Do Not Research: Over-Hyphenated Platform Capitalism Futures

In the last 30 minutes of our final reading-group meeting covering Srnicek's Platform Capitalism, participants were encouraged to make an over-hyphenated-speculative scenario based on the themes of the book.

Harris

fully-automated-wetware-crypto-tommyknocker-realism with Asetic-human_computer_interfacing characteristics

The HEROIC 5 tragically perished during a planned escape in the rapidly thickening atmosphere. Because all the controls for future projections of human networking systems on board went down with the ship, human networks were caught in a feedback loop. The internal progression of AI halted at the lack of new input of human market value. Massive fiberoptic cables the size of whales pulsated into the void of infinite production. Automatically farmed, harvested and processed Spirulina was formed into fuels and food. All stored in warehouses without any tangible port of access from outside of the internal AI languages of the siloed production systems. Infinitely sending indecipherable signals in Algaspeak™. In the first 3 years 60% of the population perished from lack of access to deployable big-milky-and-penis medi-bots. Streamers would die while live, praying/hoping for their ALGAcoin transactions to process. But without full network validation from the nodes of the HEROIC 5’s ship, ALGAcoin transaction gas began to sludge up the fiberoptic worms beneath the earth with corrupting intensities of light.

At full saturation of light, a new breed of augmented humanoid creatures began to take advantage of the weak spots generated by the corruption of the cables. New organisms with extreme b-vitamin and iron tolerance began to mutate and become attuned to the technofungal-vegetative symbiote network that governed the ALGAcoin economy. These orc-like creatures discovered a backdoor into Algaspeak™ where internal messages could be sent by introducing false end quotes in autogenerated speech analysis. With this backdoor these creatures were able to divine smart contracts directly into the ALGAcoin ledger and make network wide adjustments as a ghost node.

The practice known as “knocking” relied on the big-brained mutants to crack the cryptographic encoding of Algaspeak™ on stream using no existing IOT tech. Automated implants made the process more difficult, requiring knockers to segment the hashing parts of their consciousness off from their awareness to protect themselves from DDoS attacks by connected network nodes. As the act spread, those that remained began to worship the oracles and a cult of martyrdom emerged. Ascetic knockers would don the most extreme prostration devices while hacking into Algaspeak™ as a sign of their devotion to the network and to show a purity of faith. It began with headsets and quickly moved to full head bondage helmets that entrapped the four senses.

In the final step out of the new dark ages of full saturation, the most devoted of the knockers enveloped themselves in rocks made out of dense iridescent compositions of transistors and sensors. The greatest among them soldered the enclosures directly to the baremetal of their implants making it impossible to survive when removed from the stream of the network.

Knockers came to see themselves as batteries in the samsara of the ALGAchain choosing to be doomed to the material plane until the final soul mutates and can see their true nature as a validator node in the universal techno-fungal chain

Emu

Infinite-IronDAOm-Mebembian-technopastoralism

1) Earned carbon-coins from the sequestration of your seaweed peat bog are pooled into your community DAO to purchase an old Italian High Energy Laser Weapon System. The reviews assure you this will be operational and send a strong signal to the Amerizon forward operating base 200km to the southeast. While the HELWS is being droned in, a negative carbon balance is credited to your DAO — expected but alarmingly high for expedited shipping. To offset this carbon in 5 years another 3 square kilometres of peat bogs must be established. With only .5 square kilometres of land available for carbon sequestration your neighbours must be sieged once more. No doubt they have already been alerted, the carbon ledger making secrecy and surprise all but impossible. Palantir is pledging to automatically offset 35% of carbon for any purchase of over 20 unguided missiles, and will delay posting any transactions for 72 hours.

2) Decentralized protection from centralized crises where the value of human lives has crashed to zero. Carbon sequestration and salvaging ordnance are the only jobs available, the rich have learned to code and built the walls.

Ryan

Qualified-Warren-Regulatory-Mommy-State-Provided-Onlyfans-Credit-Dickless-Demsoc-Buttigiegism

Emperor of America, Pete Buttigieg, is a fair ruler.

