Web3 Galaxy Brain 🌌🧠

Nicholas: Welcome to Web3 Galaxy Brain. My name is Nicholas. Each week, I sit down with some of the brightest people building Web3 to talk about what they're working on right now. In May of 2022, the Truth NFT studio secretly released the Goblin Town generative PFP NFT collection on Ethereum. As the crypto bull market turned into a bear, goblins and the meme of going goblin mode took crypto Twitter by storm. In my mind, Goblin Town is most identified with a surprising and creative new use of Twitter spaces for NFT community building. During Goblin Town spaces, a short clip of clanging dungeon inspired music plays on loop in the background, while a cast of volunteer voice actors sourced ad hoc from the Twitter spaces audience put on their best goblin character voices. These unscripted participatory improv comedy happenings felt truly new. Goblin Town spaces regularly reached thousands of concurrent listeners and tens of thousands would tune into each episode. On this episode of Galaxy Brain, I'm joined by Alci, Truth's director of vibes and the original instigator of the Goblin Twitter spaces, and four real life goblins, iMiller, Ice Cream Sandwich, Dr. Grobbler, and John McApody. We discuss the origins of the unique Goblin Spaces culture and its connection with performance art and voice acting. This is a wonderfully unusual episode of Galaxy Brain. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. A note to listeners and goblins alike, after recording the show, I found a recording of the May 29th, 2022 edition of Goblin Town spaces that I ripped from Twitter and uploaded to our weave. A link to that file is in the show notes. For people who maybe don't know what the heck we're doing, Web3 Galaxy Brain is the show I do every Friday afternoon, interviewing people who are building in the Web3 space, crypto space, usually Ethereum. And I really just am interested in talking to people who are doing something for real hands on themselves. And today I'm very lucky to have a gaggle of goblins from Goblin Town universe. And I'll see the community coordinator, I don't know exactly what your title is, but one of the original people who curated and created this emergent phenomenon that is the Goblin Town set of creatures and characters and the Twitter spaces that I think everyone enjoyed last year. I certainly did. And I was looking on Etherscan earlier, and the original Goblin Town contract was deployed on May 19th, 2022. That's about eight months ago. ETH was at $2,000. And I think we were just sort of settling into a bear market and Goblin Town arrived at just the right time to kind of summarize and create a forum for people to express that. I'm curious how all of you think about Goblin Town and also talk to some of the goblins in character. So yeah, thank you all for coming today.

Allsee: Thanks. I can introduce myself. People do ask me what my title is. And it's a lot of different weird things. I just kind of go by director of vibes. But it's really like social media management, strategy, community management, IRL stuff. Anytime it involves interacting with people and performance and storytelling, I'm kind of right there. But we'll talk about the goblins. That's my intro. Go ahead.

Jon Macapodi: Who's got it? Is it me? It's me. Go for it.

Nicholas: Go for it.

Jon Macapodi: Thanks for having us here. My name is John McApody. Yeah, I got into Goblin Town pretty shortly after Mint. And there was just something that I guess was really struck a nerve with me creatively speaking. I'm just part of the community and I've been sort of telling stories that form in my head through various characters in Goblin Town. As far as any role I have, I'm part of the G Weekly show with Ice Cream Sandwich and I Miller here, my two compatriots. My role there is generally running audio stuff for the live broadcast and then also coming up with just some goblin commercials, which are a very fun part of our bi-weekly show. So yeah, that's what I do.

i_miller00: G Weekly would be nothing without John McApody.

Nicholas: Awesome.

i_miller00: My name is Dime Miller and I was just a lowly dishwasher at the once infamous McGoblin Burger when someone slipped me a bit of very important and timely information and I decided I would share it with everybody and it took like

Allsee: a hot cup of piss

i_miller00: to Goblin Town. And so I figured we should share more of the news more frequently. And so GTN was kind enough to hire me on. and then Goblin Town Weekly assembled. and here we are bi-monthly. And I do mean bi. Hello, I'm Ice Cream Sandwich.

Nicholas: You know, like the goblin.

i_miller00: I'm here. I was kind of got into Goblin Town first day and just had a whole lot of love and love the creativity and the community. And that's why I'm here. And I like to piss on the floor and they welcome that.

Allsee: So that's why I'm here.

