Product Lost

Understand you are impressionable. Your consciousness is the result of that which you consume.

Focus on the quality of your inputs, the rest will follow.

The world is malleable to your energy and intention, act accordingly.

Always consider the other narrative, your awareness and compassion is your humanity.

Find the root. Find the truth. This is how you learn where it’s going

Daily nourishment fuels our body, mind, and spirit. Routine exercise, meditation, and prayer will sustain you.

Take comfort in the love of your friends, family, partner. Make space to give more love everyday.

Remind yourself you are small, remind yourself you are big.

Do not trouble yourself with things outside of your control, this is a recipe for distress.

Understand your creator endowed you to go forth and create. This is a gift. Be grateful, be unrelenting.

Remind yourself that none of this matters. Remind yourself that every second matters.

Discern when it is time to observe or time to dissect, but always write it down.

Your spirit needs rest. Find beauty where you can, and be at ease.

Make space to feel. Take time to feel.

You don’t need to voice everything, but you should have a definitive view on everything you come across.

Time is non-linear, and we don’t exists on the same plane. Do not look at them for comparison or comfort, both take place in your own mind.

When seeking abstraction and freedom, how have so many come to creating a builder to create a digital me?

Only to invite harder questions of photorealism, in which I a black male want to express as an Asian female. Or a white female wants to express as a Hispanic male. These questions are too difficult and aren’t mindful of the delicate nature of identity.

And so we, Eternal, push into surrealism. A sense of characterization. Role play. Mimetic desire.

We push into an elevated self that can be realized through a beautiful and fantastical world. We are world builders and identity sculptors.

This won’t be nearly as organized / cohesive as I or you would like. But need to get these very raw thoughts down somewhere. It’s too long for my Newsletter and is too all over the place for a Twitter thread. I write about the nature and nuance of identity, all the time. This will be much lighter on that front than previous essays. 

Short Precursor 

Let me start by saying that gaming has always been social, and social has always been a sort of game. Something something, Eugene Wei, something something, status. But I want to focus more on the productized manifestations that we have seen, and how I am currently thinking about building moving forward. 

Let me also say, before diving into this, that I’ve been reading Snow Crash and playing Ready Player One in the background while I work. And although the movie isn’t that good, it still allows certain product-philosophies to be presented in a clear way. I think it is always important to share inputs at any given time of producing something, because it allows a clearer look into the thoughts of the creator. 

Podcasts: Founders Fund Anatomy of Next, little A16Z, and very little Village Global

Music: Solange, James Blake, Theophilus London, Bob Dylan, Khruangbin, Frank Ocean, The Internet, Lil Pump, Paul Simon, Jordan Rakei, King Krule 

TV: Haven’t consumed much tv lately only new thing is Wild Wild Country, mostly rewatching Seinfeld & Mad Men

Art: Mark Rothko, James Turrell, Dan Flavin

Fortnite

Let’s take the clear example of Fortnite. I’m not going to talk about the obvious / pseudo-hot takes we see on Twitter. We have those in abundance.

I tweeted a while ago, probably deleted now, that Fortnite is the precursor to the Oasis. I thought the Marshmallow concert on Fortnite was interesting. But it was interesting in a very limited way.  

If the goal is simply, time spent on Fortnite. Then they can keep plopping in more and more entertainment to form around. It builds an experiential content retention layer. The sense of space is very clear.  Navigation is very clear. And expression through skins still works. There’s nothing too groundbreaking. We have had vr dj sets for a while. This is a similar sensation for the flat internet. 

But what’s clearly missing, and again if this is simply a retention tool for time spent maybe it doesn’t matter, is how it touches the game itself. What is the most basic, yet compelling, way that Fortnite can create a social layer? 

You leverage your strengths. Fortnite has created a detailed and rhythmic world. And this is what they need to expand upon. Although I make jokes about it all the time, this probably actually looks like Club Penguin. I want to go around DJ Island. Have mid-day retreat on Meditation Island. The list goes. Then a timer goes off, I’m thrown off a plane, and I’m fighting. 

