The NFT FOMO and how it ended up with bondly hacking

the valuart podcast hey everybody welcome back to the value our podcast uh eddie and mark here um for i think like week seven uh maybe week eight seven thousand seven yeah cool cool cool um we had a guest arranged for today but um but said guest has disappeared so probably not probably not going to happen for this episode but what we're looking to do uh in the coming weeks has talked to some collectors potentially some whales but also some um interesting i guess you could call them curators or like people that are running these these series yeah uh we want to get much deeper into the nft community realm oh realm what a throwback that was um yeah that was a fun episode by the way i'm i'm really glad yeah and i hope we get to have those guys on again loved it you call them creators business men and women yeah i mean that's actually what this comes down to i could so this is a this is a something i was like interested to talking about are interested in talking to our guests about because i don't know if i would call them curators as much as i would call them investors or or business people yeah um definitely so in fact one of the main questions that i wanted to ask um today is like if they define themselves like collectors like their purpose in it like in collecting nfts if they see it more as a passion for the art the concept or if they see like the utility right because now like on a lot of platforms you can stake nfts like stoner cats that you can actually watch episodes you have special access to content so i really wanted to dig into this today but i guess it'll be for next time have you seen any other examples of nfts with a with a utility like the stoner cat series because i watched i was actually going to buy deadheads last week i considered it for their animated series but other than those two i really don't see a lot of uh of these series these avatar series specifically doing that they maybe have it in their road map but it's not happening now you know the apes have got some stuff built into their road map yeah i mean i i honestly haven't seen many projects doing that so i'm really curious to see like in the next months which ones we'll be doing that what i've been noticing is just a lot of nft projects um really focusing on charitable causes um i don't know if you know you notice that too and i think that that's a trend that's uh really you think that people do you think that's manipulative do you think that that's false advertising on on the part like do we know how much of those funds are actually going to charities do we know are is it transparent like i i'm sorry i i know i sound super cynical right no no absolutely i i mean it's it i i definitely you know i'm kind of cynical too sometimes but at the same time since you know all these projects are open source i guess you can go and kind of check that's the the nice thing about these things that you can see literally all the transactions right i don't know like the wallet um of where it goes exactly but i guess you can kind of um find out by checking that but definitely i think that a lot of projects unfortunately are are like scams another thing that i was thinking is you know into that back in 2017 there are a lot of icos emerging emerging and then more than half of them were scams then of course like the the projects that were still this period with the next cycle a lot of not a lot of other scams came out but the strongest ones from 2017 stayed and what i'm seeing like in the nft space is kind of like the same thing so i think that now is kind of like the pump it's a it's i wanted to find it like a it is a bubble right for sure i mean yeah it's i definitely believe in the long term of it but just like to 2017 it's not going to be like there's just going to be like the the winners sting right and all the scammers and little projects that emerge just for fomo they're going to collapse what do you think that's like 99 of the projects now are are just capitalizing on fomo or just speculation people so i i have this i have this fear of like of it of this community of this kind of approach to to the technology nft specifically of it devaluing the technology itself and the way we could use it or the or the like i i see the art community the art enthusiasts witnessing this from the outside of all these like investors and the speculation and the hype and like the the absurdity of these sales and then being like well this is dumb why would i want to involve my oh i want to get involved in this it's going to pop and then it's going to go away so i think what we're seeing right now is probably a lot of people hesitating that could be using the technology in a in a very meaningful way and extending their platforms uh as as creators and that kind of bums me out because it's just i don't know it feels we have this opportunity to do things differently and it feels like we're just doing it the same way that we're just it's just like like you said the icos or or anything else like that's built on speculation and that kind of sucks exactly really pessimism there a little bit eddie i'm more optimistic than you i think that having this experimentation and a lot of it is just experimentation at the moment the the cliche that the goodwill out i think holds true and in a few months a few years like as he said a lot of the crap will be weaned out i don't know how you one of the problems i see with that is how how do we define what is a valuable project and what isn't i mean i like what he said but how do we how will that be defined in the future but with all this experimentation at the moment and i think it will create something new i think it will get better i think the the use case for it and the real life of it will appear i i'm a bit more optimistic i i think absolutely you're right and i am being pessimistic but it's it's more about like uh it's not because like the internet didn't go away in the dot-com bubble right like it didn't fall apart and like people weren't like abandoning it because a bunch of money was lost but i do think it it hurt its reputation for a while i think it hurt like people it took like several years after that for small businesses to be like i should do this i should be on the internet you know i think uh it it just changes the timeline a little bit maybe delays the progress that we could see in in the respective