On The Other Side ep 68 - On-chain media w/ Yana Sosnovskaya + Guy Mackinnon-Little
Primer: Why is there a resurgence in magazines? Are magazines relevant to a Web3 audience? Let’s dive into Zine, a Web3 Print magazine from Zora, with Yana and Guy in this episode of On The Other Side.
Background
Yana
Working at Zora for 2 years
Launched Zora Zine in 2021 to cover culture in Web3
Working in culture for most of her life. What attracted her was the community aspect
Guy
Is a writer and editor
Have been working for magazines for his entire career
It was an interdisciplinary field, eventually leading him into crypto
Worked at SO-FAR, an NFT marketplace, before joining Zora last year
Defining Media
Yana
An important channel for communicating a curated point-of-view
Guy
There’s a media theorist called James W Carey who had a book titled Communication as Culture
He differentiated between:
Information view of communication (e.g. passing information from one vessel to another)
Cultural view of communication — Communication that reshapes their worldview and how they understand the world
In the age of tech disruption, magazines are becoming increasingly obsolete, but it just refuses to die
Byung-Chul Han wrote a book titled The Disappearance of Rituals, differentiating communication from community, and how media can be a substrate for both
We live in an age where we have communication with the community
The value of a magazine is to transform common understanding into culture and connection
The Broad Media Landscape
Guy
Magazines are a shared understanding of reality
It’s collaborative from a bottom-up perspective, from writers to editors to graphic designers, etc.
“I think what something good editorial can do is create an occasion to experience the world collectively, without feeling like it's something that's been forced upon you.”
- Guy Mackinnon-Little
The Renaissance in Zine could be a result of a deep sense of alienation and atomization that people are pushing back against
Yana
This is not just happening in the Web3 community but in the wider society
Have a few reasons for this:
People miss the tangible products/ledger
People are seeking their own small media and communication channels — Shifting away from traditional media towards “micro media”
Is Zine Decentralized Media?
Yana
No, it’s very vertical with strict editorial standards and formats
They are experimenting with decentralization
The biggest challenge is to maintain the quality of the content while decentralizing
Have received a lot of pitches and submissions
Not all of them are professional writers or people who take writing seriously
Guy
Have been careful and diligent about asking themselves what is it they want to decentralize and why
In the early days of the news/magazines, we relied on freelancers. In a sense, there is a decentralization of content
What has not been decentralized is the creative collaborative mode of cultural production
Magazines are hollowed out by perverse incentive structures of churning out content to reach the broadest possible audience and a lack of funding
Great Media VS Large Distribution Networks
The value of an editorial is that you can speak to and affirm an existing audience while being inherently open-ended
If someone buys a magazine, they get to participate in their community and absorb and enact its values
Being open-ended is not the same as a broad, sprawling, infinite, biggest possible audience kind of network effect nor a niche chat group
Magazines have seen a resurgence as people move away from large platforms to isolated communities
Text NFTs
Currently experimenting with how text NFTs are going to look like
Text NFTs are going live soon
Platforms and marketplaces are not optimized for text NFTs. Currently, they are speaking with Zora’s core team
The whole text in the text NFT can be read in native visual style and design
How It Aligns With On-Chain Media
Text NFTs provide provenance and citations, enabling you to trace where the ideas come from
Jacob has spoken about this in his essay Clicks vs. Collectors — Moving away from immediate high-octane reactions towards writing that offer long-term value
Minting will be forever open
Experimenting with on-chain compensation
There will be splits for contributors
Co-Creation And Shared Reality
With on-chain media, there’s a bundle of metadata that travels with the media itself
It’s not just about capturing the whole network of authorship, but seeing the different people who have read the content
It’s possible for communities to be forged around these shared cultural objects
The Nouns Model
Currently experimenting with the Nouns model
What’s most interesting is the ability to give a creator capital upfront and trust in their ability to deliver
The Extent To Which Work Has Been Financialized
Depends on the type of work
In the past, magazines are able to run comfortably for a long time as it draws in an audience that keeps advertisers happy
Somewhere along the line, magazines have been disrupted by the economic incentives of social media platforms
The danger of replicating this — The type of content that gets the most DAO votes
The incentives for creatives have to align with the broader membership
The Print Edition Of Zine
Have more than 60 contributors for both text and visuals
Approached it from the perspective that it is something that cannot be edited or changed
Is also thinking about never-ending collaboration (e.g. Wikipedia)
Wanted to capture what is happening at the moment in Web3 culture
The theme is intergenerational dynamics. Trying to find a common thread among all of them
Was There Anything In Common?
During the 2021 bull cycle, there’s an obsession with Web3 builders
It’s trendy to say bad things about Web2
It’s not as easy as it sounds to hold yourself accountable
“It was really interesting for me to go through the process of editing and sending to the printer, pushing this red button when it goes through the print of the whole material, because I was constantly thinking about engineers when they have to deploy a contract, and the code has to be absolutely perfect.”
- Yana Sosnovskaya
Where Can People Buy A Zine?
They are selling the Zine as an NFT
The NFT could be redeemed for the physical copy when it’s available
There will be fun inserts and surprises in the Zine
Collaborated with a collective that produces hardware. Will be distributing 400 pieces randomly to Zine holders
Any Last Words To Add?
Yana
Read long-form and think long-term
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