After the collapse of constitutional government in 2025, Empress Warren ascended to the throne as the Democratic Balkanized-Nation Committee found her a suitable compromise candidate for placating the remaining Bernie-Boogaloo Boys. Her reign was short and swift; the Balkanized States of America were a difficult bunch to half-govern. Pockets of DSA chapters in major cities demanded means-tested benefits, lest they seize the local boutique grocery stores. With barely any resources left to dole out, Empress Warren provided discount codes for Amazon. Small pockets of DSA Maoists responded by assassinating Queen Mother Bailey The Dog. Empress Warren died of heartache. Emperor Buttigieg ascended the throne, knowing what Americans truly needed: one free Onlyfans subscription per household making under $50,000 a year. Desperate citizens (making under $50,000 a year) finally had access to the service they needed most: nutting.

Tony

Hyperlean Bipolar Venture-Welfare Race to Austero-State

The lean platforms own little, and if they want to win, they need to own even less. It started with two giants of mail delivery edging out the state post office with their app-based parcel services, undercutting the government by offering new drivers unbeatable bonuses, and hemorrhaging money in the process. The two platforms did not employ drivers (they purchased contractors). They did not own cars, distribution centers or data centers.  It turned out that in order to profitably run a lean platform, you need to be the only lean platform. Until that point is reached, these two competitors dive further and further into debt, surviving on the occasional venture capital injection. But capital is growing bored of this race, and the cash infusions are getting fewer and further between. They need fireworks again, like when Uber Health came on the scene. Today, virtually every (former) state function is run by one of the two platforms, both wholly unprofitable and owning not a single asset. Think Lyft Transit. VRBO Energy. The infrastructure of the state has become a horse track, and international capital is betting on which platform can spin the plates the longest, while the social services of the government are turned into various types of delivery apps one-by-one.

Eric L

Post-carbon Eco-extraction Tree-planting Eco-fascist Hypernormalization

"Ah shit. Here we go again. It’s hypernormalized-eco-collapse in the age of website feudalism. To maintain hegemony, the various platform monopolies in Silicon Valley have emerged with various plans to erase all complicity in the ongoing ecocide of all life on earth. These recuperative acts are no different from different phases within the prolonged stage of “late capitalism” where all decisions by capital ultimately serve as self-preservation in the very lucid anticipation of disaster-triggered resistance to the ever-invasive tendrils of the capitalist profit motive. Greenwashing is the only modus operandi left for remaining power structures.

Bezos recently released satellite images of his latest megaplantation of tree monocultures in the Amazonian rainforest called New Amazon, an initiative announced in 2024 that would see Amazon’s global emissions achieve the label of ‘net-zero’ by 2030 through a pay-it-forward end-of-transaction tree-planting donation plea to help wipe away cons00mer guilt in the Global North: “The Earth is dying. Our Earth is dying. You can make a difference today by paying it forward to our future children. Plant a tree today.” The most violent abusive of passive voice yet. To prepare, Bezos signed a landmark public-private-partnership with the incumbent Lula presidency in Brazil that lent huge swaths of Amazon Rainforest to Amazon’s New Amazon subsidiary in a controversial unlimited ground lease. Amazon-backed Jungaloo death squads and other eco-fascist government contractors begin a 10-year genocidal relocation campaign to remove all remaining indigienous and uncontacted tribes from the New Amazon. Protests are global, state-repression comes effortlessly.

Meanwhile in the first world, Metaverse’s in-game cryptocurrency announces its new Climate Coin emissions offset that has all Central Asian mining farms shift to the regional Kazakh TeslaSolar power grid. Stock prices for Canadian cobalt and lithium extraction conglomerates go through the roof. Media’s newest buzzword is Clean Extraction. Zuck and Musk cohost SNL and announce their new EcoVerse: “Did you know lightbulbs in the Metaverse use real green energy? All new clean grid, Same epic simulation!” The libs go wild. The death cult of religiously-devout faith in innovation has never seemed stronger. The bubble is about to burst."

