I fell headlong into the WEB 3.0 rabbit hole in the virtual currency winter

The ultimate freedom for creators

As a creator, I dream of reaching the ultimate freedom, which has three dimensions:

1. economic freedom
2. creative freedom
3. freedom in time

Financial freedom is finally being able to support one's basic living expenses without taking a part-time job during the day, and being able to live entirely on one's own creations.

The freedom of creation means that it is not restricted by the manufacturer's brand customers, or the power struggle in the team, without catering to some peculiar aesthetic preferences, without worrying about algorithms and traffic.

The freedom in time and space means that I am not limited by time and space. I can create at any time and any place, and the works I create can continue to derive their own lives.

caught in a vicious circle

In the pursuit of ultimate freedom, I have been confined to a kind of vicious circle. My wishful thinking is: I have a job during the day to support my creations at night and on weekends. However, the job you find during the day, even with the title of designer, is still full of many BSs💩, the unavoidable power struggle in teamwork (even if it is remote work), and endless useless remote video conferences. After all, the design is for people to marry, and the hands and feet are full of restrictions. Usually after dedicating eight hours to the day job, my energy is almost exhausted around six o'clock. After dinner, I just want to lie down on my phone and watch Netflix, and the creation is thrown out of the sky. Unless you have super self-control, iron will.

Because the job I looked for during the day was just for survival, not what I really loved, and it was usually not lasting, so my resume was not very good. For a long time, I fell into a kind of vicious circle, working as a BS job during the day. Lying flat at night and becoming a full-time creator can seem like a distant dream.

Is Freelancer more free?

If you don't want to be tied to a full-time 9-to-5 job, it's alright to be a freelancer working on a case! You can decide your own working hours, and if you want to start work at 3am, just do that, and no one will care about you. Although Freelancer is prefixed with the word "freedom", after all, time is exchanged for money. The most precious resource in this world is time. No amount of money can buy time. It is far from the ultimate freedom I pursue. As a Freelancer, I have to deal with a variety of clients with peculiar tastes and sometimes cunning, constantly chasing new cases to ensure that I can pay the rent next month, and often accepting cases I don't like in order to survive.

first straw

At the beginning of 2022, I went back to LinkedIn to submit my resume to look for a job (the beginning of a cycle?), and the goal was to work remotely. I transitioned from graphic design to the relatively high-paying UI/UX design field. After being rejected, through a human agency in the technology industry, there was an opportunity to serve a large Swiss pharmaceutical company for the end customer. After several rounds of interviews, the final step of signing the contract was reached. At the last moment, they told me that after internal discussions After that, I decided that there is no need to hire an external UX designer at present, they will keep my resume and contact me again if they have the opportunity in the future.

I thought that after finding a job with a stable income, I could start to realize my wishful thinking. It was this notification that became the first straw that broke me and made me decide to become a full-time creator.

the last straw

In fact, the idea of becoming a full-time creator has never stopped before. I started to warm up at the beginning of May. After receiving the above notification, I immediately invested. However, I am a full-time creator in just one and a half months. Quickly realize several problems, and this is the dilemma faced by WEB 2.0 creators.

If you want to become a full-time creator, you must first run a personal brand, gradually accumulate popularity in the chosen field by publishing content on different social media, attract traffic, and develop a variety of income sources. My first wishful thinking was to start TikTok and sell digital products of my own design on Etsy, which doesn't seem like a good idea now, but at least I tried.

Etsy is a large-scale e-commerce platform in the United States. The original intention of the platform was to support independent handicraft creators. This platform also supports the sale of digital goods. Selling on this platform can save the labor and time of self-directed traffic from self-supporting websites. Relatively simple starting point.

Founded in 2005, the original intention was to support the small and beautiful Etsy, and it has evolved into a large-scale e-commerce platform that sells all kinds of strange things. It is full of fake handicrafts sold in the dropshipping mode. People collect all kinds of free digital image materials found on the Internet, and then repackage them into a product, which still sells well and has not been reported as copyright infringement.

In addition, this platform especially attracts a group of female customers who love BOHO bohemian style, which caused my BOHO aesthetic fatigue.

I'm permanently blocked on Etsy

My first digital product on Etsy was a Canva template that I designed to post on social media, and since this is a product for sale on Etsy, I honestly wanted to go BOHO when I designed it. A few days after I successfully sold my first item, I found out that my account was permanently closed by Etsy without any notice or reason.

Etsy doesn't give any reason, click on Terms of Use to see, I'm 100% sure I don't

1. outstanding payment
2. Violates Etsy Trademark Laws
3. Copyright infringement
4. I use the materials and image design templates I found in Canva. Even for paid materials, users have to pay to upgrade to Canva Pro to use these materials.

