The bleep and screech of a 28.8K modem struggling to secure a connection is a sound I will never forget. So too are the words “mom, get off the phone! I’m online!” Having come of age during web1, these memories are equally warm as they are traumatizing. Representative of a simpler time, they serve as a reminder of just how far the world has progressed in the last 25 years.
The late-90s were a seminal time in my life. Despite playing the ultimate Alpha Chad* in high school -- football in the fall, hockey in the spring and “cool bro” year-round -- I was actually a closet introvert. Behind closed doors, I was a fairly serious chess player, sci-fi nerd and Japanese role-playing obsessive. The red blooded braggadocious guido culture of Staten Island propelled me forward; it was sink or swim. I had just enough athletic ability and desire to be noticed by the fairer sex. So I swam.
But I felt most comfortable behind the computer screen, particularly posting under the pseudonym “MaSaMuNe41” on AOL’s Final Fantasy message boards. That screen name paints the perfect picture of my dichotomous existence at the time: Masamune representing Japan’s legendary swordsmith, often featured in RPG games, mashed up with 41, simply my hockey number.
It was there, on these message boards, where I thrived. Looking back, with the lessons that I’ve learned in web3, we were a DAO without a token or treasury: community-governed, masters of open debate, we shipped product in the form of fan fiction/art and even a text-based RPG, hosted meetups and shared alpha. There just wasn’t a way to capture the value of our community. Think of what that generation of creatives could have accomplished if they had web3 tools?**
Over the next 20+ years, life took me many places. Subconsciously, fashion was always at or near the center of it all. As a freshman at NYU, my first internship was at the youth culture magazine Frank151. Alife, Nom de Guerre, Odin, Opening Ceremony — independent brands and retailers were thriving at the time as it wasn’t yet prohibitively expensive to operate a store in Manhattan. It was an exciting time to be young in New York: the term “hipster” hadn’t been coined yet, and the transition from Bapestas, Triple 5 Soul and Evisu to Band of Outsiders, Red Wings and Adam Kimmel was as exciting as it was strange.
While I sat out “the forum days” of the early aughts (instead focusing my energy on becoming a lawyer, only to retire after four lo-ong years to become a fashion entrepreneur), I found myself gravitating back to “the scene” as Tumblr #menswear burst into existence at the turn of the decade. You want to talk about a community that couldn’t capture its own value -- sheesh! This was before the term “influencer” had been coined, so you bet any value a creator generated accreted right to the platform. We all know the story of web2, and it’s amazing to look back through the lens of web3 and think about all the missed opportunities.
That roughly brings me to today. The last five years have been a whirlwind. Having spent a significant portion of that time as a trend forecaster and strategist, Ethereum and decentralized technologies have been at my center. Indeed, I liken my first experience with Ethereum to a DMT trip: I felt as though I had an out of body experience, that everything I was hearing I already heard and knew to be true -- I could finish the sentences of the person telling me about this new technology.
I became a rabid evangelist. If Reddit and Discord logged your minutes on their platforms, my “gameplay” would be astronomical. Even as the bull market turned bear, I forged forward. And Ethereans kept building. Straight through the pandemic, we road Defi Summer into the winter, right until NFTs burst into public consciousness in early ‘21. For buidlers [sic], this was no surprise: we watched (and helped) Cryptokitties, Axie Infinity and Decentraland progress against their roadmaps the entire time. It seemed predetermined that JPGs and NBA clips were about to rake in billions of dollars of crypto revenue.
And everything was being fueled by late-stage web2 tools: Discord, Telegram and, of course, Clubhouse. It was there, on his Culture Club program, that I heard my now-partner, Jeff Carvalho, discussing NFTs with heavy hitters like Gary Vaynerchuk and Roham of Dapper Labs. Considering that Jeff and I first discussed the possibilities of decentralized media back in 2018 while working on a whitepaper for Highsnobiety, one could say that “it was written” we would join forces to develop a metaverse and web3 strategy studio some day.
Of course that studio is Burrata.
I know I’ve bounced around quite a bit, but this is far from a Christopher Nolan script: if you’ve been diligently reading, you’ve probably connected the dots. Community, trustless governance, creators, Internet culture, youth culture, fashion, gaming, financial services -- I feel right at home in web3. As we dive deeper into this brave new world, it’s my hope that web3 can be all that web1 was for me and similarly minded members of my generational cohort and then some. And it’s my intention that Burrata and Cheesy Talk help move the culture forward when it comes to exploring the power of web3 and blockchain technology.
If you haven’t yet, drop by and see what we are building. Cheesy Talk is a place for fashion and crypto heads to vibe out and learn from each other. It’s also a place for Burrata to experiment with new digital products and services — to research and innovate. As we create products and experiences under our own label, Burrata, and for our clients, our community will always receive early access and special experiences. So come through, post a few memes about cheese, throw up some fit pics and rap a little about crypto. Let’s build together.
* OMG, is that what the “A.C.” in AC Slater stands for?!
** I have 0 doubt that there will be a Final Fantasy DAO at some point in the near future (if there isn’t one already).