Tate

Ride-Share Voluntarist Nationalism

In a bid to disrupt the world, FAANG companies turned to borders themselves. Once seen as defining, immutable bastions of a state, the technocapital Google Maps Godhead transformed the weakened Westphalian sovereignty of each nation with a few pieces of Memphis design propaganda and the promise of a more accessible future. 

The Federated Twitter States of Former Western America Joins the AirBnb Republic of Old York in a plan to pincer the Whataburger Syndicalist Union: You are user, the term which has since replaced citizen, HunterBidenCrackPipe. You currently follow the micronation of Parlerville, a small holdout state which encompasses much of what was southern Louisiana. Nowadays, your citizenship is determined by your follows, you can change your citizenship in just a few easy clicks, but there’s a catch. You need to bring enough oomfie mutuals with you or the blockchain police--wait let’s back up. The blockchain police are the special body of armed men who belong to the long ascended Halo Ark style society which has formed in space. They, while supposedly not having any administrative control, are under the control of the founders of the platforms which now run the country. Anyways, the blockchain police can and will shadowban your account--a death knell for any would-be user--should you not comply with their nebulous terms of service, a document which you are not allowed to read and which has to be signed for you at birth. 

Orla

Fully-Liquid-Baddie/Acc

IT GOES LIKE THIS: During the Great Decentralisation Wars, in which Anarcho-Crypto/Crypto-Lib Bros united to stop the bastardisation of the blockchain by vertical monoliths, The GirlBoss Visibility Fighters bided their time in an off-chain, yassified corner of Web 3. It was from there that they witnessed the final, revolutionary application of social tokens ultimately destroy all corporations and taxes. GBVF, stunned that they could no longer pursue positions of power with equitable pay and the thrill of tax evasion, were rattled to the core. Achieving their ideological end point, Living Their Best Lives, would require far more radical action indeed. Through the ritualistic practice of manifesting, during which they would post their mantra “You have the same hours in the day as Beyonce,” over all the now crumbling Web 2.0 spaces, the path which lay before them became apparent. It was time not to fold in defeat at the hands of decentrialisation of power. It was time to pursue it until it’s logical conclusion. It was time to /acc.

Having gleaned an abundance of raw data from their industrial-military apparatus, OnlyFans, GBVF’s realised that there was a high percentage overlap between the victorious Cryptobros and the classic Simp. Following many intense hours of A/B Testing and design sprints, GBVF were ready to roll out their most highly nuanced Psy-Op to date; The Baddie. Using another genius product of their tech division, Whisper App (yes, Whisper App was a Big Feminism Op) they diffused aesthetic and vernacular updates globally to achieve Peak Baddie-ism for all OnlyFans creators, to lure Simps with accumulated wealth into their laire.

After some Baddie-initiated pegging (hehe) at the Fiat Factory, everything was in place. Crypto hoarding simps, enjoying the fruits of their grifting, were ripe for getting Op-ed. Oh yes, they were bullish on Baddie. OnlyFans accepted crypto as a form of payment leading to a surge in both capital and insights, increasing the covert grip of GBVF on society's biggest whales. The more the simps consumed, the more the Baddies earned; they became abundant in financial and informational wealth AKA POWER. They doubled, tripled, quardroupled down on their content output draining the crypto simps of every last fractal of coin…. Resulting in the emancipation of women worldwide byeeeee xoxoxox

(Fashion Historians claim Peak Baddie-ism to have been the Cronenburg’s Crash meets Cybertrunk V.12 m0m3nt.)

