Identity debt, nihilism and finding meaning in the multiverse
This article is the first in our Signals Series, where we’ll dive deep to investigate a single idea we’re seeing emerge in our discord — looking at its past, its present, and the futures we believe have potential to unfold moving forward. In Reporting from RADAR, we just scratch the surface of emerging constellations. Here, once a month, we’ll explore those connections in greater detail and unpack the patterns we’re observing that give color, shape, and texture to what’s next.
Written by @aarenarchive and edited by @oryzae, contributors at RADAR
Signals: #multiverse, #nihilism, #identity-R&D
Curators: @victoriafutures, @keels223, @lostwithliv, @luiz otra vez, @aarenarchive
One, or many?
Ideas of the multiverse seem inescapable in today’s pop culture. There’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s string of blockbusters, critically acclaimed shows like Undone, and 2022’s indie darling Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
Each story takes a different lens to the concept and consequences of a multiverse, but the audiences who eagerly consume this content may find similarities within the characters — each yearns for a situation different to the one they’re in. What is it about these themes that are so attractive to us? We’re starting to dig deeper and explore what might be driving this emerging trend.
The multiverse isn’t simply a media trope; there’s real (albeit theoretical) science behind it. In Michio Kaku’s overview on the multiverse for the New York Times, he breaks down the theories that have led scientists to question if thousands of minutely variable worlds could exist, just like ours. Calling back to Einstein’s foundational work in our understanding of the world, Kaku contrasts the grandiosity of relativity with the minuscule details examined through quantum theory. One can’t be understood without the other.
We can’t help but see parallels.
The issues faced by society over the last few years have felt so big, inescapable and overwhelming. The multiverse, in contrast, reinforces just how small we are. We can see how this drives our fascination with it.
Identity interoperability
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, lockdowns meant we spent nearly every waking hour in our homes. Many sought to escape online from their newly limited, mundane realities.
No matter how you prefer to express yourself online, your presence naturally takes different forms as you explore and switch between platforms. From the inadvertent, like swapping skins within video games, to the intentional, like tweeting from an anonymous account; it’s easy to explore and manufacture multiple identities online.
At the onboarding and exit of each platform, we create what we’re calling identity debt. A part of your identity is owed to the platform in the form of your account and data, and they loan it to you in exchange for the platform’s use. We’re seeing a parallel emerge in the Web3 space too, through self-custodial cryptocurrency wallets and their central role in building on-chain identity.
Crypto wallets have the potential to create an even more exaggerated expression of identity debt, where many users have a hot wallet, a cold wallet, and different wallets for each blockchain they transact on. Each holds different currencies, NFTs, POAPs, trading history and more. We imagine these wallets as akin to a Harry Potter horcrux - pieces of fractionalized identities that are splintered, and in the case of soulbound tokens, unable to be reunited to one central space.
From platform-based identity debt to the fracturing of digital self through crypto wallets, our online personas have us simultaneously living as digital variants across slightly different timelines. What might this begin to remind us of? A multiverse, of course.
Beyond identity debt
In this fractured self, it’s important to not only consider the implications of multi-platform identity, but multiple metaverses, universes, and timelines. And in these we open up an entirely new set of trends and signals to shed light on finding meaning in the multiverse.
TikTok trends probe these ideas with viral videos exploring the mind-warping possibilities of 3D beings in a 5D world and speculating on timeline hopping as CERN turns back on their atom-smashing hadron collider.
And it’s not just fantastical imagining on social media - journalists and scientists are increasingly engaged with these ideas - as an astrophysics professor in Australia put it in a recent article: “The many-worlds theory says any time there’s a 50-50 chance of anything and there is a bifurcation, both outcomes did occur, and you just found yourself on one of those paths, but an alternative you continued on the other path.”
But could it be a dangerous mindset to imagine a world that may have been, fueled by our adoption of different identities across multiple ‘universes?’ In the metaverse or otherwise, how are we to derive uniform meaning in the many worlds in which we live?
A road to… nowhere?
One perspective is that we’re seeing a rise in ideas of nothingness and apathy take hold. We are faced with an endless grasp for meaning from a multiverse of experiences, where no meaning is derived in a single life if there are so many lives lived at once. As the New York Times put it in their excellent How Nothingness Became Everything We Wanted, we’re leaning in on “obsession with absence, the intentional erasure of self and surroundings.”
Much of the world appears to be in a similar holding pattern, as we wait for the seemingly never-ending pandemic to abate, interest rates and inflation to stabilize and the bull market to start again. The effects these have on our shared reality is a fertile ground for existential crises.
We’re not alone in our observations of nihilism either. Drew Austin of Dirt writes how nihilism has replaced the values previously upheld as important to some communities and the objects that make up our identities “can all be worn like a costume and then discarded.”
Pitchfork’s Jayson Greene writes that these difficult times have created a cultural moment of disassociation inspired by depression memes on social media, being trapped in “late capitalism” and an “impulse [...] to obscure meaning, to flatten affect, and to don expressive masks.”
It feels like the adoption of PFP (profile picture) NFTs might be a nod to the costume and masks, as yet another tool to obscure meaning within our multiverse of fragmented identity.
On our radar
What are we to make of all of this? At RADAR, we’re not sure yet. The web of signals that intertwines multiverse media to metaverse avatars, philosophies of nihilism, and many more signals is just beginning to emerge.
We’re keeping our eye on this space, particularly attuned to the way people engage across platforms in emerging technology and media, and the philosophies and meaning-making frameworks that are taking hold.
Will we find solace in these ideas of the multiverse, helping us reconcile the fractured feelings created by our digital lives? Or will we be driven to conclusions that nothing matters, because how could it in a world of infinite possibilities we can disappear into?
We’ll be watching…