industries with this technology because because of a bunch of people just trying to make money really fast and take advantage of other people's fomo and and lack of community and that's the thing that really hurts my my heart is like so many of these people getting scammed and so many of these people like throwing their money at these insane like voxel artworks is it's just people lacking a community a sense of community and like they have their avatar now and they're like oh look it's my twitter avatar it's my discord avatar like i'm part of something and like that's wonderful and we all want that but at a macro level people like gary vaynerchuk and like v friends are gross to me like it's really gross that there's these these people that are just taking advantage of those communities they're like let's just pop into the discord chat real fast for like 10 minutes and then like people will see gary's name in there and then that nft series will explode in value and we'll drop it and then it'll be over like that that's so predatory i don't like that i hope it just balances out more like i want to see more projects like the stoner cast project or like the deadheads project or stuff that is bringing more value to the collector and and to the artist like i i want to see more projects like that because right now it's mostly just people throwing together a series as quickly as possible making a shitload of money and then like wiping their hands of it and and moving on and even like there's definitely a lot of opportunism and as a tech guy eddie when at the in the internet of the 1990s the gatekeepers did they keep it complicated for normal people in a very common endless space like is one of the problems with nfts now just how difficult it is or not easy it is to create something creative and that is that complexity putting people off is there something to do with making it easier you mean the practicality of like minting in nft and making a piece of actually minting an nft is not that complicated i think you just need a basic understanding of programming and i think you can do it with javascript even like i was i was reading nftschool.dev has a really nice read up a write-up about how to how to go from nothing knowing nothing with a little bit of knowledge about like front-end development and some back-end to launching your own series and like different ways to mint um so yeah i think there is a learning curve involved and i think there's a lot of um friction for people who have maybe no experience and probably artists are are in that camp and and we're going to see them slowly catch up actually it's funny because the internet is the internet in the 90s specifically is why beanie babies became as massive as it was and beanie babies are like an analog for this whole nft boom right and they got ahead of the curve i think it was one of the first e-commerce sites the beanie baby's website was like one of the first e-commerce sites on the internet and i guess these platforms like open c and these uh series these avatar series are also first to market and taking advantage of a space that i guess we needed this in some way we needed like people needed a way to see their crypto to spend it to see what it what it would be other than just sitting in their wallet yeah and and to add to that you know i think that the implementation of virtual worlds now right where i think that's going to really help in this sense um to this adoption because in these virtual worlds what i envision is these communities really like engaging with one another and uh solidifying you know the value of projects and also you know i i can already imagine like i don't know stoner cats like creating their own uh spot where users can re reunite right in the virtual world and omni who uh has like a stoner cat can access and maybe sit together watch the episode comment it together i mean i i think that the virtual worlds will really like enhance these projects and really put like a major like value to it you know yeah that the nft space combined with the with the metaverse and like these virtual worlds definitely excites me but mark here to your point about like the the slow build we're just talking about the pet rock series which has been around since 2017 so if these if this technology has been there since 2017 and we're now just in 2021 seeing a bubble of like really superficial projects why do you think that is why do you think it's taken this long to to why do you think it's still like it's not necessarily about these projects putting out ideas and then the technology catching up with their promises because these these could have been three years in the making at this point but they're these projects all seem like they're popping up within the last few months netflix i think it's possibly it might if you want to get deep into the wormhole of the the the psyche of the population i think everyone is watching netflix and not paying attention and covered came around and people finished watching their series like i'm joking about that but people started paying attention and that's that was what march 2019 so it's all happened because it takes that long that year and a half to to build the the business map or for these people to get together have the conversation decide what they're going to do and then do it and i think a lot of it hangs on kovid yeah i i definitely agree with you mark like um so many projects even even stoner cats um was created in uh covered time right um i think that in kobe we we all had like more time to to even like discover new things me too like i remember in that period i was like just studying anything and i actually started getting into crypto in that period i i was kind of still scared of it i like really got into it in september uh 2020 but it was definitely that period that you you had more time to find out and study we all know lots of people who have started a new hobby changed their job changed their their relationships changed their lifestyle and that's a global phenomenon that's happened and it's just a numbers game isn't it and some of those people found crypto they found nfts they you know it takes a bit of time for the for the ideas to just date and they they meet people on twitter and i think it's just the timeline has led to like the summer of 2021 a year and a half and that's why we're seeing the explosion now yeah exactly and also i think covington