Nicholas: You found your people. Awesome. Well, I'm super glad to have all of you here. And if there's anyone else who drops in who's been a part of the community for a long time, please feel free to request and we'll bring you up.

Doktur Grobler: I sort of dropped in.

Nicholas: Would you like to introduce yourself?

Doktur Grobler: Yes, I was feeling shy, but my name is Dr. Gobbler. I'm from the Goblins at the Goblin Town. And yeah, Goblins, we're very poor communities. There are many people that are anti-communities these days. My job is I'm the therapist of the Goblin Town. So there's a lot of people with kind of screwed up brains and we kind of work through problems. And I host a sort of improv comedy kind of psychological space for people to talk to each other.

Nicholas: Well, welcome, Dr. Therapist.

Doktur Grobler: Oh, thank you.

Jon Macapodi: Dr. Gobbler is Goblin Town's one doctor. So he's kind of a catch all. Yeah. For any medical needs you might have or psychological, he kind of takes care of all of it.

Doktur Grobler: Yeah, or if one of your toes feel weird, lots of people have toe problems.

Allsee: It is a huge part of like why. So

Nicholas: I'm not an actor, but

i_miller00: I will break

Allsee: in any situation. So I, one of the biggest problems that I had to deal with when we were doing our original spaces before we were doxxed was like trying to stay completely silent while everyone was making some of the best jokes I've ever heard in my life. Just like crying quietly because I had a hot mic because I was running the space. And so it's just like, yeah, it's so good. It's so good.

Nicholas: Incredible. Would it be worth talking a little bit just to set up how the collection came together and some of that mystery in the early days leading up to the original Twitter spaces?

Allsee: Yeah, absolutely. So Goblin Town was born from the brain of AJT. He is a big fan of doing really crazy, weird things. And our other co-founder, Cesar Curiama, he was a time hacker, is all about mischief on the blockchain. And then the artist and other co-founder, Process Gray, is all about bringing weirdness into reality with his art. And so the idea stemmed from down, down to Goblin Town, which was this huge sort of crypto anthem going on when everyone was sort of panicking a little bit about the market. And then AJT brought up the Lord of the Rings, which this is a great time to mention that I've never seen Lord of the Rings and I've never actually listened to the song. I know, right? Crazy. There's this big sort of down, down to Goblin Town song, and it was kind of turning into like an anthem and crypto and Web3 Twitter. And so that was sort of the inspiration behind the collection. It was like a quick little like, we're going to do something really fun because we love mischief. The sort of whole company that we, it's like a collective, but it's called Truth Labs. And so our first Genesis project was Illuminati NFT. But then we kind of always wanted to keep doing more and continue telling a bigger story than pyramids in a secret society, because that you can tell a lot, but it has to be secret. So you got to find other ways to get people excited about stuff. And so with that, we're like, OK, our first idea of mischief on the blockchain is going to be coming out with a totally anonymous Goblin project. And I think everyone knows that like we did not expect this to blow up in the way that it did. We kind of had the plan where we were going to be like, all right, we're going to put this out, like we'll give it the weekend. And then because I think we put it out on like a Friday at 8 p.m. I remember we were like, OK, it's got to be really late because like Goblin hours. And so we put it out. It was a free mint. We all the team were not allowed to mint until like a thousand actual like mints went through because no one could know that it was us. And then obviously sold out super fast. The weekend happened and we were like, OK, well, this is a real thing now. And then we kind of started the ball rolling on like how we could start telling the story and expanding it and making it really match the level of community excitement because it was everyone sort of around us that was really inspiring. When I did the original. So because we were undocs anonymous, there were not a lot of things that we could do in terms of like talking to people or like telling them what was going on. And so I kind of started using the main Goblin Twitter account to communicate with this teeny tiny font. And it had a character. When I look at the PFP that's down there, like I look at him and I think of what his voice sounds like. And that's kind of how I imagine he speaks when I'm like tweeting as him. But we started creating this Goblin character. And then through that, we're like, all right, great. I'm going to have a Twitter space because that's what you do in Web 3. But I can't talk to anyone. So we're going to play this music, which Bruce, our like Swiss Army creative man, content, just genius made. We're going to just put that on loop and we're going to see what happens, which is funny because there's so many breadcrumbs. But like previously, so Bruce and I make a lot of puzzles for the Secret Society, Illuminati, NFT. And earlier we had done this Twitter space where on a loop we had played an audio recording and it was a puzzle. And it was on a Twitter space and you had to decipher the puzzle. I like to be a little bit cruel with some of these puzzles. And I'm like, OK, I'm not going to post the audio because then it'll be super easy to find out what it's saying. So I'm going to put it on Twitter space, which means people have to actively listen to it to try and solve it. And so I was kind of doing something similar with that where it's not a puzzle, but I'm going to put up an open space. No one's going to talk. We're just going to see what happens. Right. It's a little bit of like a psychological experiment.