Thinking of a bunch of merchants selling cheap fake handicrafts and stealing free digital materials on the Internet to repackage and sell them can all mix well. I spent a lot of effort designing a template and it was blocked for no reason. It feels so unfair. .

The only reason I can think of is that maybe I violated their IP policy, which stems from the fact that I nomadically move to a new country in the EU every two or three years on average, using an internet bank from the UK, passport from the Netherlands, place of residence In Italy, this might all be too suspicious for Etsy.

This email sent to tens of millions of people using the standard response template informs me that my account is permanently banned, even if I re-register my account with a new mobile phone number or email, it will be banned immediately. The last line #standwithsmall (support small businesses) seems very Satire. I started searching the Internet for all kinds of information about accounts blocked by Etsy. There is a single mother who relies entirely on Etsy for her income selling handicrafts, and lost her only source of income overnight because of Etsy's decision. There is also a good reputation on Etsy for several years. Sellers who generate huge revenue for Etsy are suddenly banned for no reason.

After being blocked by Etsy, I didn't think of appealing, because it would be futile in the end, the only way is to reopen the account with my relatives and friends using ID. The 3.0 creator economy rabbit hole.

If the king wants the minister to die, the minister must die (FACEBOOK)

This is the absolute power held by the centralized platform on WEB 2.0.

You treat Facebook as a cloud photo album or personal diary for storing photos. You feel it and put a lot of thought into PO posts. Sorry, these are not yours. If one day, Facebook decides to permanently block your account. , you will spend a lot of effort to port the content accumulated over the years on the platform to other places.

Unwittingly become a digital slave

Billions of users around the world donate their time and energy for free on major social platforms every day, creating amazing revenue for the platform without any real return. Posting, liking, and sharing on Facebook or IG has commercial value. Tech giants are full of wallets, and users become free digital laborers.

"In fact, we are producers and workers. Every post, comment, share, and even every move online is an act of work, not to mention the content that has been painstakingly written. All actions are imported into technology companies. of big data.”
--- Antonio Casilli, scholar of digital culture and internet sociology

Creators who run personal brands spend a lot of time and energy producing content, whether it’s text, images, photos, or short or long videos. At present, a TikTok short video of about 30 seconds takes me two to three days. Time output, although it is related to my just starting, but the short 30 seconds may only have a lifespan of two or three days. I must continue to generate content to get more attention and traffic, and update it continuously like a hamster wheel.

The Unbalanced Creator Economy of WEB 2.0

You may think that being an internet celebrity can make a lot of money by cooperating with brand manufacturers. However, only a few internet celebrities at the top of the pyramid can fully rely on this to make a living. Many original works without professional matching are actually better and more loyal to the personal creation of internet celebrities. The style, like Ah Han's popular Jiutian Xuannv fortune-telling auntie film , is the original work of Lingyedai.

The top 1% of creators on OnlyFans get one-third of the profits , the middle class earns less than $145 a month, a few creators earn most of the profits, and the platform pushes resources to the top of the pyramid for a few creations This is the reality of the WEB 2.0 centralized platform.

WEB 3.0 will have the potential to change this power imbalance

The decentralized nature of WEB 3.0 means that the governance, rules and general operations of the platform will return to users, and a larger share of potential profits will also be returned to users. Every sentence, every article, and every photo you publish is recorded on the blockchain. You are the owner of these contents, not a tech giant far away in Silicon Valley. The content is ported to another platform on the blockchain, while taking your fans with you.

In the new economy, creators are rewarded for their contributions, they are compensated for their valuable contributions, creators can monetize their creative content and realize their dream of doing what they love and making a living , owns the ownership of the created content, and can share them with the world with confidence, without worrying about being exploited by a centralized platform (middleman) for several layers of skins, or being transported and stolen by unscrupulous people to other platforms to defraud traffic and monetize.

Utopia in my heart

In pursuit of the ultimate personal freedom, I hope that creators of all types around the world can realize a common dream: Make a Living Doing What We Love Make a living by doing what you love (I especially hope that I am still used to being used in design studios). The boss exploits the creators who are artists and can get out of the bitter sea. In the near future, the boss can use AI robots to perform the art for them, which is more efficient and saves money.) In the information explosion, as long as you can tell the story in a unique way, Present a message, no matter it is text, image, audio, video, 2D, 3D, you can realize it in the creator economy, and the value of creation will become mainstream. It takes a lot of effort to use iPad to compress it into JPG file. Pictures are no longer ignored because they are digital files.

It's an economy that values the contributions of creators of all types, from designers to scientists, journalists to musicians, and one where everyone has a chance to succeed. I hope that various types of creators can find those thousand loyal fans who support you through the decentralized power of the blockchain. All creators can do what they love and make a living in this economy. I hope that in this economy In a lifetime, this utopia of the creator economy can be realized.

*This is my first post on a decentralized platform