SOLSTICE, SO ROMANTIC

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Happy summer solstice, how romantic.

It feels like every platform is serving us some form of the overused starter pack. We’re thirsty for the next big meme in self-referential late stage signaling. Does onchain social solve this? Should you learn to DJ? Are Tabis a lagging cultural indicator? Let’s talk about it in the woods.

We can’t wait to hear W. David Marx’s take on FEST mainstage. He’s the author of Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change, and he shared the a few things he’s currently obsessing over. More below.

For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Checking In On Squad Wealth. Our latest editorial series investigates the future of digital <> cultural currency in a series of 5 essays authored by a leading cast of an economist, cultural theorist, product founder, early stage investor, and institutional executive. Subscribe to our pop-up newsletter to receive each essay directly in your inbox.

Steph (✿◉‿◉)🗡 + Greg ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ + Iz

P.S. Shout out to our shout out in Pathetic Fashion.

CHECKING IN ON SQUAD WEALTH

Friends With Benefits started in 2020 as an experiment in experimental money, an exploration into the dark corners of creativity, culture, and digital currency, with aims at rewarding the people who instigate and grow scenes from the ground up. Inspired by Other Internet’s Squad Wealth essay, we sought answers to the questions that had been whispered by culture producers in the 2010s— What would it look like to be financially rewarded for being early to viral trends and chart-toppers? How could the relationship between cultural capital and financial capital be drawn together? What did it mean to have a group chat with a shared bank account?

In the 3+ years since, FWB has seen many iterations of that experiment. We started an industry-defining FEST. We built a blockchain-enabled ticketing app. We supported 200+ cultural events online and around the globe. We almost bought a restaurant. At the heart of each of these projects, we stood by the notion that paying attention to culture and crypto pays off. Mythmaking creates and bestows value, and value valorizes and validates creative communities.

Through our next editorial series, we are investigating the path toward a blockchain-dominant future, where financial tools are intertwined with cultural narratives. Stewarding our efforts as Editor-In-Chief is economist Kyla Scanlon. In her work online, and in her recently published book In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work, Scanlon interrogates the ways in which we are dually entrapped and empowered by financial systems, and delivers no-nonsense reports of her findings.

Kyla is joined by a storied cast of eminent culture and finance experts Anna Gát, Austin Robey,  Gaby Goldberg, and Jose Fernandez da Ponte.

The editorial series will begin publishing next week, with a limited edition print zine available later this summer. Stay tuned.

Subscribe to Checking In On Squad Wealth to receive each essay directly to your inbox.

Deep and many thanks to our FEST host, Idyllwild Arts Academy

Nestled amidst the breathtakingly beautiful village of Idyllwild, high in the San Jacinto mountains of Southern California, the Idyllwild Arts campus serves as a peaceful respite for artists seeking to explore the depths of their creativity and join a broader creative collective through the Academy (an international boarding arts high school) or the Summer Program (an immersive arts camp for all ages).

_{Idyllwild Arts respectfully acknowledges the Qawishpa Cahuillangnah (also known as Cahuilla Band of Indians) and all nine sovereign Bands of Cahuilla people who have stewarded this land throughout the generations and continue to steward this land for all future generations.}