#47: The middle men of web3 and Wordle

Hi there, since I sent my last newsletter before the holidays Wordle has been the game to play. How I did today:

Wordle 215 5/6

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Check out the interview with the creator below. And if you’re looking for 💩Cool Shit, scroll down below!

💎 Word gems

Wordle founder Josh Wardle on going viral and what comes next (Techcrunch / Ingrid Lunden, Amanda Silberling)

There’s so much to love about Wordle, and its purity - only one word a day, no ads, no demands for payment to unlock a word. When it feels like everything on the web is trying to sell you something, or harvest your data the game is so refreshing. This Techcrunch article interviews the creator:

It’s not like I think that everyone needs to give away the things they create online for free, it was just that because that’s how I started this, it’s made it easier for me to continue it this way. I made something that felt really authentic to me, and now when people are asking like, “Do you want to monetize it? Why aren’t you doing X, Y and Z?”

It’s really easy for me to say… No, I was really happy with it when it was just my partner and me playing together. It’s really easy to get seduced by all that stuff, but I try and instead be like… I was happy then, and I think I’ll be happy in the future if that’s where it ends. If at the end of the day with Wordle, it’s just her and me playing again, I think I’ll be totally happy for that to be the outcome.

OpenSea, Web3, and Aggregation Theory (Stratechery / Ben Thompson)

One of my main questions about the utopian vision for a crypto-democratized web is how can there not be an intermediary? Ben Thompson’s aggregation theory is a great way of looking at the current tech giants - they dominate our attention (‘demand’). And with crypto the same trend is showing. There’s companies that own key parts of the crypto experience and right now OpenSea is a massive one.

In fact, what gives Aggregators their power is not their control of supply: they are not the only way to find websites, or to post your opinions online; rather, it is their control of demand. People are used to Google, or it is the default, so sites and advertisers don’t want to spend their time and money on alternatives; people want other people to see what they have to say, so they don’t want to risk writing a blog that no one reads, or spending time on a social network that because it lacks the network has no sense of social.

💩 Cool shit

Dojacode - A codable music video by Doja Cat and Girls Who Code. Edit HTML & CSS at certain points to customize the video.

Busy Simulator - A site that triggers all of those email and messaging notifications we hear at work. I feel my blood pressure rising the longer I leave this open.

Click to relax - This is simple. Get soothing water sounds in your browser. A nice follow-up from the previous link.

WebGL Water - More water! This one is an impressive webGL demo with realistic water.

Portmanteaur - A portmanteau generator.

Mobile Phone Museum - A simple, extensive archive of mobile phones.

Planet - Create and grow a world with this fun, simple little planet.

Play mini golf to see how politicians tilt elections using maps - A minigolf game by the Washington Post that teaches you about gerrymandering.

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