Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

help.instagram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 147 posts

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#51

Post by cableshaft »

inconceivable wrote: post #22
KyeRussell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we still doing “AI is the new crypto” here? I’d like to think that we’ve moved past this by now.

just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook. 1. dangerous new technology 2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!) 3. do we really know how it works? 4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders 5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI 6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off…

You're getting downvoted but you shouldn't be. There's already discussion about ChatGPT's energy usage, and once this starts scaling more, there's going to be more and more people concerned. Hell, I'm already a bit concerned with its energy usage, and I'm already struggling being a fan of crypto while also being concerned for the environment (didn't use to have to be, crypto didn't use a ton of energy 8+ years ago).

It really hit home to me when I saw something (that I can't find right now for some reason) about ChatGPT-4 being much more complex and would need X times more resources than ChatGPT-3.5 for the same queries (the number I don't actually remember, but I want to say 2 or 3x). Gave me a bit of a pause from me asking it to generate a bunch of sitcom scripts on random silly concepts for my private, personal amusement (Seinfeld in particular seems to work pretty well).

I was able to find an article on Bloomberg[1] talking about how the increase in AI is also increasing its carbon footprint, so yeah, it's coming. Also I saw this article[2] that estimates ChatGPT's usage in January alone to be equivalent to he power used by 175,000 people. And that's before ChatGPT-4.

People who are fans of AI right now reading this, eventually you're going to have to come to terms with it being responsible for a ton of carbon emissions as well, as it takes up more and more resources and scales to billions of people as they use it more and more in their everyday lives and the models and computation get more complex.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-...

[2]: https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumpt...

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#52

Post by lowkey_ »

theK wrote: post #25
kordlessagain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto, and now AI, are likely the great differentiators between those who seek get rich schemes and those who lever up humanity through innovation, hard work and grit. If I had the ability to migrate to another planet, the last thing I’d take with me would be an NFT image of some stupid primate.

I think I know what you are trying to say, but there night be an issue with your metaphor. The whole point of an NFT is that you don't have to take it with you as you owning it is chain state.

Out of curiosity (not into crypto so very little knowledge), what do you have to take with you to be able to view the NFT?

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#53

Post by EGreg »

23B1 wrote: post #42
EGreg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about stuff like Tony Robbins (self-help) Landmark Forum (self-help MLM) Billy Graham (Christian revival) Joel Osteen (prosperity gospel) etc. They seem to help a lot of people with just mindset stuff

If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift. There's carve outs for technical fields, for people who are willing to pay a premium for speed, or personalized learning, or putative 'networking' of course.

So college is a grift probably. Overpriced scarcity with education most people can get from the library for a buck fifty (to quote Good Will Hunting) or on the Internet these days. But enough people are still told to go to college and so much of it is subsidized by the government that it remains an institution that faces little market competition. And getting into an “ivy league” school is so prestigious that even super-millionaire celebrities with great networks feel they have to bribe admins so their kids can go.

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/college-a...

And public school is just a day care center to keep kids out of trouble so both their parents can work for corporations 10 hours a day. We’ve essentially created a prison environment for kids, and instead of fixing issues in it, we overdiagnose them with ADHD for fidgeting and prescribe amphetamines. Even Paul Graham noted these things: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Also banks are a grift, for many people. The “American Dream” was co-opted where you are sold the idea now of “owning” a home, but to do so you “rent” money issued by a bank, and then work 30 years to pay it back with a lot of interest. The government has to print more money eventually or people will work harder and harder and default. Money printing is actually what frees people up from having to slave for corporations as much (as we can clearly see happened after 2020 with the great labor exodus).

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#54

Post by woodruffw »

EGreg wrote: post #13
plugin-baby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe read advice on how to deal with a friend or family member joining a cult. AFAIU, don’t criticise the hobby, and try to maintain contact, so that when he wants out he still has a friend.

Well, speaking of a cult, we have NFT.NYC in a few days here in my city. It has many corporate industry sponsors, takes over the largest hotel in Times Square for three days, and many of the billboards. Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement. And many people from all over the world will be coming to have fun with NFTs and try out new things. I guess Bitcoin can be considered a cult, too. HODL bec…

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement.

Sure they do[1][2][3].

Mixing business and faith is critical to cult recruitment: industry allows the cult to establish "legitimate" footholds and develop stable income sources using the cheap (and often free) labor of its believers. This should ring a bell.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#55

Post by Keyframe »

DisposableDave wrote: post #3

Sorry for the off-topic. This whole NFT debacle would be fun for me if it didn't cost me a dear friend; he's been working full-time on his "collection" for almost two years now, convinced he's "just around the corner of making millions" out of it when it's obvious the ship has long sailed. I guess there's more to it than just NFT craze, and he's probably struggling with other things, but his new "know-it-all NFT bro"…

It’s not weird. What you’re wittnessing is gambling addiction. Seek out advice how to approach such a person and suddenly everything will make sense.

