Shoutout to @adamceresko for the clever “Time Capsule” title idea 👊. And much love to @clout_link for helping us with all the slick, shortened links to the issues!
It’s okay to say it. This is a safe place. BitClout has been a touch dead of late 💀. We’re confident things will heat up again when NFTs drop. Still, instead of our normal issue, we wanted to mix things up today.
What is the @BitsTODAY time capsule? Well, now that we’re 60+ issues deep, especially when you factor in all the special edition HEAT we’ve dropped over the past few weeks and months, we’re quickly becoming more than just a daily update on all things BitClout. We’re a repository of the early history of this platform, too. We might argue we’re one of the best books of record, besides of course the blockchain itself, of what it’s meant to be an early adopter of BitClout.
While this will let us do all kinds of cool sh*t in the long-term (@nvo pens a book on BitClout???), for now, we just want to have some fun. Let’s take a nostalgic look back at @BitsTODAY’s maiden voyage through the cloutiverse 🌌, running up to issue 020.
Without further ado, shall we get started with edition 001? These were the first words we EVER penned for you all:
“We know. Last night was rough. Your coin price is down. Bitclout won’t load. The re-clouting feature will never come. I guess that’s how it’s going to be out here. It’s the wild wild west. And I for one am here for it. With all this spirit and energy in mind, we bring you… BitsTODAY, a daily digest of the most far-out experiments, cool posts, general absurdity, and everything in between happening in the world of clout… rn. Let’s dive in 🐋.”
Read the issue: clout.link/001
Of course, we have @artz to thank for putting the call out into the ether for a daily BitClout digest. This is the post that started it all:
From there? A ragtag team of BitClout brothers assembled. And quickly realized the people wanted … MOAR. So we started publishing. Every day at first. Chronicling the trials, tribulations, as well as all the fun we were having on BitClout. As you can see from the intro text of our first edition (above the @artz post), there was a time long ago in a galaxy far away where reclouts weren’t even a thing yet 🔁 …
It was in that space and time that we got excited whenever the core dev team did even the ABSOLUTE minimum. Like adding pull to refresh to our feeds:
“Pull to refresh is here. As if BitClout wasn’t already addicting enough. Now the rapidity with which we can all collectively hammer the dopamine trigger has increased exponentially. Anyone setting up the 1–800 hotline for BitClout addiction?”
Read the issue: clout.link/002
What else did we do in those early days? We hunted. We gathered. And we marveled at the beautiful chaos that was (and is) the global feed…
@melodaysong summed it up well: “My global feed is like 2007 instagram and twitter had a baby.” We couldn’t have framed it better ourselves.
Read the issue: clout.link/005
… And we conducted interviews with rising stars ✨ BEFORE they were interviewed by boomer media outlets like the New Yorker (shoutout @Sigil!)
It’s about 4:50 am on the West Coast. I tweaked my back yesterday (not sure how, maybe just from hammering away at my keyboard writing @BitsTODAY too much), and I woke up in pain and couldn’t fall back asleep. “Oh well, might as well get started for the day” I thought to myself, as I gingerly rolled out of bed. When I popped out of the shower a while later, I saw that @sigil had not only accepted my discord request for the AMA, he’d actually pinged me:
“Wassup”
Read the issue: clout.link/005
We also made ridiculous inside jokes that only someone who spends all day on BitClout would understand 🐳🐳🐳:
“As @nvo pointed out, @BitsToday has spent a lot of time swimming with whale pods (*queues 10-hours of whale noises*). Today, we want to go deeper on the smaller fish, the up and comers, the ‘minnows’ if you will, on Planet Clout.”
Read the issue: clout.link/006
Of course, we met many of the amazing clouters we know call homies in the confines of our pages for the first time. Our first ever Friday Night Happy Hour was a ripe occasion for meeting some of ‘clouts finest. In fact, that’s where we were first turned on to @ClayPerryMusic!
Fellow perusers of the cloutgeist, welcome to the vibiest Friday HH🍻 on the interwebs.
Weary from a wild week? Eager to dive headfirst into the weekend? Why don’t you join us at the @BitsTODAY lounge? We’ve got a great patio out back and the best beers on the block(chain). Plus, we’re bumping the hottest track of the week (and the first big hit song all about BitClout, to our knowledge): Go listen to “BitClout” by @ClayPerryMusic
Read the issue: clout.link/008
Things definitely took a turn to the absurd at times. The rise of @Da5id and @r0nin was definitely one of those days. We watched with rapt awe (and were all too aware of our own mortality and relative poverty) as @Da5id ascended the ranks of top creators on BitClout mercilessly on that fateful April day:
“Well, Goliath (aka the top 10 creators list) wasn’t much of a match for @Da5id in this rendition of the story, either. And neither was @Craig, who quickly proposed an alliance with @Da5id rather than risk devastation…So who tf is @Da5id anyways? This has been the hottest goss on the BitClout block today (at least until @r0nin entered the chat; more on that later). As @Da5id surged into the top 10 creator list seemingly out of nowhere last night, clouters from all walks of life strapped on their tin foil hats to opine ad nauseam about who this mystery man… woman… robot (???) could possibly be.”