in general really changed our our view to virtual um and digital overall right because like people have there's some people that have always worked remotely but now for everybody to like work on zoom and everything it was like oh my god how am i gonna face this how am i gonna be totally digital instead now you see like the the turnaround that after these almost two years people don't even want to go back to the offices uh they're looking for virtual and digital different digital solutions so there's been like a shift um in the perception um it would have happened i think sooner or later it was bound to happen um it would have been more gradual but you know due to covet it just like hit us and it happened so rapidly that was actually an interesting point that mark i'm sorry that matt made on the last episode where he was talking about how how blockchain got a bad rap in terms of like the cost of it of operating and how like these massive financial institutions and businesses have these office spaces and people have to commute and the carbon footprint for all that and i was like well you know what like i never really looked at it from that perspective and i think remote remote work is doing some good in that sense and and lowering our carbon yeah our carbon footprint um i was i sent you guys about this article the premium mediocre life of maya millennial and i want to just read a quick section from it because it struck me he says the only path to wealth building available to the average premium mediocre young person in the developed world today absent of any special technical skills or entrepreneurial bent is crypto currencies public markets are not really reliable for building wealth and private markets are basically if you have money you continue to make money and it's hard to get into which leaves the crypto currency lottery as the only documented way up uh regardless of skills and i think that actually when i read this it really made sense to me like you don't have to have you don't have to have a lot of skills to or any skills really to be to be to make any money in crypto you have to be ahead of the curve you have to like kind of be first in and then first out and i think yeah that made a lot of sense like why we're seeing this this sort of middle class of of of uh millennial really take to it and why a lot of people who maybe never knew anything about economics or finance before are like all of a sudden they're traders and they've got youtube channels where they're talking about like charts and they're looking at graphs and they're like oh if you look at this currency it's i guess it's also like all the sources of information we have like compared to years ago i loved how you mentioned also youtube for me it's truly like a source of knowledge youtube twitter i'm just like they're always learning and for free right um better than that it can't get better than that sometimes it's kind of overwhelming just because uh and i guess you guys feel this too when i have like too much information and i'm like how do i know what is reliable and what is not uh when i'm watching those investment videos and people are describing the curve and they're indicating the candles and i just always feel like i'm watching a parody i don't know i don't understand enough of it to they could be saying anything they could literally be saying anything to me about those graphs they zoom in they zoom out they go left they go right seven day averages 30 day averages one year averages candles here i but ball head crosses i want to do like a version of those videos where i'm like talking about charts as if they're crypto charts but actually i've replaced all the charts with like word trends so like the word is toxic masculinity and you're following the chart as it goes up you would never know the difference like unless you were in on the joke you would it's it's the same amount of value it's the same amount of uh of of sincerity and truth like it doesn't matter it's it's all about who's the most enthusiastic who's the loudest in the space and who's getting your attention and and people are so desperate to make money and be part of something that they're like yeah i like this guy he's he's got a lot of enthusiasm and charisma i trust him bit boy crypto is that that's his like yeah and he's funny like he's super charismatic he's like a really good uh and he seems informed he's very eloquent like he's he's got everything you need and he's turned it into like his channel looks like a news channel or his one of his channels at least looks like a proper news channel quickly and loudly he must know he must know what he's talking about i also like um there's also evan on tech that i really like personally um and he actually created also his own academy where he teaches you how to do coding and also to like read the charts so like all these uh crypto influencers if you may call them i don't know if i would call them crypto influencers but i mean they they do that like uh that's their job right on a daily basis and they're passionate about it and um they're creating also these academies and which are very successful i was actually thinking about taking a course like and learning how to read uh the charts so we'll see how that goes i wanted to start in september should we talk newsletter yeah no no i was like what did i write sometimes i i write my newsletter like during the weekend and then by the time we do the podcast like i read so many things on twitter that i'm like what what did i say like out of all the things that happened is there anything more pertinent to discuss that you read on twitter what i would bring up is definitely the bondly hack like i mentioned that we mentioned like a few weeks back they actually like on monday 23rd they announced finally that the redeployment would take place is going to take place this friday 27th by the time this podcast is out it's going to be last week wait so is this the timer that you were talking about last episode where it's like yes supposedly exactly the countdown started on august 23rd it was announced so yeah last last week bondly announced that they would um announce the countdown on monday 23rd so then on monday 23rd i was like they're okay twitter please be good with me because i thought the countdown would like i wanted it to be like three days or something like that um and i was pretty lucky because then they announced