The stand-up comedy space presents an interesting case for the inclusion of NFT technology. As is with most performance art, an artists ability to earn is heavily dependent on ticket sales. This model leave the artist at the mercy of bookers/venues who also need their cut. This works fine if you’re someone people are already paying to see, but low attendance numbers can lead to situations where artists work for free because there is simply not enough to pay them. This paradigm inevitably forces working artists onto over saturated web 2.0 content creation platforms because their actual art, their jokes, have no real value.
Tokenized, collectible jokes could allow stand-up comedy artists to sell their product directly to fans, potentially turning a low audience turnout into an opportunity to cultivate a loyal fan base. A simple compliment like, “Hey, I really liked your ‘x’ joke” could be met not just with a “Thanks” or “Follow me on ‘social media site’” but with a, “Would you like to support me by buying one?”
Artists could always hold the original joke asset, while a smart contract interface would be written to dispense future “editions” of each joke. This could be further gamified to allow artists to compete among each others for the title of top seller, and buyers to compete for the title of top collector.
I originally tried to leverage some of the platforms on Ethereum to accomplish something similar; creating some simple NFTs for my own jokes, but i was unable to find something that felt like a fit and not a pain in the ass to try to onboard users onto.
Since the covid-19 outbreak, live performances are almost non-existent. Now more than ever, artists need more opportunities to earn safely and OWB seemed like a good opportunity to share my idea with a community I believe is positioning itself to be a major player in the NFT game.
@truzech this does sound interesting, but you’d need to find more ways to make the joke NFTs more valuable and useful than just collecting. Maybe users could combine them to create their own routines or something like that!
@truzech you have the whole Flow community! and you’re onto something here - writing, poetry, prose, jokes are all forms of work that people value and that are made more valuable when a community forms around them.
We don’t have to limit ourselves to tokenization. The value of a joke isnt the joke itself, it’s the response it generates from the audience (arguably more so than the other works I cited). Maybe the interesting thing here isn’t to expand on the joke but to create a joke and then pass it to your friends and the more passes it gets, the more revenue the creator gets (in blockchain, we usually think in fractions of cents but it’s not nothing!) and maybe young, aspiring joke tellers get the opportunity to bid on being added to the very popular, passed around joke for exposure (the two jokes are temporarily attached as a promotional thing)
I’m just spit balling - but the point is - the best ideas come from a place of “I would love something like…” “my friends would love something like…” and if jokes spawned that for you, keep running with it
visualizing jokes in just the token sense was shortsighted on my part. the real value comes from sharing, and as you said, the response you elicit. i got to thinking about an open-mic night app.
theres a serious lack of performance opportunities right now, and few options for work shopping new material other than traditional social media (of which i am not a fan). part of the fun of the open mic experience is the low-stakes opportunity for high value feedback from your peers and I think people are really hungry for that.
i imagine a micro-transaction based voting app sort of the way you described where users could create and manage their own virtual “clubs” with their peers and host virtual open mic nights. users in these communities could meet up and share their new material or vote/give feedback to each other. users would also have the opportunity to travel to other community’s “clubs” for extra feedback opportunities. i suppose there could also be a mint NFT option if it turns out to be something that the creator really values and would like to display on their profile.
it could obviously use some gamification and i’m gonna continue to think about it, but i appreciate you helping me dig a little deeper.
