Sunday Thoughts: The YOLO Decade

Why I’m seeing a lot of weird and crazy on the Internet these days

It’s a real thing: the YOLO economy.

What I really think it is is that much of the corporate brand identity, middle management, or language of many white-collar jobs have burnt out a lot of people.

There are a bunch of childhood dreams that people are making steps, leaps, or bounds, depending on their risk tolerance, to make it happen.

I have a feeling Web 3.0 is going to turn far more personal now.

Less of the professional development, branding talk, and more low-brow stuff.

I’m also seeing a lot more folks dedicate more time to public interest or social impact causes, sometimes even putting the extra initiative to raise funds to make it happen.

This was far less frequent pre-COVID.

The language of this generation is very focused on the exploration of the self.

I do see a much more concerted effort for folks to explore identities outside of the nice, shiny checkboxes that tech algorithms may have constrained us to.

In other words, the genres of the past that have bounded us as individuals are about to change.

Maybe, this is a way to self-actualize or grow from much of the childhood traumas we were given from our upbringing.

And this stuff can sometimes be more crazier than financial insecurity. With financial insecurity, your brain is more fixated to trying to get your bills paid ASAP.

Mental and emotional health is much crazier - it’s like a bunch of mind games, voices in your head, filled with lots of chaos, and the more complex the thoughts, the harder it is to just make sense of everything.

I myself have this same challenge.

As I pivot into AR marketing and virtual avatars, exploring NFTs, I’m constantly trying to make sense of new genres of work that have evolving best practices.

It’s really scary sometimes. I recently signed up for therapy, because I knew much of my own inner thoughts and fears of self-doubt would really drive me crazy. I knew it was the right thing to ask for help.

The weird and crazy art popping up is a means or vehicle of the artist trying to make sense of their own inner thoughts. Because now the platforms are evolving where that feedback loop can facilitate an audience to make that happen.

This has caused me a lot of both excitement and mental confusion.

The YOLO decade moves very fast, like a streetwear company with incredible hustle and daily change. FOMO is very easy to feel especially with crypto, stocks, or even remote work lifestyles popping up seemingly everywhere.

I think it’s important to distinguish between:

• What you were put to Earth to accomplish or set out to do, versus

• A quick dopamine hit from all the fast moving social media changes, which may not reflect what you actually need.

The YOLO economy is very good at the latter.

It’s very important to distinguish between stuff that you might want versus what you actually need.

Because the YOLO economy is a social construct that uses status as a service to persuade you to buy stuff that you may or may not need.

I know this because we’re all participants in this. And really, we have to have stronger boundaries deciding on what we weigh most important. Because our attention is very finite.

But at the same time though…. What if we need that explosion in weirdness to explore even ourselves?

I pose this question, because there are people who really want that high level of weirdness.

Pay attention to where this goes. There’s a lot more that meets the eye. Weird as a service is coming.