it would be on the 27th of august so today's the 26th so that's going to be cool it's going to be tomorrow's the big day i can't wait to keep you all updated next week on how that went um i had a little panic moment because i was trying to understand with uh my wallet how to connect and to get these this these new tokens and i almost got scammed almost but i i didn't let the scammer get me on telegram tell me how that happened like what what happened to where you felt like you almost got scammed yeah so i i went on the bondly uh channel and i asked for some help for the wallet because in the list of wallets i didn't see mine uh then i found out how to do it um but i asked the question and then literally after not even a second in a chat i got like technical support right like bondly technical support calling me and saying hey ma'am i want to help you uh tell me your problem so then i initially i was like well that was fast especially because you know the bonley team usually isn't responsive and that's like what the community is like tweeting about all the time so that was a red flag and i was like but oh well i'll just like tell him my problem so then he said okay ma'am just press this link and then i was like hmm this link like seems kind of fishy and then i didn't press it and then this guy kept on like calling me and saying ma'am please press the link ma'am are you there i am so then i was like no dude like this and then i just like blocked it but so you never clicked it thankfully what what do you think would have happened did you read anything about this scam like afterwards was anybody talking about it did you warn anybody about it yeah i went on twitter and then i saw that the other guys were talking about i was like i should have checked this out i i went a little bit i got paranoid i didn't touch anything uh i was about to answer the call i tried like pressing on the green to answer initially like when i didn't know because i just like saw this call coming uh and then i was like oh my god what if i pressed it and now it's like in my phone and this guy can see me through my webcam i don't know i like went into like more than just scam i went into like a hack of my phone yeah super paranoid i got super paranoid but yeah i went on the twitter channel and everybody's like aware of it first time i wasn't like before it but now i am uh the thing that i didn't really appreciate about um you know the telegram channel is that now uh the bali team hasn't been really responsive since the hack happened and now like if you try texting on the telegram channel you have to wait like 45 minutes to send another text so i asked like my question and i had to wait like 45 minutes to like if they had responded to me i would have had to wait like 45 minutes to answer again and by the time i answer like you know all the people writing my message would have been like way on youtube yeah yeah telegram is not really great for for anything other than like it's a stream of information like it's not a way to communicate i i feel bad that i i'm kind of like you know saying that i'm not happy with the communication but that's how i feel at the moment i know that they're trying to improve their communication so that's going to be really decisive in me holding the tokens or not and that's something else i wanted to mention that um this week they also announced that they're going to do an initiative that if you huddle your tokens until october 27th they have this initiative called diamond hands that they're gonna give you like a five percent bonus so on top of what you've been holding exactly so on top of what you've been holding like when you they give you like the new tokens and that's because um i think they want to avoid the dump of many users because of course there's a lot of frustration you know it's been a month yeah since this happened and this is the best period for altcoins right because everything's like rise like soaring up um five percent is enough to keep people interested or do you think that they're still gonna bounce after the token drop i think probably like the whales could be a good good thing for the whales but for like smaller smaller amounts i i don't i don't know how convincing that could be it would probably just be as simple as like being more responsive on telegram and being more responsive with the community i think that would go a long way in terms of keeping people engaged and holding but what do you think the issue is there like what is it just lack of leadership and la or or like i mean moving too quickly i think it's just like moving too too quickly um definitely that and then you know there's been a change in ceo um so i think it's just like the changes internal changes but even like before that there wasn't a lot of even you you can check out their twitter account there's not like a lot of engagement with the community um so that's something that you know initially didn't really bother me but now it does um it's what still keeps you interested like are you gonna hold after you get this new new what do you call it batch honestly um i i wasn't thinking about i don't know if it's good to say in in public in front of but uh sorry bonnie team like i i don't know if you convinced me otherwise uh then yes but at the moment no i'm not very convinced of holding it just because i've i've not not that i've been betrayed but um it scares me right like when you don't have a lot of communication it only it honestly scares me so unless something changes but it has to change very quick i'm i'm not going to hold it for long i'm probably going to invest in projects that you know i like the community and i like the value do you have anything in mind right now that you want to talk about like anything you're eyeing that you want to you're excited to move to or yeah actually i do like um well one of them is definitely real that we saw last week i want to invest in that in the beginning of september so that could be a good good thing um so definitely in the metaverse because i'm i'm in involved in a lot of crypto uh you know d5 projects right now so um i would like to invest more in the metaverse now since this one is going to do something like like a token offering or something like that not not in not at the moment and not at the moment i guess uh we're more like now we're focusing on building our new version of the platform which is going to be