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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#41

Post by Retric »

mherdeg wrote: post #18

Is this different from the phenomenon described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming ? Honestly it seems like a pretty great career -- you get to spend your time indoors, probably somewhere climate controlled with electricity and restrooms. This is way better than the workhouse. Whoever is buying these things as a collector is basically donating their wealth to others, like a kind of privatized welfare. If p…

AC costs money, in most of the world they would do without and have extra heat from the PC. Also, limited range of motion plus extremely long workweek quickly results in RSI.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#42

Post by netcan »

As I was reading Graeber, it's useful to imagine useless job economies of the past. Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers?

These classes represented a small part of most societies in the past, though not always that small. In any case, it's obvious that whatever needs these jobs serve are cultural. Don't underestimate culture. Money is a cultural construct. Power. Politics. Macroeconomics. Etc.

That's what's going on here.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#43

Post by xracy »

seibelj wrote: post #31
xracy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article?

Yes! However, as stated in the article, earning currency or items in videogames and reselling them have been around since the earliest days of online gaming. Plus these people are entrepreneurs working for themselves. I'm really not getting the link.

"In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work."

I would treat a bullshit job as any job/living that requires you to do useless work. How do you define "useless work"?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#45

Post by renewiltord »

HWR_14 wrote: post #14

How is this not a Ponzi scheme?

So a Ponzi scheme works like this:

* You take money from investors

* You then claim that you are making money from some legitimate business

* You return money to earlier investors by just feeding them the money later investors put in

So who are the early investors here, what's the legitimate business, and how are we taking money from later investors to give to early investors?

EDIT: Guys, it's not a zero-sum game. You can breed new axies, etc. By the logic espoused by everyone in the responses, the stock market is a ponzi scheme because later participants buy stock from earlier participants. This may be my fault with the defn lacking some things, but clearly the stock market isn't a ponzi scheme, so something is wrong.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#46

Post by throwaheyy »

nightski wrote: post #23
jimbob45 wrote: post #9

My problem with these Play2Earn games is that it provides a dark motivation for kids to play them. Previously, you'd play something like Doom or Quake because you enjoyed it and you'd quit after an hour or two because it would rapidly become repetitive and boring. You knew deep down that you were wasting time on recreation and that you should probably do the things you should be doing (e.g. the dishes, reading a book…

I'd be careful telling people what they "should" and "shouldn't" be doing with their time based on your contrived opinions.

I’m fine with telling them that they shouldn’t.

We already went through all this with bs degrees that leave people in massive debt and without sufficient income to pay it back.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#47

Post by all2well »

seibelj wrote: post #31
xracy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article?

Yes! However, as stated in the article, earning currency or items in videogames and reselling them have been around since the earliest days of online gaming. Plus these people are entrepreneurs working for themselves. I'm really not getting the link.

Something like Axie Infinity just seems _incredibly_ cynical. I sometimes joke that stuff like professional sports are just financial instruments, which only incidentally involve a ball of some sort. Play-to-earn and many crypto schemes seem to self-consciously be minimal veils to rope in people who otherwise wouldn't care about financial products.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#48

Post by badlucklottery »

k__ wrote: post #17

A bit like social media points, right? Followers, likes, karma, all aren't directly worth anything. But it takes work to get them. I know a bunch of prominent internet people who don't make much money with this status, because it's not easy to monetize it without compromise yourself.

Charlie Booker had a similar take back in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjGh_lE6EGY

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#49

Post by jonathan-adly »

58x14 wrote: post #32

In the late 2000s, as a teenager, I was gifted a Runescape account. This account had level 80+ woodcutting, allowing one to chop magic trees - which would produce the most expensive lumber in the game. It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. At some point I had realized that there were different sketchy websites that would buy and sell the in…

Very similar story here.. I had a few party hats in Runescape which made the whole NFT thing and to a lesser extent Bitcoin so much easier to understand.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#50

Post by renewiltord »

seibelj wrote: post #8
withinboredom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can quit. But often these “bs jobs” are a form of scope creep so you face the thought that eventually, it may change.

Can you provide an example of a bullshit job?

The wikipedia article has examples from David Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
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