I workshopped this in a tweet. But this level of world building could continually expand the meta-space that is Fortnite.

Pokémon Go

When Pokémon Go first launched, it was the Summer between my junior and senior year at Penn. And in that time, I thought that a game had solved racism. Obviously, I say that jokingly. But the collective experience of going around Williamsburg, catching Pokémon, battling gyms, all while meeting and talking to complete strangers was truly magical. It also destroyed my phone’s battery.

The downside of mobile AR for this game, is that you are getting in the way of anyone not playing the game. So, the environment is not collectively heightened. This is part of the friction of trans-reality. 

This was part of a discussion on Founders Fund Anatomy Of Next Podcast, where residents that lived near a park wanted to strip the location from the game. Which brings up an interesting question of how we think of digital layers, and what that means to physical communities. But for another time.

The social layers being built within Pokémon Go are truly interesting. And something I have started playing around with more. My friction here is that most of my peers don’t play anymore. So to build a social component for myself, I would be starting from scratch. We do this with Twitter, to some extent, after choosing the community we want to explore. But with mobile AR, there is no digital barrier. I’m not in a “Twitterverse”. Any new social connection from the game is made from interacting directly, without any previous context of who someone is.

Niantic is a company that doesn’t get enough credit, but in terms of consumer AR, I would argue Niantic and Snap are delivering the most powerful experiences right now. We’ll see what happens with Ubiquity6. 

Eternal 

As a believer that every day is day 1 of our future, I ask what worlds can we build.

Games on social platforms do not elevate the network in which they take place. At its most basic, we have playing games on Facebook. And at its most interesting right now, we have Snapchat / Houseparty / Messenger (and others) gaming through video chat / messaging. There seems to be two things top of mind moving forward from here. 

1 - Social AR and editing a shared digital layer. (Niantic, Neon, Ubiquity6)

2 - Avatars and unlocking the next phase of digital identity. 

The second is where I currently focus, and what the rest of this post will be about. As we push into avatars as our medium of expression, we unlock a new level of social freedom. 

When I talk about digital avatars/identity, I am referring to high photorealism. Not Bitmoji/Genies/Zepeto. We want Frankie as our quality baseline. Photorealism gives us a stronger connection to the abstraction of our identity, and allows us to blur reality enough to make the experience feel valid.

/// For those that haven’t read previous posts about Eternal, we are building a social network allowing users to have multiple avatars for expression. This is grounded in core truths of liquid identity. First we are building a social game, so get excited about that! ///

The most direct thing, from a business perspective, is building a digital marketplace to customize / augment your avatar. This isn’t new. But it creates a bridge into the first thing games can unlock within social. Rare digital goods. I think the compounding nature of this opportunity starts with abstracting your identity to a digital avatar. Without that essential foundation, this doesn’t make sense. The best we can do on current platforms is getting “verified” but even that has lost some of its value.   

With default open networks, we are able to host competitions for every user to submit to. I think this pulls at compelling themes that allow us to dive deeper to see what some of these experiences looks like. 

By directing the energy of the crowds, we not only create a shared goal through collective intentions, but we create a shared history for the platform itself. Meme culture is hyper ephemeral. However, to memorialize a moment that we’ve all witnessed and participated in, rare digital goods creates a lasting token. Or as my very sharp friend and builder, Paari, dubs it can render digital reputation.  

For the absolute worst example, if the platform wants to host “Supreme Street King”. Users would share a video where you tell us why your avatar should be crowned. If you win, your avatar is donned with a Platinum Supreme Headband, where we can all call back to what that means. This is most similar to artifact hunts in Ready Player One. 

A question I’ve been meditating on, is what happens when you can win a singular customized identity? Maybe it is non-gendered. Maybe it doesn’t have racial identity attached to it. Maybe it has a different racial identity than you, or a different gender than you normally express yourself with. How deep can we push this? What does this do to our sense of identity? 

I could go on, but I think the goal with the intersection of gaming and social comes down to a few questions that we can optimize around. 

1 - Can everyone on the platform take part in the game? And is simply playing enjoyable, no matter the result

2 - When you are amongst the winners, how does the prize live beyond the game as users interact on platform? What does this do to interactions? 