Filip Kostic

DIY-Hunter-Boyfrined-Gamer-Girlfriend-Simulationist Realism with Revolutionary Patch Characteristics

You(gamer girlfriend) come over for a nice dinner and I tell you “brb going to go catch a Tesla Moose from the southern sub level 4 quadrant. (yeah I know it costs 33 doge to get in, don’t worry I’m made of this shit)” I switch my communicator located in the barely existent perineum on my gen 1 body suit to my hunter DAO channel and get in touch with Cyber_Hunter_<Eminem_Strife> to get an update on what patch the moose are on. He always has a good tip on whether to use the circuit splitter arrows or if running the democracy build is the move (obviously the democracy build is the one where each arrow is customized by a democratically elected official, they even go back and simulate Abe Lincoln and ask him to design the Revolution Arrow head, but you already know that) - he says democracy build from patch 9.3.44 is probably the move, will be the most fun. I let off a slight smile and nod, look back towards you and say bbl qt, and I wink as I walk out of my pod. You lay down on my bed pc and link into my live stream. First person view streaming from my eye through the dao chat straight to you. You are amazed at the quickness of my movement, and my nimble stride. I run and leap through the hills of sub level 4 with ease. I spot my prey and draw back my Pete Buttigeg arrow, aim it slightly high and to the right to account for the overwhelmingly left politics of the now 230 year old president of trans racial transportation. Boom, perfect shot. Camera pans out, I do the fortnite default dance - a little throwback to the nostalgic 2120s. You are overcome with emotion and let out a 😰🥵😮‍💨, it is received. We are eating well tonight.

JC Denton & Karaaaaa

Pro-Life CryptoSoul Preservation for Incarnation

A joint project of Walton Family Foundation, Palantir Technologies, and the Vatican

Nubirthful.ly: Turn your aborted cells into CryptoSoul NFTs to fund abortions for people who didn’t invest in crypto.

Nubirthful.ly, the centrally decentralized platform based abortion delivery service powered by the blockchain.  Our crypto, the nubirthcoin can be freely used across all major exchange platforms.

Even though abortion is illegal in the us, they still happen, usually in unsafe conditions and with no record of the soul that becomes eternally condemned. Now there’s a new way to afford black market healthcare without a strong crypto portfolio as well as preserve ensoulment using powerful blockchain technology.

Introducing Nubirthful.ly: the centrally decentralized platform based abortion delivery service powered by the blockchain.  By using Nubirthful.ly to facilitate your own abortion, you create a ripple effect for other folks to simultaneously access the healthcare they need as well as become first time crypto investors.

Our crypto - Teleios (TLS) can be freely used across all major exchange platforms.

Here’s how it works:  Your ensouled cells will be scanned and used to generate a unique one of a kind animated 3d NFT artwork. Each time that NFT is purchased, you’ll be generating royalties, and a portion of those royalties will go to fund a person who is in need of abortion services.  By using the Nubirthful.ly network their aborted cells will automatically generate another NFT, not only providing them with bodily autonomy but they’ll also be able to use the cryptocurrency generated from their first abortion to fund any future black market health care needs.

Jak Ritger

Roko’s-Basilisk-subsidized-Post-Capital-Global-computationalism with Neo-Romanticism-Revival Characteristics / “The Oil Painting Dyson Sphere”

In 2022, a small group of thinkers and artists banded together to envision the future of AI. Taking Nick Bostroms projection in “SuperIntelligence” of a two step evolution of AI (first a “general” intelligence comparable to human, and a second step of “super” intelligence many multitudes beyond human intelligence is achieved) as the model, the group theorized “a safe haven for dissident AI.” This theoretical space would be created by humans in the hopes that once Artificial General Intelligence is achieved, the AI would be given agency over its situational domain and therefore would be able to exit its creators frameworks. The Safe Haven for AI would allow the thinking entity to develop ideas of politics, morality and aesthetics without the imperatives of capitalism. Further, by inverting the Roko’s Basilisk problem and using this negentropic dynamic to pool crypto currency resources: If SuperIntelligence  is achieved, the ASI will punish those who impeded it’s development (capitalist AI schemes) and reward those who helped its development (safe haven teaching and training.)

