I’ve known about Pump.fun [wikipedia] — a website where anyone can create a meme coin and then hope to profit from a “pump” in its price — for a few months, but I’ve never had any interest in visiting it (neither should you). But I already knew that it was full of “degens” trying to rip each other off in the most depraved — but transparently depraved — ways possible. (Trump’s meme coins are in the same basket of rip offs actually worse.)
What we’re talking about here is a competition to find the most novel ways to create something from nothing… and then try to find “bigger idiots” to pay you for it.
What’s sad is the number of people (mostly young men) who are spending so much time — and usually money — trying to rip each other off, and — as you know with men taking risks — it’s getting out of control.
Recently a guy shot himself on a life stream. He had failed to make money on Pump, but he said “if I die [playing Russian Roulette], then I hope someone makes a meme coin for me.”
Well he did and someone did and then people started speculating on the coin, trying to make money. Here’s a podcast describing the whole sordid affair.
Here I am worried about climate chaos, trying to become a better teacher, and worried about my dad’s long term care — and THIS is reality for so many people? Fuck. That. Shit.
Pivoting a little, there’s an interesting fight developing on whether AIs (or their creators) can be sued for lying or other nasty stuff. What’s interesting is that the AIs are trained on human data — a lot of it coming from social media companies that are protected (in the US) from lawsuits due to Section 230. Will AIs also be protected by §230? Or will they get sued for repeating the lies and filth of humans? (They ARE getting sued for training AIs on pirated books.) I really wonder when people will just walk away from all the “shit on social” and start talking with each other again. Social sites — and especially their “engagement for cash” algorithms are a plague.
Of course, that plague was created by humans — mostly tech-bros — so these developments debasements are related.