3 - Am I in another world? 

In the end it comes back to a feeling, that this is unlike anything else. To create next gen-experiences, we cannot be anchored to social as we see it today. 

I hope this doesn’t sound vague or reductive. I’m hyper aware that any time a founder paints a piece of their vision of what they want to build, how the world works, or how they view emergent behavior, there’s the more intense reality that it probably won’t happen. Which is the basis of fear when pursuing what you deeply believe. 

Some of these thoughts are off / half baked. But I want to come back to this to go deeper on specific ideas, throw away parts, clarify how products manifest themselves... and more.

/// This is a side thought I figured I’d throw in here. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I’ve been meditating on the nature of space. With consumer AR, the space is wherever you are. This has it’s obvious frictions, as I stated previously. More and more I’ve been obsessed with creating (1) a sense of space through direction (2) a sense of space through lack of direction. On the first point, there is an incredible lack of depth representation in mobile experiences. I should be pushing inward, to consume a history of you. Not gliding by it vertically. Weight of response and collaboration is held equal, when that isn’t skeuomorphic to how we ideally process interactions. On the second point, and I don’t remember who shared this idea with me, what if the future of social is a digital garden that we all help tend. I think lack of direction is beautiful and a potential direction of our future. Collectively caring for something. Conversing while we do it. Making new connections. Actively building a new world. ///

We relate to ourselves as a function of understanding our relationship with the world around us. There are artifacts baked into our existence, that we must wrestle with. And this is how others relate to us. It is in this back-and-forth we process our experience in being human. For one can not have a human experience in isolation. 

This awareness of relation between each of us, and the settings we inhabit, creates a fluid character. And while others consume this fluid character in fractured pieces, we know our own completeness. 

This is the beauty of romantic relationships that span over long periods of time. Becoming more aware of the completeness of your partner. The beauty of depth and the fractured nature of identity being rendered in front of you piece by piece. 

The question becomes, where can we allow the fullness of our identity, while allowing the protection fluidity allows us...

Fractured Identity Edit 1 by Leah Saulnier

“The fluidity of our social and therefore personal existence is a function of our essential freedom...” - James P. Carse 

I believe this same long term romantic relationship we have with our partner, in which our fluid sense of identity becomes fully realized, can exist within a social product. And through this, we may come to love the product as it allows us the fluidity of both self and community the deepening of what is the human experience.

I believe this sits at the core of two fundamental truths, in which the product fountains out of. 

1 - Holding multiple identities that allow for a sense of fluid identity, and directly ties into a fluid sense of community. 

2 - Relieving the user from a sense of performative identity, constantly at the center of interaction as the actor, and visually rendering through AR a photorealistic personification of this part of yourself. 

This is what is at the root of Eternal. That we can usher in this new phase of digital identity. Through a compelling social product, grounded in universal truth.   

We are not afraid of the mature landscape. Because we see the world differently. To building a social product that we don’t need to take breaks from. Worry about who is using our data and how. Or the simple growing feeling that something is off.

Let me break this into two answers. One being a general work day and then days I’m not formally working. 

Work Day 

I like having a very rhythmic flow to my day. A cycle of deep work and light work. Breaks. Meetings. etc. 

It generally looks like: emails and texting with my co-founder with a healthy dosage of twitter -> deeper work -> a series of meetings especially as we are fundraising -> decompress with reading (book, articles, blogs) -> probably another call/ft with my co-founder (I’m in NYC & he’s in LA) -> have dinner with the girlfriend (i’m not a heavy eater, so dinner is usually my only meal) -> some more emails and creative work (some creative work are for the company some are just for me) -> watch some tv or play a game before bed. 

For what it’s worth, I think from a calendar standpoint, everyone’s day looks like the same. It’s the subject of what the work is and meetings are about that change that. I’m blessed to think about social tech all day, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Non-Work Day 

Being a New Yorker, the seasons can really start to dictate how you spend a free day. Currently, as it is brick outside, I spend most days indoors. Reading, watching movies/tv, playing board games with my girlfriend, etc. 