Nicholas: That's a clue for the puzzle that you were creating. that got you to do these listening to an audio clip on loop bases in the first place.

Allsee: Yeah, so that was the original. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, I had no plans when I put up the space. I was going to put up the space. I put on the music. I was like, we're just going to kind of see what happens. If no one talks after 30 minutes, I'll close the space and people will be like, man, what was going on? But every move that we made, someone in the community made another move and we would sort of take a look at that, digest it and then like adapt and move with that. So I would have to have to give him a shout out because he was the first goblin that came up and he came up on the space. He requested I accepted him and I was like, all right, what is this person going to say? And he started making a goblin voice and I was like, OK, that's what we're going to do now.

Jon Macapodi: He's the patient zero of this delusion we have of goblin voices. So thank you, cold. Yeah.

Allsee: From there, a lot of like. what I think is really exciting about this element of community brain melding is that like if one person does something that other people feel very comfortable doing it as well. And so one person came up and made a goblin voice. And so then other people felt comfortable coming up and making goblin voices. And then it was really cool to come up and make goblin voices and everyone wanted to do it. Right. And so it kind of kept adapting from there. And I don't even remember how long that one Twitter space was, but I was really genuinely shocked because when it had ended, I looked at the recording the next day. And by the way, I was so upset to find out that even though you record Twitter spaces, they like wipe their servers. So like they're actually gone, which is upsetting. I know. I thought they were saved forever, but it's fine. The number of people that had attended or listened was like around 50,000, which I could not believe. But it was insane to me. And that's when people started writing about it, these articles. And then it was like, OK, so this is a huge thing now. Right. And I started doing these spaces all the time. And what would end up happening was that, again, I'm not talking at all. Right. A lot of people, I think, think that like the team was going up and down and talking in goblin voices. No, not at all. It was me quietly behind this hot mic sitting, trying not to pee my pants laughing. And I started strategically like listening and paying attention to some of these. I'm going to call them actors, voice actors, whether they call themselves actors or not. Every goblin who participates is an actor at this point. But I started sort of listening to them and picking up on the fact like you feel really comfortable on stage. You're telling really good jokes. You're really working well with these other people. And so I would make sure that those people would always sort of have a seat up on these limited 10 seat Twitter spaces. But then I would sort of have some like staples that were always up there. And I have to give a shout out to you to I Miller, because in the beginning I just was obsessed with your goblin voice. You have this ability to scream, but not loudly. And it's so specific. And I don't know how to explain it. But like that was what like that stuck out to me so clearly. And I was like, this is amazing. I need to make sure that whenever he's in the audience, he's up on stage. And so I would try to like rotate and give other people a chance. But yeah, stuff like that. I mean, it was it was amazing. And you know, these characters were born. And like, I can't take credit for any of like the characters that people have created because it was all them. And that's why when we did docs, one of the big things that we kind of wanted to make sure that everyone knew was that like, you know, we're not Goblin Town. Everyone else is right. Everyone else has created these goblin characters. They've created this goblin world with us. And that's something that I think is absolutely incredible.

Nicholas: I don't know what that's talking about. So good. Before we go too far, what is goblin culture? Because obviously there is something that was embedded in the imagery and in your initial use of like typography in the Twitter that established this kind of voice. I guess we all have some idea what a goblin sounds like, but I couldn't tell you, you know, what it's a caricature of exactly where the influence comes from. Do any of you have a sense of what is goblin culture? What unites all goblins?

Allsee: I want everyone else to answer this. Go for it, guys.

Nicholas: Zero.

i_miller00: Zero is the great unifying factor here. We're still on the quest to get there. We all have faith that eventually we will crash land into the dark side of the moon and celebrate once and for all. In the great land of zero. Yeah, I mean, you basically just took the words out of my mouth.