awesome like we're going to release it um shorts like the beginning of 2022 so you're going to see a whole new generation of avatars and also the graphics it's going to be really uh a really nice and sleek design i can't wait to show it to you uh are we going more in the in the direction of like realism or just more stylized in terms of the design yeah so it's going to be like the buildings are going to be it's going to be like more enterprise right you're going to enter and see like these built it's hard to explain like all these fountains buildings green so it's going to keep kind of like um our design but just like be a little bit more i would say futuristic in the sense um but the avatars they're they're amazing and they're gonna keep a little bit of our design they're not going to be like um spatial you know where i i think you did you try out spatial where you can like literally upload your image and you so you have like your avatar body but then your face but your face comes out it still comes out kind of weird um okay that sounds really weird exactly so it's still gonna have that sort of video game feeling right yeah but enterprise so it's not gonna be like other platforms like where you can come to work with a dinosaur head it's always going to keep that feeling and yeah it's so exciting actually you guys this evening we have um a beach party in verbella that you guys have to come to i actually probably could do that tonight wait what yeah this evening u.s time or this evening no no like uh in europe like at 11 11 uh p.m maybe i'll maybe i'll do that maybe i'll go to a beach party tonight i went to i entered decentraland yesterday for the first time i designed my how did it go i was wandering around it was first of all that music is so corny when you first load it up it's like what is this the wii um but i i was surprised by i was surprised by nothing honestly i i'm looking forward to getting my own piece of land there i haven't done it yet but i i was just getting at the wallet set up and getting my avatar set up and like getting used to the controls because it is very much like a video game and and how you move through the world um i'm standing you met anybody there like no so i was standing there with my roommate was watching me i was like trying to i was going through the tutorial and it was like oh like you can talk to people so i was like i was like hello anyone there's like six people around me nobody responding and i was like i'm either doing this wrong or nobody wants to talk to me so um oh my gosh how did you feel because you you you said you weren't surprised but were you underwhelmed were you overwhelmed were you how did you feel yeah i don't think i got deep into it enough like conceptually it it's really not that different from anything other any other like online multiplayer game or community like second life or even like sims like it's the same thing it's the same low res like kind of uh i don't know what the right word is the low poly assets and um in that sense it's not that exciting it's actually quite underwhelming but i didn't get to experience any of the communal aspects of it so that's what i still want to do i want to i want to go out there it's weird because like i did have this sensation of like insecurity when i was about to start speaking as if people knew like it was me exactly this version of me it it's so ridiculous to feel that way like you you don't want to make a scene you don't want to be seen as like kind of weird and all of a sudden i like i i realize how absurd that was and i let it go and i was just like speaking whatever i felt like and that was kind of liberating in a way yeah that's that's the cool part but definitely you know that's a great point that you brought up that the user experience isn't that easy yet and i think that that's something that's going to be extremely important in the emerging um you know metaverses that are coming out the virtual worlds um yeah the easier it is the more mass adoption that's why i also like in in verbella and you'll see when you guys come in it's like really easy to like the user experience we make it as easy as possible do you find it actually more productive than like using the google suite and just doing things through slack or something definitely yes i found it i find it way more productive and you know i'm just like sitting in my virtual office black is the opposite of productivity yeah it is i think it's not for sure well if you have a good slack uh etiquette within your community within your your organization it doesn't have to be uh too distracting i guess you can get the information you need faster than email let's say but i agree slack is really bad in terms like people don't use it that way but i i imagine people won't use this that way either it's like being in an office and kind of just hanging out and like bothering each other it's like there's no there's no barrier anymore you're there with them exactly it's uh you know sometimes well we i have to admit like we have a very good um net ticket if you can say of of slack but i don't know how you call that but um like we were very organized on slack so uh you don't have like i i don't miss like any things like we keep everything neat in in our threads um and channels but like you mentioned you know i'm there sitting in my virtual office i don't have that barrier like i don't have to type on slack if i need something i i have contact direct contact with leadership i could just like walk to my boss's office and ask you know if i have a question or see see things together is that distracting do you find yourself like engaging with co-workers just because you can because you're there and it's like easier or or because it's it's fun even i no no absolutely like we actually it's it's nice because we like to even schedule some time to meet each other right we have dedicated times like i i sync up with my colleagues uh like 30 minutes maybe once a week just so that we can chat about all our like work things but also personal things so i think it's uh the perfect balance between do you do virtual team building are there like games that you guys play we're thinking about like doing well yes we do like trivia uh we do some trivia nights uh we have like a rooftop with this beautiful concert venue so we do like trivia nights there um you are laughing but you have to check it out because you say you say