When I’m able to go outside, I’m a full day of walking adventurer. I love museums, and deeply appreciate art. It is a great source of inspiration for me. I also love people watching. I can sit in a park and watch people and make commentary all day. Last major thing is live music. I listen to music all day and seeing artists live gives you a deeper appreciation for the work. 

Constants 

Although I was born in New York, I grew up in the Poconos. A small house, surrounded by woods. Three acres, we sat at the center. I think my parents secretly had a very Marcus Aurelian view of educating us. Isolated and meditative. Scheduled and ruled. We had a 1-to-1 deal, where the time we spent reading equalled the time we were allowed to play video games.

Growing up I played on a junior golf tour, I started at the age of 5. I would play competitive golf until I left for undergrad at Wharton. They called me Tiger. As the only black kid, it made sense. I worshipped Tiger. But what I felt as a name of reverence, was truly a label of isolation.

I wouldn’t come to express any part of black identity until much later while at school.

I’ve always been a private person. It’s why I’m a floating hand across my social channels. But with this need for certain privacies, I am still of the internet. I share myself. In hopes that you share with me. In hopes that there has always been a bridge for us to meet on. In hopes that a slice of our narratives collide to form what we used to call understanding.

Eternal is a metaphysical question of identity, representation, and expression. How we navigate who we are, and how we are consumed.

Identity is complex, robust, and fractured. Our identities are as liquid as our settings. Who I am in an office changes as I sit down for coffee with friends, as I walk down the street listening to King Krule going through the glass doors to shop at Kith, and again as I meet my girlfriend for dinner.

The tools with which we express ourselves digitally are increasingly limited. We search for ways to fog the lens in order to have personal clarity. Through pseudonymous accounts. Finstas. Fwitters. The list goes on. And it’s an open call. A hope that we may render an inward truth, without the ever growing feeling of public performance. Because this has turned into performance. Behind every post on Instagram, we are standing there. Behind every tweet, a tightness occurs in knowing others will form counter positions. We need to free ourselves from this new scrutiny.

There’s a natural progression and necessity to the layers of interaction we seek. As the title suggests, this can be broken down to crowds - groups - identity. Each increasing in intimacy. Each with a different core function. Each pushing us to certain feelings.

Crowds must be realized. They cannot exist in the abstract. If I sit in my apartment alone, the thought of a crowd in Washington Square Park has no affect on me. That same crowd can be realized by me seeing it on some device. Crowds are kinetic. They are rhythmic. It comes together and releases. The energy of the crowd is measurable and we are aware of the impact. There is a catalyst. A reaction. There is always a kill. Even if the result is simply the catharsis of the action itself. That kill then turns inward.

We see the crowd of Twitter by the number of users. A number that fluctuates every quarter. The crowd comes together in mutual reaction, this rhythm and catharsis as the trends build and die. On a smaller scale. This is a vitriolic tweet. Descended on by the masses. The writer is killed by a mob. The mob dissipates. 

We look to crowds when we feel the limitations of our identity. And need to feel connected to something larger than our group. To have a sense of elevation. Yet grounded in the knowledge that what we call living is best served through concurrency. As concurrency is, ultimately, the only way we know that others are having as close to an experience as we are having. And this, typically, gives us a deeper sense of comfort in living itself.  

Groups have a pervading layer of abstraction. That out there, somewhere, are my people. My people know that I am also here, and can be put in motion. Groups are a subset of the crowd. And the connection between groups, the shared values and consistent frustrations, often forms the larger kinetic force that mobilizes crowds to action.

We search through the crowd, to find our groups. That search is part of the value of the group itself. Relief. That knowing what we feel, what we value, particularly the smaller things, are not in isolation. And not only heard, but felt and appreciated. Through this we are able to search for guidance. To help us navigate through, not only the more complex, but even the lighter daily decisions of life.