Nicholas: I have nothing else to say.

Jon Macapodi: I agree with you in terms of like, I think there's a general idea that everyone has that goblins are tricksters, are kind of gross, they're kind of gurgly, how they deliver things. So I think everyone's sort of starting from that base point, but just as naturally as everyone has different voices, whenever they get into that mischievous, gurgly, troublemaker part of their vocal register, it just comes across so differently. Yeah, it's like, it's hard to define what a goblin voice is, but you know exactly what it is when you hear it.

Allsee: Yeah, and everyone does have one. They just have to find it like deep inside. And sometimes it sounds like Yoda. Sometimes it sounds like Dobby. You know, sometimes it comes from somewhere else, but everyone has it. You kind of have to like, at least for me, I didn't find it immediately. I had to like think about it and then like work towards it. And whenever I do my goblin voice, I have to like, it's like a running start. Like I find the voice while I'm talking, which is very funny. But it's something that I always took a lot of care in. was it obviously like with Goblin Town, the thing that's really just amazing for me is that, you know, we've kind of created this decentralized society, which is a lot of buzzwords. But basically, you know, this community has decided how they want to build and live. And these are characters and we're telling a story, but like, we're not the ones telling the story. Everyone is telling the story with us. And I think that that's really beautiful. And there are some like principles that I try to make sure that, you know, people are aware of. Like goblins can be playfully violent, but they're not like going to go out and like hurt somebody with menace, right? Like goblins are genuinely friendly, kind, very accepting. Immediately people, when they think of goblins, they think of greed. The word goblin mode, which was the word of the year, the definition was perfect except the word greed, which I was a little upset about. But something that our goblins, they don't have is greed. We are not greedy at all. For two seconds, I'll get super serious. But there has been in the past a lot of interesting and unfortunate depictions that are very anti-Semitic when people think about goblins. And I think that that was something that I was really conscious of and wanted to make sure that that was never, ever going to be the case here. Like, obviously our goblins aren't drawn that way. But if anyone like attempted to lean towards that, that was always something that I was really not going to accept. And our goblins, like, don't really, they don't care about currency, right? They're not trying to be rich. It's the opposite of that. Goblins don't want to be rich. They want to go to zero. They want to be in the bottom. They're happy down there. That's the whole point. So I think stuff like that was really important to me. But everything else, it was sort of like piss on the floor. That wasn't something that like I birthed. That was the community. The community has come up with their anthems and their catchphrases and how they live and how they speak and what they talk about.

Nicholas: It seems like goblin culture is maybe an antidote a little bit. At the time, obviously, the market had started to fall off after this extremely exuberant phase. So there was this goblin mode and all this stuff and Goblin Town really emerged right at the perfect time for taking that opportunity and turning it into a culture and a phenomenon. But it also seems like it's an alternative to and an opposite to. I agree with you. It is kind of friendly and welcoming, despite having none of the hallmarks of fake, opium toxicity, positivity that is so common in the space. And so it's like gross and awful and in a way difficult to listen to. Obviously, it's pleasurable to listen to, too, but not in the stereotypical way that most things try to be polished and appear like completely inoffensive. Instead, this is like welcoming and playful, but from going towards the grime.

Allsee: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Macapodi: Yeah, it's finding camaraderie in the shared grief and pain of a horrible bear market versus trying to paint it pretty. It's just sort of acknowledging we're kind of in a crappy spot and finding the humor in that and finding camaraderie in that.

Nicholas: Yeah, Dr. Grabler as a therapist.

Allsee: I know, I was going to say, grab a talk.

Nicholas: Yeah, what do you think?

Doktur Grobler: Oh, yeah, people's brains are not always in the best place these days. I think that you're saying the word unpolished is a good word to say. That makes sense to me.

i_miller00: You know, goblins found their place at the moment that always up, never down revealed its true self. The rug culture of the crypto bros and the landscape of the monkeys and the silly birbs.

Allsee: Are you reading a poem right now? It sounds like it.

Doktur Grobler: It sounds like you wrote this down and that you're reciting like a haiku or something.

i_miller00: You know, it's just so deeply ingrained in my psyche and through the terrible ups and downs of this market. But, you know, the goblins represent, we are the antithesis. Every teeter-totter needs two rights to play. So we're the direct opposite descendants of, say, the monkeys, right? We are the opposite of the yuga of the monkey. And so the way I see it is that our birth into NFT and into the crypto space gave pure, true balance to this whole cockamamie scheme of financial return or the hope thereof. So now that that's been established, well, we'll always be around. We'll always be here to set straight the pendulum, if you will.

