Imagine this scenario: You're 19 years old. You just dropped out of college. You want to pursue music, but you just moved in with your sister because your parents were unimpressed with your life choices.
How do you spend your days? When you're not working at Taco Bell, you run a Nikcki Minaj fan account on Twitter. You talk her up — “stan” her, in the words of Gen Z — and you play around with pop culture references. You gain some clout through this strategy, which the world soon knows as “tweetdecking,” or mass-retweeting content from lesser-known accounts to manufacture internet virality. You still work on your music when you’re not battling Twitter’s relentless anti-spam rules — which could threaten to shut down your account.
This story might sound like one of a sad Internet loner. But it’s actually the story of a now major artist: Lil Nas X, the rapper behind the breakout success "Old Town Road."
Now heralded as a marketing genius, the country-trap artist’s rapid rise to success exemplifies a sort of Web2 Internet currency: clout. By trafficking viral memes and baiting engagement on his @nasmaraj Twitter account, Lil Nas X grew his following to six digits and eventually used the platform as a springboard for his music success.
Clout is not a new invention, just a currency that gets reinvented with every new wave of technology. Internet clout for Web2 social media platforms like Twitter came (and still comes) from virality, a phenomenon contingent upon amassing faceless followers and engagement. But what will clout look like in the metaverse? Let’s explore.
Lil Nas X's Nas Maraj account is now suspended, but, this rise to fame is one that is more and more common as an aspiration for teens and tweens. A 2019 survey found that 86% of young Americans aspired to influencer status, and many Web3 industry professionals expect that today’s kids will aspire to be metaverse creators.
Internet clout is a confoundingly complex, but there’s no doubt it informs the world of a person’s reputation. From the number of followers you have to how well you're able to interact with niche Internet discourse, everything feeds into, and is reflected by, your clout.
The gamification of social media — and the immediacy of data on each post — only exacerbates this. It's made marketing experts of all of us, about our own lives. Before posting, just about anyone will pause to think will this work with my followers? Will they watch this story? Like this post? Or will this make me lose followers?
When looked at in this way, it almost makes sense that 22% of Instagram users have gone into debt for the ‘gram. And 62% have already spent money on things or experiences to show on Instagram. More and more, our online lives have the same sort of relevance and importance to us that our offline lives do.
We invest time — more than ever, with an average of 40% of waking hours spent online, and even more the younger you are — and increasingly money on these lives.
While 86% of people aspire to Internet fame, far less are looking for "true" celebrity, like being famous musicians or actors. The divide between the lives we live online and the lives we physically live is far harder to break down into simple terms of "real" and "fake." They're both real, just very different in what they allow us to do and the types of interaction that they allow.
Regardless of a person’s stance on the metaverse, digital experiences are already becoming more immersive. Consider how often we use our phone and desktop simultaneously alongside physical, embodied experiences — whether to navigate our route to a subway station or practice yoga at a distance with our friends.
We can now use technology for things that we once only dreamt of — and maybe haven't even started dreaming of yet. Tom Sargent, a Web3 growth marketer, outlines the metaverse as "the next generation of the way we engage in the internet." He predicts that one day, we might turn our About Me section on our websites into an immersive plot of digital land where our avatar greets guests who want to explore your story.
“You might have an 'About Me' section that has all of your favorite books, your music collection, and your art collection,” says Sargent — like a digital rendering of your physical house.
Essentially, the physical goods that we now use to populate our digital spaces through photos might be replaced with more robust digital goods, sold directly to your avatar, or at least your online persona.
Time and time again, the Internet has shown us that if we can use it to skip a step, we will. Incumbent tech brands like Netflix, Amazon, and even Gmail worked out how to skip a step in the physical world and deliver goods and services straight to the end user.
There is now a business model, Direct-to-Avatar (D2A) that applies this concept to all of the goods and services that we use online. D2A also includes the types of goods that we might buy specifically to display online with the sole purpose of boosting our clout (PFPs anyone?).
This model is already in motion, argues Enara Nazarova, a Top 30 Voice in the Metaverse & Third Academy instructor. "Whether you’re familiar with the Direct-to-Avatar business model or not, you actually already have a digital body. For most of us it doesn’t look 3D — yet, but you’ve been sculpting your identity and crafting the myth of who you are ever since you created your first usernames and accounts on the Internet."
Many are already enterprising on this. You can find countless examples in games over the years. But, more recently, you can visit Gucci in the Metaverse, mint your best memes into NFTs, and, in 2020, you could have even gone to a Lil Nas X concert in Roblox….along with 33M others.
And why not? When so much of our lives are entangled in the Internet that they are taking on a life of their own, does it still make sense to always have a stop over in the physical realm? Or is that now just slowing delivery and limiting what we can make?
As online realities evolve, clout will undoubtedly also evolve. But, we already seem far too invested in our digital personas to get rid of the importance behind how relevant we are, and how many followers we have.
What might change, though, is how we earn that clout. Luxury goods are expensive, and often not suited for daily wear. Food that tastes amazing doesn't always look great. And experiences that can happen online are not always possible offline. Why not get all of these directly for your avatar?
Nazarova points out: "Interestingly enough, most virtual clothing creators are not fashion designers by trade but are rather technologists and consumers who have ideas for what the future of fashion can be."
But even though new Web3 brands and tastemakers will always enter the space as Lil Nas X did on Twitter, Nazarova argues we shouldn’t sleep on already established brands, she argues. "Web2 brands can’t ignore digital fashion’s power to connect with millions of consumers through virtual experiences and designs."
We're just in the beginning of serving our online personas, our avatars, directly. But, this market, too, will take on a life of its own, to serve our digital double lives. It's just a matter of making sure that your brand — and product — are still relevant.
Mags Clarendon is a writer and editor. They've spent the last three years working in Web3, where they were given the opportunity as one of the first hires to build an educational startup. But, regardless of company or position, they've always maintained an avid interest in the social impact of the technologies behind Web3.
This article and all the information in it does not constitute financial advice. If you don’t want to invest money or time in Web3, you don’t have to. As always: Do your own research.