The knitting of our groups allow us to embrace a consistent back and forth, building and allowing a deeper shared history, that push us to concurrent moments. What we share within groups are different than what holds a crowd together. Where crowds are geared to kill, an idea - person - institution. Groups are meant to nurture and, ideally, refine. A sense of comfort, yes, but more importantly our best sense of reality. The act of belonging as an act of refinement, we selfishly but still out of necessity acquire, have a deeper sense of self.

Identity is delicate. It is the well from which our expression flows. By definition, our very being. Our participation in crowds and groups is an extended sense of this identity. The understanding of whether or not we belong is an extension of this. The most important ideas resonate at the center of this. Others we admire feel a closeness to this.

Our ability to express our sense of identity is one of the things we all hold sacred. It is complex. Robust. Impressionable. A compounding history of action and reaction and internalization. And it continues, spiritually, eternally.

We live in a world where we are constantly in the shower. Continuously at the center of it all. And we emerge to understand that we are living a perpetually refocused American life. Eternally in pursuit of happiness, which is to say that we are constantly in the pursuit of self-satisfaction.

We believe that if we can arrive at “x”, then “y” will fall into place. This search for answers is what drives plenty of social benefit. There is always something to prove, and our affectionate embrace with the idea of capitalism has placed us in the arena of industrial pursuit that can be egotistically rewarded. But has it come at the cost of utterly destroying one’s own psyche? Where the freedom to pursue, is simply the promise of near arrival. Can we question how comfortable the collective industrial we, are with that.

When we come to realize that results are non-linear, the psychological weight of embracing chaos becomes too much. And so we retreat. We retreat to never ending feeds. We retreat to Netflix asking if we are still there. We retreat to working at Facebook. And even the serious challenges of the day have lost their effect. It all flows into the media mix.

Everything is entertainment. Everything is to be watched. It is death by entertainment and influence and the dark corners of the digital age. Although, I then ask myself if killing a sedated self even counts as murder? Or have we silently drifted away long ago?

The subject of American Consumerism has been plenty exhausted, but something I’ve been meditating on is, what I will dub, “American Voyeurism”. Although the subject is not explicitly sexual, I believe that we have found ourselves silently seeking a perverse pleasure from our black mirrors. I have also come to believe that the subject is ourselves.

We live utterly self-importantly. We only have a singular point of view. We only hear ourselves. And although some of us are aware of our own awareness. Our technology is organized around the profile, allowing us to indulge in whatever we have done prior to that moment we have just tuned in for. Transcendence, or what was once called transcendence before many words lost the weight of themselves, is almost impossible. I think this is partially why we have a never ending attraction to certain drugs. The only other way is through faith, and that’s the importance of our belief and truth in God’s existence.

I don’t have any answers to what I believe is a new sense of American Voyeurism. Perhaps it is simply a more invigorated part of our technologically soaked existence. But I do know that I have become more aware of it. I witness it in when I talk to people I’m not particularly close with. It is a sensation that reminds me how acutely concerned I am about how that other person is perceiving me in that moment. Is my profile in tact. Or can they view me as the same ever changing self I know that I am.

I think some may call this paranoia. But I think if we were honest with ourselves we would all say that there is something very true about this feeling. This isolation that is, maybe, just a fact of living within our own heads because that is how God confined us. And that as I even type this I wonder about the second order effects of you reading it, if you’ve gotten this far. And what does that mean to our relationship, and if the right person comes across this sparkly corner of the internet and feels what I feel do I then become, what a lot of want to be, which is considered intelligent with the capital means to assert that title that is based on the history of previous actions. Now under a new lens.

Yesterday I was texting my friend more around this social product that you can’t join until you’re 23. Which brought up another idea I’ve had for a voice first social product.

This brought me to think that there are some products that are wholistic experiences that we move through. I think HQ Trivia is a good example of this. It has a clear start and end point, and that end gives us a sense of accomplishment. Then there are products that are compelling because they land at the intersection of two trends or unique human insights that can create “value”. These are generally more ephemeral. More habit driven. Social is always a good place to look for these products. My favorite being Snapchat, the intersection being around the benefit of high quality cameras x the unique insight of the ephemeral nature of sharing and identity. 