Doktur Grobler: We've always been kind of thinking different a little bit. Like, other people think one way and then we are thinking like a totally different way. And as the Goblin Therapist, my job is to think the opposite of that, too. So I'm kind of like the opposite of the opposite, you know? We're just trying to keep people on their toes.

Nicholas: Speaking of Lord of the Rings before, I recently watched The Hobbit series for the first time, the three movies. And it's interesting that the goblins, the typical depictions are. so, you know, obviously the characters in the light are the ones that we're supposed to admire and attempt to be like. But actually, goblin culture seems much more fun. And I think one element of this that really does seem opposed to the apes and company is that y'all have a very popular Twitter spaces and community where there's a lot of creativity coming directly from the community, from the audience. It's not artificial. It's not top-down programmed. And it's not entirely about speculating on tokens. In fact, it's very little about that, or if any at all. I'm curious, like, maybe we can go a little further through the creation of the Twitter spaces. So you start the Twitter space with this music loop, which is inviting people to sort of play out their goblin characters. People start developing things, little characters. What happens next?

Allsee: Yeah, so,

Nicholas: well,

Allsee: something that I think was always really, whether it was intentional or not, or it ended up just kind

Nicholas: of happening was

Allsee: kind of really beautiful to see was that when you get people in sort of a room and Twitter spaces are essentially rooms, right, you know, there are panels, there's listeners, you're in a room together. When people are sort of in a room together and they're speaking together and they're making these jokes about things that are usually somewhat taboo. Piss or farts, things that are a little bit crude. You're talking about something that is making you slightly vulnerable. It's just like a little hair of, like, you're not going to normally say this, right, you know, at work or in front of your normal friends or your mom or whatever. Maybe you do, but it's something that puts you in a different sort of position that you would normally be in. And once you have that vulnerability, you start to actually feel more comfortable being yourself and you start to really get to know people around you. And so, early on with these characters and the people that started participating and the legends that have been here since day one, they're genuine friends now and this is a genuine community of people who have bonded over something that is about them, right? It's not about an actual NFT or about a token or about anything like that. It's about who you are as a person. And so, that was something that once you peel back the shell of being this crypto I mean, you said already, the crypto bro that you always win, right? Once that's gone, once that facade is gone, you can actually be yourself and actually really start to, I don't know, grow as a community, which is something that I take super seriously and I find that that's really where you can succeed is when you actually have people that genuinely want to be a part of something because it makes them feel like they're found, right? They've found their people. You know, I noticed early on that these people who have really found themselves in Goblin Town started going above and beyond by creating their own characters, right? And this was when iMiller started. G Weekly was, for us, the team out of nowhere, right? We're doing our stuff. I've created some of these side characters that I play around with and then all of a sudden I see iMiller start posting these little Twitter spaces that the way you did them was really just so. funny is that you would use them like a news bulletin where you would run a Twitter space for like a minute or something, no one would come up but it would be you just delivering news and from there it's grown so much. but yeah, I'm gonna make you talk about it iMiller, because like, this is why when you messaged me to sort of talk about the performance art of Goblin Town and everything, like, I mean I can talk about this forever. but also it doesn't really matter as much, what I have to say. it matters what the actual, the actors and the community brands have to say because it's just as much of their story as it is mine, so go ahead iMiller tell them.

i_miller00: Commoner mode activated.

Jon Macapodi: Hey, yeah This is a very rare occurrence by the way, so enjoy it folks, enjoy it.

Nicholas: Oh my gosh, we're lucky, okay.

i_miller00: Thanks to Scott Commoners, the great Harvard professor, we have this technology which allows me to sound like one of you, Nicholas.

Nicholas: So, uh, here I am.

