway from this visualization is the insistence that deeper connection and firmer boundaries are not mutually exclusive: deeper connection can come with firmer boundaries, firmer boundaries can result in more right-sized connection. The venerable thinker, writer, somatics practitioner [Prentis Hemphill](https://prentishemphill.com/) said this on boundaries, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/AvxsEWeTzn9uDalxFzQHe.png?height=600&width=1200)

### Conflict as a Tool

If we understand the primary function of conflict as clarifying the relationship, then conflict as a tool is the means in which we carry out this function. Said another way, conflict is the mechanism to clarify our relationships.

There are countless conflict engagement methods, about which I won’t explore within this post. Instead, I want to build a mental model for thinking about conflict as a tool. (I use this phrase *conflict engagement* instead of *conflict resolution* because it’s my belief that conflict is very rarely *resolved.*)

So what do we know about tools? Tools make the daily textures of life easier, and most of the time they’re a necessary precondition. Consider the tools needed to cook our food:

* Tools can have similar, but divergent manifestations: an open fire vs an electric stove.
* Tools can scale up and down: a backpacking “stove” vs 12-deck commercial bread oven.
* Tools can produce significantly different outcomes: smoked meats vs braised meats.
* One can have varying levels of fluency: can navigate a stove, but not a sous vide.

Let’s game out what’s possible when we attempt to use a tool that’s unfamiliar to us: we could break the tool, or we could break the thing we’re working on; we could hurt ourselves and/or someone else in the process; we can do all of that at the same time, in a single moment. (Disclosure: I’ve managed to accomplish all of these within conflict.)

If we think of conflict as a tool, then we recognize the utility of conflict as something to integrate into the everyday texture of our lives — and we recognize that we have to learn how to use conflict as a tool.

There are multiple ways to learn how to use a tool, and people share divergent opinions on the superior path to mastery.

But is it possible to gain mastery in conflict engagement? Certainly not — conflict engagement requires the ability to shape shift and read the room, to dial up and down various conflict engagement elements to output a process that is uniquely suited to the context and relationship of the people involved at that very specific and irreproducible moment in time.

That being said, in the way that someone with mastery of a craft begins their craftmanship education by learning the foundational concepts of their tools — either by deep study (learning by learning), hours of practice (learning by doing), or a combination of the two — only by integrating both the practice and the study of conflict engagement do we develop a meaningful praxis.

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/0uM8CZuSZSTf8UW2F_nLZ.png?height=600&width=1200)

### Current Sources of Inspiration

*Reading:* 

Field Recordings: facilitation as a practice in hearing 

*This is **Body Language**: a weekly web3 serial about human-scale interoperability, and the existential tensions that flow from this pursuit. [Subscribe.](https://cryptohun3y.substack.com/?r=14eaa0&s=w&utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web)*

### New Mental Models

We need to reimagine our mental models for working within decentralized teams. This looks like shifting our orientation to our work from one of team management over to team facilitation. The primary function of facilitation is to remove obstacles, to get out of people’s way so that the people in the room can have the conversation that only they can have at that moment in time.\* This requires *listening*.

When I talk about listening I’m talking about the kind of listening you do in an Adirondack pasture at 5 am in June.

At 5 am in an Adirondack pasture in June the immediate world is only just awakening...or so you think. The story you have is that you’re alone in a field. But when you listen - like *really* listen - you recognize there is an entire symphony beneath the silence: the shuffle of dewy grass under your boots, the white throated sparrows singing, “*Oh sweet Canada*,” the flutter of their wings as they fly from the fencepost.

If listening is the ability to answer the question *What did this person say?*, hearing is the ability to answer the question *What does this person mean?* Facilitation is listening to what everyone says, but more importantly it’s hearing everything that’s not said.

I wasn’t really hearing until I learned to listen. Hearing happens when you move the listening from your cognition into your body. You hear the sparrow’s song and it leaves an artifact in your mind that you can still recall years later. A field recording.\*\*

What are the field recordings of us, building web3? How are we integrating our learnings into our bodies to memorialize this generationally defining culture shift? I ask this with the recognition that what we do today matters for the people who onboard tomorrow and each successive day ad infinitum.

### We’re so Early (Are We?)

Another way to think about digital coordination is the act of listening, hearing, and taking action. Every time we synch over Zoom, Google Meet, Discord, Twitter spaces, etc. we’re engaging in coordination, attempting to collectively decide what is the most elegant next step. We’re doing this with few templates, with literally no precedence. The lack of preexisting case law is what makes the legal implications of our choices so murky. Like a pasture at 5 am, we’re so early.

And yet we’re also not. The hubris to believe that this is the first time humans have attempted to design something revolutionary is painfully foolish. If we listen to one another we may just be able to hear the ways in which we have all done this before. The precedence lives in our bodies.


---

*\*[adrienne maree brown](https://adriennemareebrown.net/) taught me everything I know about this.*

*\*\*[Field Recordings](https://fieldrecordingswine.com) is the name of one of my favorite winemakers.*

*This weekly serial investigates the tensions that flow from our pursuit of the next phase of digital evolution. As we’re [building the infrastructure](https://jacob.energy/hyperstructures.html), [finding shared purpose](https://forefront.mirror.xyz/LCPVlxuOHJ2yCHvL5hJ9ErCwjwvJ2-Fk1lnOyHviIPc), and [establishing digital coordination norms](https://mirror.xyz/0x57589967346a2C46626f1C4797173458746F7E19/mE-QdUUrVSKBCNE5c3QBtqfee3PbyHqCOhYeo1ue1_E) at dizzying speed, it’s easy to forget that we’re still complex and divergent humans [collectively traumatized by a previously unimaginable global pandemic](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-nadine-burke-harris.html). Body language is here to help us remember.*

Body Language

*Hello world, this is **Body Language**: a weekly web3 serial about human-scale interoperability, and the existential tensions that flow from this pursuit. [Subscribe.](https://cryptohun3y.substack.com/?r=14eaa0&s=w&utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web)*

### Why Body Language.

What if body language underlies our digital interactions?

