From neopaganism to cryptocurrency cults, the Internet today is full of strange quasi-faiths
In early 2022, a video-essay creator named Dan Olson uploaded a two-hour-long exposé to YouTube. “Line Goes Up—the Problem with NFTs” quickly became a viral sensation, accumulating nearly 9 million views as of August—an incredible number for a seemingly niche topic. (The acronym “NFT” stands for “non-fungible token,” the name of a very small subset of the still fairly obscure online cryptocurrency system.)
Olson had done his homework. The video begins with the real-estate crash of 2008, tracing not only how that crisis was allowed to happen but also the social and economic consequences that followed. From there, Olson explores the early days of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and its various features, promises, and problems. Olson moves on from Bitcoin to other digital currencies, such as Ethereum, but he wants to make a larger point than just identifying the idiosyncrasies and flaws of these technologies—he is interested in the social implications of “crypto” hype. The crypto world, according to Olson, is filled not only with hype but also with professional scammers, broken promises, predatory and antisocial behavior, desperation, greed—and rage. Rage at how the post-2008 world had turned out, rage at how the American dream doesn’t seem attainable anymore, rage at whomever and whatever could be blamed for robbing the people inside that online world of what they felt they were owed.
