Good ole planned obsolescence. You know what it is – you deal with it every day. It’s product ‘expiration’. And not just that – it’s a ‘manufactured’ product expiration. This means the product is built to expire on purpose.
Milk expire dates are real dates. Either you drink the milk before a certain time, or face certain death. Or close to it.
That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the time that one marketing person said to the CEO, “We’re out of ideas. The only thing we know to do to sell more is to make sure what were selling breaks.”
It Works A Couple Of Ways, But First, Think iPhone.
Sure, new iPhones come with all kinds of new bells and whistles. Technology that apparently takes years and years to develop and put in place. But the years spent on developing and putting these new technologies into place means that within less than one year, the technology is ‘outdated’ and old. Then the ‘new’ technology arrives.
I get it. We don’t want to wait for new technology. We want our technology now! Right now!!! Just give it to me! Whatever you have!!!
Companies know this.
Automobile companies can add any number of ‘features’ to a new vehicle any time they want. There’s probably thousands of ideas sitting on back-order. But do they? No. The marketing guys come in and says, “from our research it seems no other car company is releasing this yet, so if we just wait, we either will, or won’t, be the first.” And the bean-counter chimes up and says, “but if we wait, we can sell X amount of cars without it this year! And then release it, which means we can to sell X amount more!” And the CEO smiles.
The Second Way Is This: EVERYTHING is meant to break too.
20% more than the ‘lifetime’ guarantee – that’s my guess. Unless of course you’re a Dodge truck transmission, in which case, you’re extremely lucky to get those 72,000 miles (trust me, I know).
Everything is meant to break. The refrigerator, stove, microwave – even the TV. My roommate actually told me one time, ‘don’t leave the TV on, it has a lifespan”. Are you kidding me? It’s a TV. It’s meant to last a lifetime.
Bread will go bad on it’s own, and then create medicine. TV’s just die.
Enter NFTs and the Blockchain.
NFTs never die. There is no “expiration”. How would I know? Because once it’s on the blockchain, it’s in the blockchain, and the blockchain lives forever!
I’ll use the PFP Daily Advertising NFT as an example.
This NFT, the first of it’s kind ever, allows the owner to literally (literally meaning “in the real world”) secure advertising space in the NFT Daily Magazine for the first 3 months of the year.
What if someone doesn’t want to advertise in the magazine?
Well, then they own a super cool, first of it’s kind, 100% authentic NFT which they can then sell to others – if they wish.
The ‘utility’ may be missing (after the advertising submission cut-off date), but the NFT isn’t going anywhere.
Mission (not) Impossible
I’m thinking about the show Mission Impossible. “This message will self destruct in 5 minutes”. Pretty cool. But that’s the product world.
NFTs don’t self destruct. They don’t break. An NFT is an NFT, and all NFTs are perfect in their own way as the entire essence of an NFT is: it will always be one of a kind – even if there are 20 copies of the same thing!
Blockchain is the difference.
For example, I own an NFT from a 10,000 piece hand drawn collection. This collection has properties for 9,999 of the items, but for whatever reason, I found the only one that didn’t. Maybe they forgot to put them there. But I bought that one because I know, no matter how ‘rare’ any other piece in the collection is, there’s only one rarest of them all – the one with no properties listed on the blockchain. And it will remain that way, because I own it and they can’t ever go back and change it.
The blockchain is cool like that. Mistakes are immutable. Typos can be valuable, like finding a silver penny.
This is a lot different from what we all know in the consumer world. And truthfully, it makes the world a better place. It definitely makes NFTs a better place to spend money.
“Something that doesn’t break, breakdown, or destroy itself on purpose? AND has the potential to continually and forever rise in price by it’s very nature of being on the blockchain and immutable?”
Yeah, sign me up.
I’ve wasted enough money on TV’s, couches that wear out, phones, bicycles – you name it. Stuff.
And while we’re talk about NFTs …
You know what else doesn’t exist in NFTs and blockchain? It’s called shrinkage. Not the kind of shrinkage you have from sitting in the swimming pool – the kind where inflation is at such rates that companies decide to ‘cheat’ you out of things.
The normally 14 oz bag of chips suddenly becomes 12 oz. The 1,000 sheet 2-ply roll of toilet paper now has 690. You don’t realize you’re getting a lot less for the same price. “I always pay $2.99 for these, they must be the one’s”. Yeah.
Maybe that’s an entire post on it’s own. But that post will say, “there is no shrinkage in NFTs and blockchain.” What you’re offered is what you get and there’s no changing anything once you own it!
The roommate:
Oh, and the roommate I was telling you about? Of course he has a storage unit he’s paying for to ‘keep’ all his broke stuff that, one day, “he’ll fix and sell’.
Forgetaboutit.
Buy NFTs. Not stuff that ends up in storage because of planned obsolescence. Or at a garage sale, dumping your cheaply made stuff on other people.
Make money. Not garage sale items.