It’s true that the phrase *body language* implies physical interaction. It includes the word *body* after all, which according to Oxford Languages ([Google’s dictionary partner](https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/)) is principally, “the physical structure of a person or animal, including the bones, flesh, and organs.”

*Body* language. The language of the body.

There’s another definition further down, which complicates this. Body, “a group of people with a common purpose or function acting as an organized unit.”

What if this is us? What if we are a body?

We’re a body of people, of cryptopians, an entire movement of humans reaching concurrent and continuous [schelling points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)) to build the new internet. A body of people in digital community, shaping our body’s culture.

### Language is an agreement.

People will come after us just as people have come before us. That’s one of a handful objective truths - barring world-ending catastrophe. (Perhaps this is not so much an objective truth anymore as it is an aspirational one.)

Just as the people who came before us, we are shaping culture for the people who will come after. I believe we’re doing this through our body language.

The definition of body language is, “the process of communicating nonverbally through conscious or unconscious gestures and movements.” Body language is critical for developing connection and trust during physical interactions. What’s the shape of our body language within our digital-first imagination?

If we look at the word gesture, we find another world of possibility: “A movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning; an action performed to convey one's feelings or intentions.”

Think about the foundational role of gestures in touchscreen User Interfaces. Most of us gesture all day through the use of our devices. Our hands and heads move to express an idea or meaning, to convey our feelings. This is *body language*.

In [this pop-psych piece over at ThoughtCo](https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-nonverbal-communication-1691351). on nonverbal communication, the author quotes *[Communicating Globally: Intercultural Communication and International Business](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/communicating-globally/book227071):* “Signs or emblems include all of those gestures that supplant words, numbers, and punctuation marks. \[...\] Signs and emblems are culture specific.” gm.

Likes, retweets, reposts, gifs, [emojis](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/books/review/because-internet-gretchen-mcculloch.html), memes - they’re all gestures, actions performed to convey our feelings and intentions. In place of telling you that I’m having a burn-everything-to-the-ground kind of day, I can send you a meme of elmo with his hands raised skyward, superimposed on a two-second loop of a fiery hell. Show, not tell so they say.

[This meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/elmo-rise) - our body language - is an agreement; somewhere along the way we non-verbally agreed to [give this meme a shared meaning](https://forefront.mirror.xyz/LCPVlxuOHJ2yCHvL5hJ9ErCwjwvJ2-Fk1lnOyHviIPc). I don’t have to say (write, type) how I’m doing; I can show you with my body language.

### (Re)membering.

I’m fascinated by the ways our digital and physical interactions enable us to be in relationship with one another. I don’t think it’s useful to oppose URL against IRL, but I’m precise about the distinction between digital and physical interactions. They’re different, primarily due to the mechanism of connection: one happens via a portal, and the other happe

Web3's Language Problem

![It's time web3 divests from stale colonialist words like frontier, jungle, and pioneer.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/gIXQbINNZVMpkveyqLotv.png?height=2251&width=4001&&size=large)

If the promise of web3 is in fact truly revolutionary then let’s start with how we talk about it.

There’s a family of words floating around web3 that people are using to talk about the current state of the web’s third act. I’m talking about words like pioneer, frontier, settler, wilderness, explorer, and the like. We choose these words to convey the felt sensation of thrill, of simultaneously building as we’re discovering what it is we’re building. But these words are not only trite, they’re also the language of violence for many us who are actively building this space. **Which is why web3 needs to reimagine its language.**

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/m-hX7tRv7UdAlLtkVG7Ij.png?height=2251&width=4001)

It makes sense that we experience emotional resonance with these words - we are working backwards from centuries of imperialist colonialist storytelling after all. These words evoke cellular-level ancestral remembrances of adventure, exploration, high risk with high reward...but at who’s expense?

We already know how this story arcs. We’re witnessing it continue to unfold in real time, IRL.

I recently attended a DAO town hall where the analogy of walking through the jungle together was invoked throughout the call. I happen to have ancestral connections to an IRL place that colonizers violently oppressed in the 1500s. Upon arrival to our shores, they may have said similar things about my homeland as they navigated through our tropical paradise. (Think about it: these people were *mission*aries.)

People will talk about making web3 accessible and inclusive to people with “marginalized identities,” and then say the words “new frontier” in the same breath. Actually hold up, **can we also stop using the word marginalized?** We, the marginalized are actually the global majority, and I believe we are the web3 majority as well.

There is a rich opportunity to find new words to talk about what we’re building, and how we’re building it. Nature and organic systems have so much to teach us about this. Mycelium networks, fractals, ecosystems. There is language available to us that is non-extractive. We just have to **tap into our fertile imaginations to find words that are precise, evocative, and that fully divest from the stale colonialist language of times past.**

Let’s not repeat the mistakes of web2 and all that came before. We have the opportunity to shape the culture of web3 by shaping the language of web3. LFG 🕺🏻

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/l7nzooKDNjU-I-RRwiOa3.png?height=2250&width=4001)