Jon Macapodi: Wow, it's like, in clear states like you speak English normally Goblins don't know how it works but we just know how to hit the on button, so that's all we got.

i_miller00: Hopefully the batteries last at least a couple of minutes here. It rarely does It's true. Okay, we're good. Yeah, thanks, I'll see. In the beginning, the first one like, it came as a lightning strike to me, I was actually taking a shit and I had this great thought that we need updates we need news, we need nudes actually, and so I decided to send the nudes. I sketched it out, I

Allsee: very

i_miller00: hap dash slap dash, 30 second little rant of a news bulletin and update and I was very excited, I was shaking and just excited to get it out there see what would happen, and so I ran that very first one and it was just too much fun. it was too much fun to create this notion of something deeper a more enriched landscape inside this world of Goblin Town and so, I was just super inspired.

Nicholas: Had you ever done improv comedy or anything like that?

i_miller00: I've done a lot of stuff in my existence as a human and yeah, so I've got experience in performance art so to speak but not in this way, it was something new for me, but something I'd always wanted to do. at the same time, I've done a lot of voice performance and what not. this was a chance to use my actual self my goblin self which I've identified with since I was a very young goblin, and so the project was just so inspiring from the very beginning to me because it felt like that place that I fit. like I was saying before. this is very antithetical to the rest of the space that I've been participating in up until the point that Goblin Town launched and it felt like the right place to use my true voice and identity, but the goal quickly changed from doing a very short news update for the community into doing a full-fledged weekly or what not regular program that could unlock more narrative for the rest of the community and so I started originally talking with Dadmod I don't know if Dad's here on this call, but we started talking about how it could be built and how we could dive deeper into the culture of NYCNFT and the idea continued to blossom from there. and then of course the natural players aligned and assimilated and now we have this amazing cast of correspondents. and yeah, it's been an amazing ride and we've got a lot of plans for this upcoming year and the team proper has been so supportive and has helped nurture us along the way and included us in a lot of fun things. and I know that's going to continue to grow as well and we're just very excited to have everybody's support.

Nicholas: and to bring you the nudes and the show format, I listened to a little bit of one of the recorded episodes recently, it's quite extensive, it's a long show, are the segments pre-recorded or are people performing live?

i_miller00: Yeah, so it's actually started as a pre-recorded show. originally I did them live when it was just myself but when we approached adding more correspondents in different segments we wanted to make sure that it delivered well and so we started with a pre-recorded edited show and that went on for I think about seven or eight episodes I could be wrong all the way through the Great Cabbage episode and then we kind of ran into time constraints. not only did the market start to really capitulate but all I can think of when I say that word is Shill and Villain. by the way these buzzwords have been connected to these personas in crypto land now. so but anyhow continue to capitulate, many of us have juggled so many different IRL responsibilities aside from Web 3 of course and so we decided to just try one live and that was really the spirit of the thing from the beginning. anyhow and as you know BASSIS really is driven by the spirit of being live and being here with each other and feeling that energy and presence. It's thrilling to now have the program be majority of a live performance and thanks to John McApody we have this great product that happens along with the live components. Just really thrilling to be at the point we're at.

Nicholas: Dadmarsh just came in.

Jon Macapodi: There he is.

Allsee: I'm gonna try and find a commercial and pin it. Hold on, go for it.

Jon Macapodi: I actually have my soundboard loaded up if we're open to hearing one. I don't want to take up the time with that commercial.

Allsee: Yeah, no, please do it.

Jon Macapodi: I also want to pin the cabbage.

Nicholas: Quick commercial break right now.

Jon Macapodi: We'll do a commercial and then one of our G Weekly stingers, alright?

Nicholas: Let's do it. Come on down to the grand reopening of the new used Toyota dealership. You've got the best deals in all of Gobletop. But I've got bad credit. Don't give a f**k. I've got no credit. Don't give a f**k.

Allsee: I just took a piss in the backseat of that 96 Camry.

Nicholas: You get a discount.

Allsee: Take the Gobletown exit off Route 69. Head east on

Jon Macapodi: Polka Face Avenue

Dad Mod: just

Nicholas: past the fall down

Allsee: bridge.

Nicholas: Look out for bus fans. You've got the best deals in all of Gobletown, guaranteed.

i_miller00: If you

Jon Macapodi: find a better deal anywhere

Nicholas: else we'll take a

Allsee: f**k on your

Nicholas: mother's face.

Allsee: Absolutely free.

Nicholas: These deals will last forever. so don't miss it.

Jon Macapodi: Don't touch the dial. You're listening to Gobletown Weekly part of the GTN network.

Nicholas: Awesome.

