NFT startups hire “vibe managers” full time to lift the mood in the midst of cryptocurrency collapse | Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

Do not call it a collapse – it’s just a change of mood.

Since January, the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has been locked in a downward spiral, with sales on one popular platform falling to less than one-seventh of the top in January, and the buyer of the so-called “Mona Lisa”. of the digital world ”- a $ 2.9 million NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet – which was forced to sell for just $ 6,800.

To strengthen things, NFT projects have moved on to a new type of role: the Vibes boss.

Also known in some companies as a “Chief Vibes Officer” or “Director of Vibes”, the vibes manager is something of a cross between a marketer, influencer and investor relations officer, who has the task of promoting NFT projects to newcomers and at the same time reassure existing funders. The goal? To keep things positive, no matter what.

“Vibes are everything,” explained tropoFarmer, a 30-year-old Minnesota resident who was one of the first buyers of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs (one of the most hyped and expensive collections) and is a lawyer for vibes management. “There are ways you can swing trading based on the momentum that is mostly built on vibes.”

Among the first to hire a vibes director was an NFT startup called Fractional, Business Insider reported. The job went to an influencer named Deeze, whom a spokesman called “a super influential commentator and taster in the NFT room” and “the most public figure in the company along with the founder”.

Along with managing the company’s Twitter and Discord, Deeze also handles “collector relationships” and is the “internal ‘vibe checker’ for events and content,” the spokesman explained.

This type of work is crucial for an industry that hopes that the promise of social exclusivity will keep potential investors interested – and distract holders from the troubled market. During a recent NFT conference in New York, owners of Bored Ape NFTs gained access to a special concert series that included performances by Lil Baby, Timbaland and Haim.

“People there honestly could not give much of a shit” about the NFT market crash, tropoFarmer told the Guardian, “just because the mood at the festival was so high.”

Michael Jerome, a 20-year-old NFT investor, dropped out of college last year to shop and post full-time NFTs online, and was soon hired by a startup called Tally Labs to be their “director of vibes.” modeled after Deeze’s position.

“It’s obviously a bit of a scary title, maybe something you laugh at if you do not really understand it, but if I had to give it one word, I would say it’s marketing,” Jerome told the Guardian.

The job, which gives him a salary with full benefits, involves writing “hundreds” of posts a day on Twitter – where the vast majority of the NFT discussion is located. “I am the eyes and ears of society. I’m a full time employee, I work for the team, but before anything else I’m a proprietor and I’m just another ‘dough’ on Twitter who wants to make a quick flip and have fun, “said Jerome, using a high-risk slang term crypto-investors. “And I think that allows me to really be seen in our society as just another member and a friend.”

Over the years, blockchain investments such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies have built camaraderie around feverish optimism – expressed through the community’s distinct online argot. In the early days of the rise of bitcoin, users were bound by the price that went “to the moon”. That slogan has since been replaced by “WAGMI”, or “We’ll make it.” Investments, which are virtually unregulated, have seen wild price fluctuations over the years, driven by promises that the blockchain can solve all kinds of problems in the real world, from democratic collapse to poverty.

None of that benefit has materialized. And blockchain critics say there is a simple explanation for the current enthusiasm for vibe management: existing investors need new targets to stress.

“Many of these projects obviously require a constant influx of new suckers to support the prices of these tokens or NFTs or whatever the project is centered around,” said Molly White, a software engineer whose sarcastically named “web3 is doing well” website documents large cryptocurrencies in a rolling timeline.

“They add it to things like community, vibes and culture. But it’s hard to separate it from the fact that without new residents there is no project. It is this insidious armament of the idea of ​​community.”

Ed Zitron, a writer and publicist for technology companies, said that vibe managers were “something between an evangelical and a pure old deceiver … It’s making people feel good when they do not leave crypto, to feel good about to lose money, or at least think they are on the right side of history. ”

Jerome, Tally Labs’ vibes director, admitted that it was “a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of artificial marketing, a lot of hype-driven shit” that could cause prices to explode. But he said these things were “frustrating as a real builder and working with someone you think does real things”.

The startup has “massive” goals to expand the fictional universe around Bored Apes, including a novel with over 4,000 digital monkeys written by The Game author Neil Strauss, he said. But his real dream is to see the mass adoption of NFTs. “It’s going to take a lot of work to board a billion people, two billion people, three billion.”

Reaching that scale will require a lot of “welcome vibes” for potential NFT owners, which tropoFarmer says often faces “a large financial commitment”.

“I compare it to someone going into a bar for the first time, paying tens of thousands of dollars to get in. If they go in and no one recognizes them, it’s a failure. If they go in and people hug them, slap them on the ass, cheer on them, they will feel much more welcome.

“They’re going to be a much better participant in society, which will ultimately provide a lot more value for everyone and make it a better place to be.”