❀Sugar&Spice❀

- Money, and most forms of currency, is fungible. This just means that any piece of it is interchangeable without changing value -- one dollar is one dollar, whether it is represented by a fresh new dollar bill or an old wrinkled dollar bill or a record kept in a ledger or a record in a computer. Being fungible is one of the core things necessary for a currency to work as a currency (alongside other things such as ‘being recognised as currency by others’ and ‘the value being backed by something that can ensure reasonable stability, like a stable government’). If you’re currency isn’t fungible, then it isn’t currency -- you’re not buying with it, you’re bartering. So that’s what the “fungible” part means.

- People trade with non currency stuff all the time. People trade in favours, faith, and small numbers of resources that someone else needs more. When people trade in large value items, they usually estimate a value for the item; people might trade in high value artworks, for example. This is a pretty common thing for rich people to do as you can cook books in all kinds of ways through the trade value of unique items with no obvious parallels. Who’s gonna tell you your numbers are wrong, after all?

- NFTs -- non fungible tokens -- are the latest fad by cryptobros who are a) trying to imitate the unregulated illegal trading of the rich without understanding it, or b) running scams that bank on the idea that other cryptobros don’t understand it. They’ve basically taken cryptocurrency and made it non fungible. Cryptocurrency is ‘mined’ by making computers do really, really complicated math, and the math gets more complicated the more of it is ‘mined’. It has to be like this to keep it rare and combat inflation. But, while each bitcoin will have a different ‘serial number’ the same as each US dollar note does, bitcoin are fungible -- one bitcoin has the same value as another bitcoin. (Users frequently ‘tumble’ their cryptocurrency -- swap it with each other in a complicated, automated fashion -- to launder it.) NFTs are instead URLs, and their gimmick is that each one is different! And can be worth a different amount! You can’t just swap them; they’re non-fungible!

- To convince people that the URL is worth something, they put a ‘unique’ digitally generated picture there. These are hilariously ugly. Confused cryptobros who don’t really understand NFTs tend to become convinced that what they bought is that picture, and they ‘own’ it in some way that’s deeper and more entrenched that’s just like, commissioning art. This is quite funny because you can really upset a lot of them by ‘stealing’ their NFT (copying the picture).

It really troubles me that there’s this rise in teens targeting older fans (hell most aren’t even old, I would not call someone in their 30s old) while blissfully consuming media created by men twice the age of those fans they’re saying should go do their taxes or take care of babies or whatever. 

Why are older men allowed to create, shape franchises, set ongoing stories for decades … and older women (let’s be real this stuff is almost always lobbed at an older woman for daring to have a hobby and friends) are expected to fade into the background and never speak up about their interests, or indeed have interests, ever again?

What is happening to these kids? I see teenage girls insisting that any woman over 30 is a hag, a creep, pathetic, and should no longer speak to friends online or go to conventions or enjoy stories or create crafts or write for fun. That’s what they think of their futures? That past a certain age they aren’t allowed to have friends, hobbies, interests, spend money on things for their own enjoyment, do things for fun rather than profit? 

Growing up, I had this image that anyone over 29 had to be bleak, grumpy, and mad at the world because that's what adults seemed like to me and how society showed me "adults should be". But me, getting to this point-- I had all these things I wanted to do and I loved wearing colorful clothes. I wanted to continue watching my fucking anime, reading my mangas and having fun and got SO scared that I wouldn't be allowed to do any of that anymore because "aren't you a little too old to be doing/watching this/that?". (Also because a good chunk of my classmates were all having children, there's this low-key pressure that I should be popping out kids by now).

Some of my favorite art by Hiro Mashima of Fairy Tail ships :)

Bonus:

And about halfway through listening to this, I went and read the comments, literally I could not stop reading I was there for hours, here are some of my favorites