Jon Macapodi: Like, come on. Would I get out of that? Like, I love just the idea of just for a moment Gobletown being a real place where you're on the road in a car and you hear this commercial. come on and it's not something you're like actively listening to but it's in the background and it just sells that experience of being down, down in Gobletown. And what would that look like? Are there retail places here? What would they be trying to sell me in Gobletown? Yeah, that's a big driving force. I think in sort of the creative stuff I do is what would it be like to experience the day-to-day life in Gobletown?

i_miller00: John is so amazingly talented and I can't remember what the first post was that you made, John, that was in line with the news. I don't even know if it had to do with Gobletown Weekly but what was that first one?

Jon Macapodi: It may have been Grobler Clinic Brain Pills. It may have been that. I don't remember now.

i_miller00: When John started launching materials ad materials and materials in general, it was like I knew for sure like he had to be part of GTN. We all knew that and he's just so amazing. He's just so inspiring and part of the reason that I'm able to keep going personally.

Allsee: Ah, Shucksmailer, you're too nice.

Nicholas: Talking sweet to me like that.

Allsee: We should talk about Dr. Grobler too.

i_miller00: You're a fucking whore.

Doktur Grobler: Oh. Yeah, go ahead.

i_miller00: Are we all supposed to be pissing, Doctor? I just, I don't know.

Doktur Grobler: You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to be pissing. You don't have to.

i_miller00: I've been holding it since your last space. No, don't do that!

Allsee: It's okay, Icecream. You can pee. It's okay.

Doktur Grobler: Did you know that it is proven that it's harder to make decisions when you don't pee?

i_miller00: I need you, Doctor. You've been so far away.

Doktur Grobler: Yeah, I'm very far away.

Allsee: So, Dr. Grobler was born from people being even more depressed than they already could have been in crypto because there was Goblin Town and then there was Below Goblin Town. And the idea was to kind of have you know, with performance and theatre and then art and all of that you always have to evolve a little bit and adapt similar to how G Weekly evolved from the original space that I Miller did to what it is now. We had in the beginning these sort of just open-ended Twitter spaces where we would come on, we'd play the music and then anyone could come up and sort of. it was like an open mic, essentially. And so you have to evolve a little bit and adapt and as that goes on you know, maybe the people who come up aren't as funny as they were before not the same people, but new people, maybe it's just not vibing or whatever and people just get bored by the same thing. So, we're thinking okay, we're going to need a character that you can actually interact with on a one-to-one level where you can sort of and again going back to what John mentioned was experiencing what it would be like to be in Goblin Town. Like, all of this is all real, right? This is a real place, we're all really here, we're all really talking to goblins. And so, that was sort of how Dr. Grobber was born, right? He's a therapist, he's the only doctor in Goblin Town and you can talk to him about any of your problems and he might actually really solve them or he might make them worse. But again, it goes back to that vulnerability where like you're in a room talking to someone about, you know, something that's making you upset or your problems and that kind of peels away that layer again where now you're an actual person. Like, you are who you are. You could be playing a character but deep down you're actually connecting with this person and having a real performance with that. Go ahead, Doc, you can say it better than I can for sure.

Doktur Grobler: Oh yeah, I can be so articulate right now. Yeah, go for it, do it. Yeah, this is just like, so the Dr. Grobber space is, it's mostly a space for other people. I'm just really there to give them the mic and encourage them to tell me their secrets and maybe make a space where it's okay to be a little embarrassing because it's not like the spaces are recorded except for sometimes that's a hundred percent are. So yeah, I just like to create kinds of like a vibe where people can come in and just start screaming. I think that there's a collective thing. that's all life that has ever lived. There's a connecting scene which is that we are all in great pain and I think that there's generally like a great scream that you know, you could be a part of. Like right now everyone could just scream and you sometimes need a person like a little guy that's a little goblin that is telling you to scream because otherwise you keep it all on the inside of your body and then you start to notice really bad changes.

Nicholas: Should we take a second and everybody screams at the same time?

i_miller00: We can do that.

Allsee: Although I caution you that my goblin voice, when she screams all the glass in your house will break.

Nicholas: I think we've threatened it. now everybody better unmute and scream. All right 3, 2, 1 Screaming.

Allsee: She's good at this Right? Very therapeutic thank you doctor.