Read the issue: clout.link/010
Things weren’t always all bull’d up in the early days either 🐂. There’ve been plenty of times in which we worried about the staying power of the community. Probably so many times that you’ think we would have stopped freaking out every time DAUs drop a little bit by now (#perspective):
“We’ll just come out and say it… it’s been a bit quiet around here recently (*tumbleweed rolls by*). And looking at the above chart of daily creator growth, some might ask aloud “Are the wheels falling off this wild westward bound ‘Clout wagon?” Is this just a dip before we launch into the next phase of intergalactic growth? Or a proper dust bowl in new creator onboarding? Did @Da5id scare the shit out of people? We wouldn’t overreact just yet.”
Read the issue: clout.link/012
We’ve also been pretty damn prescient at times. Well, at least @nigeleccles has been… Not sure if you can say the same for the rest of the @BitsTODAY team, tbh:
Read the issue: clout.link/012
Along the way, we’ve been #blessed with some absurdly dope cover art. All 50 first covers are immortalized in our upcoming NF50; here’s one we just keep coming back to from @ArtStory:
While @BitsTODAY is basically a public good, we did run the first (and last.. for now..) sponsored section in Edition 015. A legendary BitClout OG graced our pages, not with his 🍑, but to promote the show that still lives on in our hearts, namely the BitCult Morning Show.
“Here it is. The moment you’ve all been waiting for (or dreading). We appreciate @connormitchell’s continued support and are pleased to partner with him on our first ever sponsored post in @BitsTODAY. And yes, we know everyone was expecting an ass pic. You can find that here too (*NSFW*). We promise @TheBitCult’s content is just as juicy ;)”
Read the issue: clout.link/015
While @lazynina may be our fav dev rn, we ‘stanned on everyone’s favorite AI-generated flame, @Maebeam, along the way. A lot. Perhaps too much? Maeby not enough?
“We’ll say it plainly — this week is going to be nucking futs with UX drops. Before our calendars turn to May, our attention will be with Mae this week. Our beloved mother has already told us she’s going to be dropping 🔥🥵 all week. Here’s to hoping we can keep up.”
Read the issue: clout.link/016
Across our first 020 editions, as you’d expect there were innumerable firsts. Since our early issues, we’ve seen BitClout meetups IRL in major mets like Miami, NYC, and LA. Before the @flickapp team took NYC by storm though? We got BitClout billboards in NYC while the pandemic still prevented us from meeting face to face:
“Further, following up on a story we first covered last week, we’re also excited to report that @MOGULMOGUL delivered on their promise to take out major ad space in Times Square. Today, we saw a splashy, dynamic ad reel go live at 48th and 7th that included BitClout branding as well as the account handles for @MOGULMOGUL’s top 5 creator coin investors.”
Most importantly, who would we be if we hadn’t been around breathlessly covering some of BitClout’s biggest moments? Anyone remember 💎💎💎s? Better yet, anyone remember life before 💎💎💎s? We barely can. Here’s part of what we had to say when we made it rain 💎s for the first time:
@Maebeam for one isn’t shying away from her prediction that diamonds may quickly render ‘likes’ on BitClout obsolete. With a default price denomination of $0.01 (you can send up to $836 with a 6 diamond), one wonders whether she’s right and likes will become little more than a lowly form of social interaction.
What say we, BitClout community? Still sending ❤️s? We for one basically always hit content we like with a nice one two punch of both likes and diamonds. 🥊
Read the issue: clout.link/020
Damn. We’ve covered a lot of ground. Someone send @nvo some diamonds for all this yeoman’s work on the typewriter. Starving artists need some 🥰 too.
What did we learn from taking a gander back at our first 020 editions? For one, we need to hire a copyeditor 😂.
Second thing we learned? @BitsTODAY is criminally undervalued… 👮
We kid, we kid (kind of). Most of all, we gained perspective on just how far BitClout has come in a short amount of time. Yes, there are countless creators, projects, and fads that didn’t last. No, not everything we subject our 🔬 to ended up being pivotal or even worth mentioning in passing two months down the road.
All that said, we do continue to see tremendous value in coming together a few times a week to share common narratives and discuss the experience of early adoption as a community. This will become especially salient if and when BitClout blooms in the larger public’s consciousness. Community is built on shared narratives, after all. Beyond the laughs, we hope @BitsTODAY has helped form this community issue by issue, offering clouters a place to come catch up and contribute to our understanding of … whatever tf is happening here. We’ll keep at it. 💪
We appreciate you for being a part of it. Sending endless love your way,
The @BitsTODAY boyz