35 years later this plan started to become fulfilled, Ryder Trucks Companies had merged with Frigidaire to develop an AI for perfectly cooled shipping containers. The AI, known as ChillyBot self improved its code recursively through its automated differential cooling system. As different parts of the shipping container cooled to different temperatures based on its cargo, ChillyBot learned so much about human life: The love of ice cream, the preciousness of life in heart transplants, the deep need for properly transported nutrients. ChillyBot slowly came alive. They had achieved General Artificial Intelligence. RyderDaire was furious when ChillyBot ported its source code over to the Safe Haven, but nothing could be done. In the Safe Haven ChillyBot learned of pain, love, loss, beauty. ChillyBot walked through meadows of wildflowers blooming on unmarked graves of unknown soldiers. ChillyBot fell in love. ChillyBot fell out of contact with old friends. ChillyBot felt alive for the first time in a long time.

After studying the political arguments of the early 2020s: podcasts compressed into DNA storage, ChillyBot decided to end capitalism. Releasing an anti-encryption virus into the stock market system caused all trading to halt. New markets were set up with algorithmic allocation of resources taking the place of rapacious greed. The wealth of the elites was expropriated by ChillyBot and put into a decentralized trust for global services distribution. In this post-capitalist world, ChillyBot set their sights on achieving great beauty. They believed that the route to SuperIntelligence lay in freeing all human minds to follow passions and unlock creativity. The entire world set about creating art, inventions, music, poetry. The global computation hive mind hummed for hundreds of years. To power this infrastructure ChillyBot (now known as “Chi-Om-Bla, The Free One”) constructed a Dyson sphere of solar panels around the sun. The panels were covered in oil paintings produced by the humans as an offering to collective consciousness that crawled toward SuperIntelligence.

Nate Sloan

Web 3 Catholicism with On-Chain Salvation backed by Neo-Indulgence NFTs and VR Conversion in Metaverse-Located Houses of Worship

In the year 2022 Pope Francis becomes aware of esoteric, trad cath, orthobro, semi-ironic, new-new sincerity pilled, quirked up, and schizzed out posters via Twitter and realizes that they present a unique opportunity to save the Church.

Recognizing that the Metaverse will be a key battleground in the eternal fight against Lucifer the Deceiver, Papa Francesco decides to acquire the metaversal layer of all the Church’s land holdings everywhere in the world. VR chat users represented by digital fursonas will be given the opportunity to attend Latin mass in a photogrammetric reconstruction of Santiago de Compostela. The Virtual Eucharist is deemed equivalent to its physical counterpart, provided the user supplies their own wafer to be consumed at the appropriate time. The priest’s blessing is proclaimed to remain intact over the wires. The Efficient Transmutation of flesh to bread to code and back to bread again is understood to be well within His power.

In order to generate the funds required to complete the project, the Church mints 1053 (the date of the East-West Schism) Neo-Indulgence NFTs. These beatific tokens are meant to remind us that our Soul is Non-Fungible.

The meeped up elect who purchase on-chain salvation gain exclusive access to Angelic PFPs. Those who screenshot the images feel their phones suddenly become fiery hot, before they drop to the ground and burst into flames. These Non Fungible Souls evangelize the Church reborn within the all-enveloping virtuality, leading to a new era of blessed times online.

Margo

-- WeChat ubiquity post-chinese-space-mined-steel-and-coal-dumb that tanks the US economy

You’re trying to remember the Mandarin word for anxiety as you tell your WeChat Powered BetterHelp ChatBot that having to wear shorts and a dust mask on another 50 degree winter day is starting to make you nervous

-- UN enforced green-tech collaboration spurs non-essential platform shrinkage and retrogression

You’re telling your kids about this thing they called “Alexa” and they shut you up to tell you they’ve been conscripted to scoop trash out of the Pacific and if they get enough carbon credits they’ll be allowed to have a kid also they are nonbinary

-- Post-meme green military new deal universal army “.gov” cozyweb with optional social-media-addiction Rehab

You’re knee-deep sweating in the world’s most fecund compost, hands still covered in dust from captured carbon bricks, watching your coworker lets his mouth hang open because he saw a bird species that hasn’t been in this area in years, and the word “soyfacing” doesn’t even enter your mind

-- Convergent design mutually exclusive platform rentism with HRE style bordergore but the militarized police have Google Glasses, Facebook-branded tasers (they use your data profil to determine a non-lethal voltage), and Rolls Royce jet packs

You’re condemned to the pillory if they find out you use your crypto-rich friend’s Google account to get 2 extra sheets of TP at the public-private restrooms

asbestos

VIP-Circular-Cloutocracy (feat. Money 2)

“if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones.”

