Spheres of Self: Performativity and Parasociality in the Metaverse

In digital spaces, brands can have personalities and influencers with whom one has never met can feel like close friends. These are consequences of the same thing. The parasocializing force that humanizes corporations also serves to abstract the individual, collapsing individual identity into something more synthetic and structured

While less glamorous than virtual reality science fiction landscapes, we believe that constructing a definition of the metaverse that is grounded more fundamentally in social structure will allow us to more effectively map its implications and understand the transitional nature of our current moment: The phase of human society where digital express... See more

On the other side, new social spaces will continue to emerge and bring with them new rulesets, dynamics, and discovery algorithms to connect new people in new ways. We argue that this is the primary value of social networks and should be their sole focus: developing and providing different “flavors” of content and algorithms

Through this lens, our transition to the metaverse becomes a cultural shift as a consequence of technology and connectedness, rather than the result of some specific technological innovation that then begets a cultural shift.

As part of a creator’s relationship with the broader Koji platform, Koji provides and manages liquidity and exchange of USD/kUSD for registered creators. By bridging from fiat to cryptocurrency at transaction time, we allow audience members to seamlessly transact in the ways in which they are familiar, while providing the creator community with a s... See more

The parasocial self is that which passively solicits engagement from others. From the perspective of those others, the parasocial self appears as a public performance of the private self. It embodies an inversion of the dynamics of agency we previously ascribed to the public self: we present the parasocial self publicly and invite others to approac... See more

While creators and developers ultimately require true ownership in the platforms on which they rely to make a living, we also hold that, in today’s world, the frictionless flow of money from audiences to creators is table stakes for any sort of meaningful adoption and success, and it is

The purpose of this document is to articulate a high level blueprint for Koji by exploring the ways in which Koji’s product, platform, and mission intersect with broader social, cultural, and technological shifts.

therefore necessary to introduce some elements of centralization and complexity as a stopgap pending more widespread consumer adoption of cryptocurrency. Thus, when examining the primary financial relationship Koji facilitates—that between an audience and a creator via web-based in-app purchases (a simple example of which would be a tip jar app)—we... See more

Web3-enabled onramp that allows participation in the next layer of ownership, status, and upside within the platform