For side reading - The Liquid Self 

I write this while I watch “Her” for the 20th time now. It’s somewhat known that this is my favorite sci-fi movie. (Close second goes to Blade Runner, followed by a tie with Ex Machina & Arrival) Mostly because the science happens very much in the background. Against something like “Ready Player One”. “Her” is extremely human, emotional, and simply beautiful. 

Moving into product talk, this film also inspires me to think more deeply about voice first technologies. The unique intersection in my mind for a voice driven social product: with every new technology an element gets pushed into the secondary, for mobile’s case this was audio since cameras were so easy to grasp x the timing/adoption of AirPods has opened the door for more voice activated products, casual phone calls, etc. 

For a fun new voice product check out - Voice Roulette

I think for voice, both mainstream consumption formats don’t align well. Stories & Feeds. 

Something I think that we will explore in building this is a collective recording, where you can still see the visible nature of who is contributing. But as a listening experience it isn’t interrupted. There is still that 1 -> many broadcast feel, but it is materialized in what I believe is a more intimate way. 

Finally I think it’s always important to understand the nature of shared media. The visual nature of feeds and stories led to the universal pivot to video. Which was also an advertising necessity. Audio lends itself to podcasts and music. Two forms that haven’t had the best distribution within a social product. 

Chatting on the train with my friend, he questioned me a little more on an idea I have for a social network that has an age restriction. This age restriction being something along the lines of not being able to join until you are 23. At first glance, that might sounds weird. But let me explain why I think this product is bound to exist.

For someone like me, that grew up on the internet, I can look at the progression of when I created certain accounts and the nature of my friends on that network.

Facebook, I see friends from high school and where their lives are today. There’s a mix of family friends and early college friends.

On Instagram are all of my college friends, the real ones from high school, and some friends I’ve made after college. It’s visual and narrative. Often around petty flexes that proves they are living their #bestlife.

On Snapchat is a hodgepodge of people I simply appreciate.

GroupMe has a few college groups that are still tight. And we discuss films pretentiously.

Twitter is essentially my LinkedIn where I fight for tech community glory and witty comebacks.

This is coming from someone who has lived through the time of social products launching and coming into maturity. Imagine a high schooler today with their new iPhone X. There is no progression of social products getting launched. It’s simply an ecosystem waiting to be explored. But this will bring an almost certain issue as they age.

Let’s just call this issue social relevance clutter. Essentially the idea that individuals are shed from our sense of social relevance. The vast majority of people I interacted with in high school and college serve little purpose for me today. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. Some I like to keep up with and a quick DM exchange on Instagram can suffice. But that’s where that ends. Thus freeing up my sense of availability, to cherish my deeper relationships.

So back to this idea that we will need a social product built around the idea that the participants are all reaching this new phase in their life together. I think part of the appeal to me is the idea of reseting. Reseting who I am in relation to my peers. Reseting who I am in relation to myself. And crafting new layers of intimacy with those I invite to this digital space.

This is partially the evergreen appeal of shows like Seinfeld and Friends. Embracing this young adult life. Where it is aspirational for those that are younger, accurate to the present for those that age, and nostalgic for those that have aged on.

Placing this barrier of turning 23 before you can join, is taking the place of the adult milestone that turning 21 to drink currently holds. I would argue this is more significant. Because it is a tie to how you may now view your new adult social circle.

I’ve run through this flow of conscious a few times, and briefly tweeted about it as well. Now I’m currently pondering what the original feature set would be for an experience like this. In some ways, I actually think that having an age restricted social product like this could lend its way to dating being part of the core experience that other social products haven’t been able to capitalize on. Thus opening a different revenue stream!

Looking at “Fallingwater” by Frank Lloyd Wright, I think of my idea of aesthetic extenionism. 

“Ethical extensionism is an argument in environmental ethics that moral standing ought to be extended to things (animals, plants, species, the earth) that traditionally are not thought of as having moral standing.” 

I view aesthetic extenionism, what Frank Lloyd Wright may have called organic architecture, as our aesthetic principles stemming from the values of that which we are rooted in. Spiritually tied to the core nature of those elements.