AGM

(1 more left) Kneecapped, but not dead yet, we kept going as the V2 and swap contracts were being built. This was the process we should have been in before launch, and the resulting work was brilliant and bulletproof. I spent a lot of time brainstorming next steps, while trying to grapple with a lot of unanswered questions lingering in my mind. As we slimmed our pipeline to maximize the runway we had left, we did a lot of community creation sessions where we facilitated learning and collaboration with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and other AI Art creation platforms. Our relationship with what became Futureverse was broken, but didn’t seem hostile. Given our frequent sessions with Stable Diffusion and other free or open source platforms, when Aaron announced an upcoming “Fused Diffusion” phase for Thingies, naturally, I had some questions. That post and my initial response (pics) are below. I wasn’t the first person to question their plans, but it was my first time openly doing so. The reaction was really, really unexpected and… oddly disproportionate. Aaron and I had the visible exchange as you can see in full if you look up the tweet, but while that was happening, Aaron went into their Discord and did an @ -everyone post in their gen chat to tell their entire audience that the current exchange taking place was from a toxic and negative person. It was an escalation that welcomed the entire community to join. They did. I was being barraged with insults, and Aaron fanned the flames of antagonization, although he deleted many of his messages (see; Wayback Machine). At that time, I had both David and Aaron in separate DMs. David was pretty civil, but upset, and I understood his position about my questioning trivializing the work of the teams creating “Fused Diffusion.” I always respected those people and that was not my intention. Aaron’s DMs came as I was responding to myriad attacks on my character, brought on by his weaponization of their Discord and community. He also delivered a message I can only perceive as a threat: “And if you want to openly question the honesty of other people[‘]s projects I’m ready to fire back too.” Now let’s be real. There are a lot of people who have openly questioned FV. How many of them got this nuclear reaction? If the answer is zero, then what motivated such a nuclear reaction on me? Was I really that out of line? What didn’t I know? Or, what did I know, that maybe positioned me as being perceived as a threat worthy of that reaction? Furthermore, had I not been honest about something? Wasn’t I in Spaces and chats and present constantly facing up to public scrutiny despite faceplanting with our mint? What *would* he have “fired back” to discredit my honesty about? I’ve shared the good and the bad, things that outright embarrass me, things that acknowledge the very public failures I’ve made. I am still here, and I don’t care if anyone has anything they want to question publicly. I welcome it. I made mistakes because I tried something very bold, and I will never be ashamed of that. That was when I left many of the Fluf-related discords and cut all ties completely. I stopped engaging entirely, and slowly sold the rest of my assets. I’ve still got a Flufthulu-trait Thingie, a gift to me from a kind person and a beloved reminder of the collaborative vibes we once had. I’ve been trying to negotiate acquisition of the 2nd, matching-trait Thingie for 3 years, and if it’s accepted, I’ll buy it. So, this is my story of my experience with Futureverse. Well, technically, I was out before the rollup even happened. Shortly after these incidents, the V2, final, revealed iteration of the Relic project went live. I cringe at the thought of explaining any specific interpretations of my Art, but the Relic is and has always been about messages, sent and received. It was made for this moment, and I have waited years for those messages to finally reveal themselves. (to be continued & completed)