beautiful concert venue as if it's like this real place that somebody built and decide like it's so funny that the term beautiful being applied to to like we have like this beach where you can put like fireworks you can go for a boat ride um so it really gives you that feeling of being well not at the beach because i don't i don't feel like the heat but it's just i swear like when i'm also at concerts in rubella i'm dancing like behind my computer there's my avatar dancing and i'm dancing my avatar dance is better than me but yeah that makes sense i i even shared a video with you a few weeks back when uh i was like at um on the beach dancing remember that yeah yeah yeah that was so weird it's like i don't i don't know why why a beach then like what's the why why does everybody because you don't get the the tropical weather and the water and like the sand and all of your crevices like you just you could be in space for all you if it doesn't really matter as long as you're all together right yeah exactly like you're all together and the locations so why the beach well i i personally like we all who doesn't love the beach i love the beach i love the beach i don't have any like emotional connection to a virtual beach i guess i guess it's it's more about like suspension of disbelief especially i guess if you spend your whole day like multiple days a week in there it starts to become more and more real to you and you can appreciate the mimicry mimicry i like netiquette that's a great word netiquette oh my gosh i don't know i was like netiquette i don't know i was like what is the right word here not a good you guys have to like bear with me sometimes when i mix like uh american and italian and i'm like no it's great it's my favorite part of co-hosting with you oh boy but yeah definitely you guys have to come and have an experience in inverbela it's uh unique really mark do you have any exciting projects or nft games or oh i also sign up for axiomfinity by the way but i won't get into that um but mark do you have anything that you want to share or you've come across if you're still i am still here yeah we're getting distracted by small people um they're going to grow up as i have i have small people and so i've been spending most of my time looking at the metaverse and play-to-and gaming and i've been this week looking at the ethics of the metaverse and different conversations perhaps to the nft platforms i'm interested in the philosophy of the metaverse and where it's going and how the conversations about the ethics aren't really happening as much as i'd like i think everyone's focused on what the metaverse is and what it looks like and what it can be but not how um my little people look yeah people are gonna live with it in a in 10 15 years i've been looking at that i've not really been looking at any exciting projects this last week um have you read anything that's noteworthy or that like had you thinking about the future five years from now 10 years from now and how it's going to impact them well yeah essentially the same issues that the current incarnation of the internet has so it's bullying harassment um data privacy how how are those things going to be handled in the metaverse if it's decentralized is that decentralization going to help or hinder that it is is an open metaverse lawless you know some of these more questions about it i don't know the answers i haven't read many answers i've just been reading a lot of questions about how that's going to be yeah there's a i mean there's obviously more risk of a decentralized place for it's just like you know being out in the world right you you have some bad actors and you have uh people that are vulnerable more vulnerable than others uh i guess and you can't really like decentralization is anti-regulation right or at least to some extent yeah so it would be hard to prevent cyber bullying i don't know how you mod how do you moderate a decentralized or an unregulated platform especially one for kids that's that's an interesting thing that's conundrum it is they might have to create some metaverses but they would have to be centralized like only for like minors right in which there would have to be like some moderators always like supervised but by some adults um but even even centralized ones like like i don't know if you remember club penguin was like a big place for kids to play and hang out like back in the day my sister used to use it and there were there were tons of people on there like taking advantage of it and like scamming little kids or like doing inappropriate things on there and they had they had moderators they had like a centralized administrative force that was able to sort of regulate it but i think that's always yeah that's always going to be something you as a parent need to be weary of for your time and the kids aren't going to play on those platforms so they're not going to go into those meta verses i mean 10 11 12 year olds they're going to be in decentral and they're going to be playing actor infinity or whatever whatever the platforms are in 10 years they're not going to be they're going to know more than the adults anyway they're not going to be going into miners only they'll be they'll they'll be going on two platforms and yeah i just wonder how that is gonna so turn out then it comes down to just how you educate them now right like to to to be prepared for those platforms when they come because you're gonna be oblivious to them and they're going to take to them really quickly you just need to set them up with the right kind of moral compass yeah how do you talk to your kids about it how do you discuss how do you discuss these like other than the blog which i think is a great idea because it's there and it documents your feelings as they evolve but like how do you talk to them currently about these technologies and are they using anything that you've had to actually have a conversation about it's funny you mentioned that because yesterday i'm on holiday with the small people in normandy and yesterday we went to the supposed birthplace of william the conqueror so it's a castle not far from where we are and after spending half an hour proving that we didn't have coronavirus we got let in and they gave my oldest who's five a tablet and i at first i was i didn't want to have a tablet we're going to a museum we'll we'll read the panels like an old man we went anyway they