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#56

Post by hurril »

inconceivable wrote: post #22
KyeRussell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we still doing “AI is the new crypto” here? I’d like to think that we’ve moved past this by now.

just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook. 1. dangerous new technology 2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!) 3. do we really know how it works? 4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders 5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI 6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off…

That's just a poor attempt at some cheap poisoning the well from you.

The grand difference between the NFT craze and ordinary collecting, is that the latter is not primarily driven by cultish behaviour or the want for Internet Money.

I'm sure NFT, just as crypto, apps and The Internet eventually presents new findings or "just" novel ways of doing stuff. But so far, we have people confused by things _they_ don't understand, setting themselves up for a great loss.

The cultishness in it is the incessant: this is the way. This is new and nothing like this has ever existed before.

When it totally has! Manias and scams have come in all shapes and sizes and will continue to do so.

The reason y'all are buying in to this, is because the sucker's goin' up. Just like with crypto. Just like with dotcom stock and a ton of other things. The fact that there _are_ useful things that came out of the dotcom era, is not a proof of the viability of _your_ mania.

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#57

Post by simonw »

EGreg wrote: post #53
23B1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift. There's carve outs for technical fields, for people who are willing to pay a premium for speed, or personalized learning, or putative 'networking' of course.

So college is a grift probably. Overpriced scarcity with education most people can get from the library for a buck fifty (to quote Good Will Hunting) or on the Internet these days. But enough people are still told to go to college and so much of it is subsidized by the government that it remains an institution that faces little market competition. And getting into an “ivy league” school is so prestigious that even su…

Figuring out for yourself why college and Landmark Forum aren't the same grift is a useful life skill.

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#58

Post by ghaff »

ImaCake wrote: post #43
inconceivable wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook. 1. dangerous new technology 2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!) 3. do we really know how it works? 4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders 5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI 6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off…

The playbook against NFTs is that they did nothing useful. That seems to still be the case. ChatGPT is useful, some of us are just not sure how useful it is yet.

Of course if your criteria is "do something useful" (whatever that means exactly), a whole lot of things in both the digital and physical worlds would have a hard time justifying their existence.

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#59

Post by cableshaft »

winphone1974 wrote: post #50
cableshaft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that same fashion, the Pokemon collector craze is successful in a way that has nothing to do with them being on physical cards. It would be successful in other form factors as well. Collectors like to collect, no matter the medium. I have a large collection of both physical and digital-only games. Many of those digital games aren't anything more than an entry in a database table that says my steam id is allowed to…

I don't understand how this can be a valid comparison, unless you bought games planning to never play them, just check them off against your list? That seems like a very minor use case. This would be like people saying they "collect" Kindle books or itunes music. Collecting is based on the idea of scarcity, either real or contrived, and digital plus not even owning the object makes that both impossible to be true and…

It's not a minor use case. According to Forbes[1], 37% of all games purchased on Steam never get played.

Collecting definitely doesn't have to be based on scarcity. Board games aren't scarce (some are long out of print and rare, yes, but most aren't) yet I know people with vast collections (I myself have about 500 board games, and only maybe 3 or 4 are rare enough to be worth any significant money beyond its retail price). If 500 games is not a collection, then what would you call it?

500 board games isn't even necessarily a lot for a collector (it is for me, as I don't have the space to store them anymore and need to sell like 200 of them, but yet I keep compulsively buying new games anyway, I bought 2 more just this past week). I know another guy in my area that has over 2000 board games in his basement.

And I (and many other board game collectors) don't play the games anywhere near as much as we buy them. We may justify the purchase with 'oh this would be good for this group someday' but mainly it's just an excuse to get it onto our shelves.

Before I started playing board games solo, I'd say about 80% of the games I bought I hadn't played since I bought them, sitting on the shelf (for years) for the possible right board game night in the future for them to be played. Or I played the game since, but someone else's copy, since between my friends we often have 2-5 copies amongst us.

Now I mostly buy games I can play solo, and I've played a good chunk of my new purchases the past two years at least once.

Buying yet never playing is so common in board games, in fact, that there's a term for those unplayed games: 'The Shelf of Shame'[2]

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/nearly-37-o...

[2]: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2199795/lets-stop-calling-i...

Re: Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

#60

Post by RobotToaster »

theK wrote: post #31
tetrisgm wrote: post #4

What's interesting here is that it's not really affecting the perception of people who believe in web3. As someone who's working on a decentralized product, I speak with nft creators and collectors every day. They see this as a confirmation that Meta wasn't really in. There was also a perception that Polygon NFTs aren't as valuable. Interestingly, Reddit has managed to sell Polygon based profile pictures fine, and th…

I think there are two issues at play in the current NFT space, both exacerbated by the get-rich-quick potential of NFTs 1. NFTs as ownership standards are not there yet. Even on ETH, there are significant compatibility issues between NFT minters and discussion about downsides of the diverse storage architectures and ownership systems. 2. Classical business is still in flailing hands mode when it comes to adoption of…

I'm not convinced they will ever be a standard for "ownership"

They may have a boring but practical use as UUIDs in decentralised systems. Without wading through a sea of scams it's difficult to find anyone doing anything in that space.

Post reply on HN