I Would Very Much Like To Be Excluded From This Lore

1. Lore is anti-marketing 2. Lore is inner psyche-management 3. Lore is born-baroque imaginative irony 4. Lore is Posture, Narrative, Behavior (PNB) triad molecules 5. Lore is narrative territory catalyzed by shaky epistemologies 6. Lore is about circumstances you manage, not problems you “solve” 7. Lore is epic-orthogonal everyday life habits

Lore is something you witness, and attempt to shape as it emerges, if it emerges, not something you design and execute. You cannot, for instance, set out to write an origin myth. At least not one that will work as lore (though it may work as part of a grift). You can only recognize and institutionalize one. 

What makes lore important is that it what persists through epic ages and dark ages, through booms and busts, through iconic era-defining product seasons and incremental update seasons that merely keep the product alive and chugging along. Lore creates slow-burn meaning in a way that isn’t subject to the vagaries of epic winds. Epics wax and wane. G... See more

An implication that creates the sharp contrast to traditional marketing is that lore cannot be engineered in the same way marketing can be. While you can shape lore as it emerges, it is a matter of subtle gardening and curation. You do not go around trying to invent brand names, logos, and brand-identity postures for emerging lore. You are not pump... See more

Let’s consider that formula: community knowledge + solidarity networks + folklore. The web3 communities I’m in have powerful ideologies; these are spaces with shared perspectives and rituals that have emerged over a compressed period of time. This manner of collective world-building in and around projects (in the best possible way, I wouldn’t use t... See more

There’s power in signaling insider knowledge to outsiders, so naturally we see the memetic propagation of idiomatic lore artifacts beyond the bounds of where they actually convey meaning. But as time goes on, their density and alienation from more universal lexicons makes it hard for even the ‘in-group’ to keep track of this internal meaning. It’s ... See more

Modern celebrity fandom encourages fans to look for the narrative they want to see. Little clues are everywhere, and new source material is never-ending. If fandom has become more conspiratorial—and I think it has—that must be due, in part, to the way that social media has created immediate incentives for amateur sleuthing.