got the tablet we went in and it was augmented reality so it was overlaying so the tablet overlaid what you could see in the in the castle with what they thought it would have looked like in the time of william the conqueror so whereas you had these just empty rooms you looked at the tablet and yeah there's this augmented reality it wasn't amazing looking but you know it it was like the metaverse it was the augmented reality part of the metaphor that's cool and so i was like saying what's the metaverse doing alice what's the reverse look like and she was kind of looking at the screen of the augmented reality overlaid on the castle and my old-fashioned brain kind of flicked and i thought it was a learn as a learning tool it was awesome so we could learn we could have the conversation you know she's like only five so we're not having in-depth conversations about the future of like the metaverse and the internet and augmented reality but i just thought okay what a strange place to be looking at the metaverse and speaking about the venomous in the birthplace of william the conqueror but i guess every museum will have that in the future and it'll be much more utilized and that was pretty cool i'm very curious how her memory of this event uh how she reflects on it like if you ask her in a couple months like do you remember that museum we went to if she remembers those elements of that room as like there and real or if she remembers them as a filter in front of a real reality okay it's a good question i'll ask her will she remember the castle at all will she only remember the tablet and playing with tablet um yeah yeah in fact children have no uh reference of time so i'll ask her now if she remembers yesterday and what she remembers yeah true because like a week for her is like a quarter of her life yeah basically yeah she's like oh that was forever ago yeah that was so it was life gave us the opportunity to speak about the metaverse and technology and she just embraced it there was no you know there was no hesitation it's like i want that tablet i want it i want that i want to see what it does and i want to use it and brain hesitated do they have free access to the internet in your presence or like when you're around or even when you're not like do they have a computer that they can access on their own they're far too young for that um they they see us on the internet they watch we don't have a tv so they do watch cartoons and stuff on the computer on the internet um they they can pick up my phone and find photos already at five years old but they don't they won't have their own devices for a while yeah yeah at what age do you are you thinking about giving them like their first personal devices i can like i sound like my dad when they can when they've got a job and they can buy their own oh no so when did you get is when did you get your first smartphone um at the end of middle school what about you what sorry like my first cell phone yeah like so you were like 12 yeah so your first phone no wait a minute so actually like no now that i think about it in the beginning of um middle school it was when was it oh my gosh like the year i can't go back to the year but um i had like that flip phone but it wasn't a smartphone yet then towards i think you had a motor no motorola razor was um i think in the third year of middle school and i had that and i felt like a queen yeah i felt like a queen and then um and that's when like the smartphone i guess it wasn't like a smartphone yet but you could go on internet yeah and then at the beginning of high school i got the one that you could like flip like this and then right oh the yeah wow you had well so there was a the first droid came out and when you were like yeah beginning high school i think and then there was also the t-mobile um sidekick which was like uh one of those flipped ones or there's lg one too like everybody was doing that sideways yeah thing for a little bit exactly but i also like i bought i bought my first smartphone uh marketing yeah but i was i was still i was 13 i think when i bought it okay or 14 maybe yeah but my parents didn't have a saying and i was working so i was like this is my money i'm going to go buy what i want yeah i want a smartphone and i was so i was so so excited for this because it was the first droid it was the first android phone and they called it like the droid and i was like seeing all these ads for it and it was months away and i was like i need that i don't even know why but something inside of you wants that so badly that i bought the case for the phone three months before i had it no my that's cute and it was like relatively useless in terms of like i had a i had a regular phone like a dumb phone before that like the nokia or i had it no i had lg chocolate which which could do some things but the droid wasn't that much of a step up like i was supposed to be able to access the internet it was touch screen so that was interesting but it wasn't multi-touch it was just single capacitive touch screen so it was kind of shitty um but yeah it was it was more about the idea i think i was just excited for where the technology was going and the potential of it that i was like i need to be a part of this like i need to i need to have something that can access an app store that's exciting awesome now then uh definitely i'm trying to go back oh my gosh like i can't remember when i got like my first iphone uh and then i started i think it was around 2012 i'd say when i was almost 18. where i got my first iphone and then i started like seeing instagram and everything and i was like oh my god like green crazy so you had like the the four or the five i had like the the four the four yeah yeah yeah i remember do you are you like an android or i was like 25. you were 25. so you remember a time when you just had like a portion of your life was just like a duck when was your first cell phone what age so i went to university um in 1999 [Music] um there was no didn't have a phone there was a couple of computers in the uni library that you could access but um my yeah my whole childhood and all of my teenage years didn't have a phone we went to festivals and concerts you know without phones and we didn't get lost and all that good stuff you couldn't you couldn't lose each other you had to like keep we used landmarks we use landmark landmarks trees buildings you know things like that i'll