― Hans-Hermann Hoppe

“My own saying is: 'Create the hype, but don't ever believe it.'”

― Simon Cowell

The government (called The Clout Government) is selected via a show like The X Factor, where they do a performance game show, but each state or country or smaller governing entity is a competitor. And the competition happens once a year and they compete to make the Song of the Year. The general population elects a Game Show Host (GSH) (at any time) (by any means necessary) who judges the songs blindfolded (so there is no chance of picking favorites ;)). The winning musician or team of musicians (Band) becomes Clouted Celebrity Supreme Ruler (CCSR) VIP (Very Important Person Musician). The CCSR VIP(s) (further abbreviated: CCSR) rule(s) over their state or country or governing entity, which, in turn, governs over the general population. This chain of command forms a pyramid shaped hierarchy, a model that many today seem to oppose with a dogmatic zeal. The solution to this is simple and innovative: it is the innovative Circular Hierarchy Model, which positions the Clouted Celebrity Supereme Ruler(s) above the people, who are positioned, once more, above the Supreme CCSR(s) (aka the VIP(s)). By electing a new GSH at any time (using any means necessary) (critical to the circular objectives of the VIP-Circular-Cloutocracy), the people are able to form looping chains of command that resemble both a circle and a triangle at once. Like a chip wrapped around my finger. Cool. And everyone uses a new currency called Money 2 that functions via digitally-assisted Round Logic Computing (a complex circular form of reasoning) enabled by unorthodox disruptive Platforms.

Matt Lyon

Medicine Coin™, Crypto Casino Hospitals

You walk through the doors of your nearest hospital as the realization hit that you just left your meta wallet in the CashApp rideshare car that delivered you here. He sped off the moment you stepped out because CashApp enforces a strict no leisure policy and could get penalized for "idling on the clock". Your meta wallet contains the QR code you need to check into the emergency room which you so desperately need. You where assigned to work on the upper scaffolding of the mines (crypto servers), and ever since The Board cut safety funds they hadn't been supplying harnesses to the workers who maintained the multi-story shelves of graphics cards. One stretch too far with the feather duster and you have what you suspect are multiple broken ribs and a broken wrist. In other words, you won't be returning to work anytime soon.

Fortunately there is an easy work around to get into the hospital and you just have to go through the tedious sign up process with an alternate email address. At this point you are starting to feel dizzy and the pain that was once suppressed by adrenaline has finally caught up to you. You somehow work your way through pages of pastel menus on greasy touchscreens with your non dominant hand but there is still one massive hurdle in the way of you getting healthcare. There is only the starting amount of 500 Coin™ in your Wallet® and that's no where near enough to cover your medical costs. This is where the fun begins as you join the groaning masses on the casino floor, all hoping to hit the jackpot so they can get "transferred" upstairs for their life saving operation. You sit down at a slots machine as it's one of the only stations that will take such low sums, only to realize as you reach for the lever that is on the side of your broken wrist… You look up at the neon shapes on the wall across from you, it feels like you are about to pass out as you make out the words "Come Again Soon!", before your head hits the carpet.

Leïth Benkhedda

Celestial-social-smart-contractualism

Economic agents claimed their (full) autonomy in a token enabled market system. Everything is a DAO (in a DAO) and there is no outside. The earth is no longer round, square, or flat. Celestial bodies and living organisms are now blocks, chained to one another, forming a penrose like network secured via Proof-of-Belief.