meet you by the gate oh my god i i love that i feel like now we're so used to like having our phones and you know you're in this public space and you just text your friend like where are you that i think i would get anxiety like if i go out of my house without it the realm guys just had like their first product that was successful was this like positioning within an enclosed location like they built they built the landmarks into a digital space that's so funny so oh my god so you also remember when like your university it was probably an internet right it wasn't even an internet or was it connected to the internet i didn't use it like i just used the books um i was like it didn't even there wasn't this huge pull to use it you know it wasn't this huge i must use it i must do that um because i just i guess grown up using books to access the information so it wasn't in my mind at that time to use something else to access information which i guess is a change i think like the year i was born i'm really on that cusp those few years where we experienced that up to our 20s without it and then our 20s and 30s with the internet and whether that's good or bad uh haven't quite worked out yet i think that's a beautiful time to have existed i think you have a you have a solid memory of what it was like pre-internet that i is a is a period that we'll never get to experience again and then you have now what everybody else has and a perspective that is really unique i like to put myself in that camp but i think you have a stronger image of that and memory of that than i do because i was i was in my teens when i when i made this transition to like a fully digital light like i was telling my housemate the other day i think the last time i had a day without screens was probably when i got that smartphone like when i was like 14. me too yeah it's really it's really crazy to think about like i can't i i can't remember a day where i had like no connection or no viewing of the screen i went to norway in 2018 for a five-day pack rafting trip where we were in the wilderness like we were camping and rafting and camping and rafting and even then i had my phone with me and at night i would check it to see if there was any any notifications for me for the business and questions there was something there's a question for you to then is there an edit if so i am very conscious of that and at least i don't know once a month or something i'm like okay i'm gonna not look at my phone today or i'm gonna do a week without looking at my phone or there's always this kind of desire to not look at the phone but do you have that or do you just not even think about that more and more every day i have that desire because i i feel like uh like i started using the digital well-being tools on my phone to monitor like how much i'm consuming like how much screen time i have and when you're aware of that then it becomes really hard to ignore like how unhealthy it is and um i i also find that my best ideas come when i'm not passively consuming things i think that's pretty obvious it's probably obvious to say that's common sense but it's so easy to get lost in mindless scrolling or swiping that uh two hours passing you're like what the [ __ ] have i done for the last two hours i've been in this vegetative state and i just time traveled basically so i have been actively i have notifications for me to put my phone down which is such a weird thing that i need like i don't know why i need that i should be able to just control myself but i need that reminders to like meditate or stand up or like take a break uh things that uh are i think a transition for me towards less screen time and i haven't done this day of no screens yet i've been like kind of waiting for the right moment because i've been so busy with other things and i'm so connected and so like um right now i'm as this article the premium uh the premium mediocrity article says i'm i think i'm living below the algorithm below the api where i'm sort of at the mercy of these apis still and like my engagement is still important for my income so it's hard to disconnect i totally agree i do too much screen time to be honest he's just like you ready i get lost in like scrolling and stuff like that and i do i feel the necessity to disconnect but the problem is that like with what i do like for work and everything i just like have to check it so i'm like what yeah but do you because that's what i'm asking myself lately is like do you have to check it or what happens if you respond tomorrow morning like to a to a message that you get in the middle of the day let's say like is it is it ever that urgent is it ever actually that urgent it's not always that that's a very good question i think it's just the mindset that we've come to have you know also what i did is like on whatsapp i removed the time that um i access and also now i have it if like i read messages but it just gives you that anxiety that maybe like somebody can think that i'm rude if i'm not answering or i don't know so bad and etiquette sensitive challenge here let's we'll challenge izzy 48 hours no screen how much money would we have to pony up for that to to happen [Laughter] you wanna you wanna do this challenge that's what it cost you how much would it cost us to get you to take 48 hours of no screen time um do you guys really want to do this with me listen to the quiver in her voice she's like i don't know if there's any amount of money um i don't know guys um do you want to bet like 50 like no no like 50 bucks each uh i'm thinking so like you have to consider what's happening and when i would give you 100 bucks myself to take 48 hours off if you started right after this podcast and you yeah right and you kept it through the exactly because you have this because you have this bondly thing tomorrow no way no way you see yeah exactly exactly wait does like does the computer count too in the 48 all screens all screens i have to um you can look i don't even have a watch like on that note that's the thing my phone is awesome i know it's it's 11 i'm gonna have to um turn off my screen so i will okay all right well i think that's probably a good place to to wrap it up for today anyway so um yeah let's uh let's catch up again next week guys hopefully we have a guest and it was great chatting with both of you and i uh i enjoyed it enjoyed it so enjoy the rest of your day we'll chat again