Doktur Grobler: And also I need to have a place where people can squeeze me and that is primarily is a function of the CRP. for me is that, uh, otherwise nobody wants to hang out with Dr. Grobbler, so it's good to make a space where people are forced inside the room with me, where I could get my military to hit me with a stick, but in a friendly way.

i_miller00: I don't know if I can speak to the stick in my Scamander mod voice.

Allsee: You can turn it off.

i_miller00: I'm very conflicted right now.

Nicholas: Have you figured out how to turn that thing off?

i_miller00: This is an existential crisis I'm having. Getting thick in my brain cloud. Scamander mod off.

Allsee: Um, so you want the stick, doctor?

i_miller00: Oh no, not the stick! Anything but the stick!

Doktur Grobler: Oh, okay. You're hitting my toes? That feels very different.

i_miller00: Just a quick one.

Doktur Grobler: Okay, thank you. It has been a while.

Nicholas: We've talked a little bit about this Goblin Town network. Maybe could you explain a little bit about the structure or how? Oh, they captured me!

i_miller00: We free you, doctor!

Allsee: Now you can have all the birds!

Nicholas: So Goblin Town network is lifting up creators in the community and goblins in the community to create their own shows. How does it work?

Jon Macapodi: Well, Miller gets his Scamander mod on here. I think the goal with GTN as a network is to sort of have different platforms for maybe different creators or different types of entertainment to sort of just fall under one umbrella quote-unquote brand. Even if you think about the idea of a Goblin Town news network, TV network, entertainment network, it's just continuing to sell the fantasy of being an actual Goblin Town. So yeah, G Weekly falls under the GTN umbrella and hopefully in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later, we come up with some other programming for the goblins.

i_miller00: And this one, I want to... John hit it right. John hit the nail right on the head. I couldn't say it better myself.

Allsee: It's true. I want to talk about the Cabbage, which is like GTN adjacent. Please. But it was something that I'm so impressed with and in love with. And it's something that I just have the greatest amount of admiration for. And I want to see so much more of this in the future. But...

Jon Macapodi: Can I preface this real quick? I'll see. Yes, yes, go for it. So Nicholas, one thing I'll say is that one of my favorite things about Goblin Town is that the creative process is like this positive feedback loop between the team and the art they make and the things they produce, how the community responds to it, the wild batshit ideas that come out of that, and then how the team responds to that. And so this whole Cabbage thing was just sort of an extension of that philosophy of a positive creative feedback loop between Goblin Town team proper and the community. So go ahead, I'll see.

Allsee: I mean, it's something that, again, like going back to the fact that like the community kind of writes the story with us. I think the term is asynchronous stick, right? Like we're all working on our story together and it just all works together so wonderfully because we've done a really good job by building a foundation. that Goblin Town is kind of fair game. Anything can happen. Like if someone starts spinning off the character, we're like, great, let's follow this character. Where are we going with it? What can we do with it? And so this is what sort of happened with character Ricky Burflaps, who is the owner of Gobmart, which is a chain of supermarkets. And Ricky came around Halloween this past year. Again, out of nowhere, out of the blue. I always love to see when a new account pops up and I'm like, all right, this is going to be something very exciting. But there was, I think all the spaces are still up there and the finale is on YouTube if anyone wants to catch it. Over the course of the month, you would sort of get to know this character, Ricky, and these spaces were put on where it was literally just supermarket simulator. It was really wonderfully orchestrated audio of supermarkets. You would have these announcements that would come on, like, you know, clean up on all three. And then people would go up on the space and they would just act like they were in a supermarket, which was amazing and so fun. And then at the end of that space, it would run, everyone would get muted and you would hear the character, Ricky burp flaps, kind of talk about some nefarious things going on in the background because he doesn't know what Twitter is. He's a little bit of a boomer. It sort of came to be where this whole story was like. he had been kidnapping goblins and had this idea to sacrifice them to this giant cabbage in vain to the Charlie Brown, you know, the giant pumpkin. But this was a giant animatronic cabbage. So there were these like supermarket simulator spaces. And then there was the the Gob Mart festival space where it was like an old fashioned, like, like a carnival. And so you'd have like carnival noise in the background. And then what really blew me away was that, you know, this is all like, in a way, like dinner theater, because you show up and then you're participating and you're like, sort of agreeing to go along with whatever happens. And then there's this whole story being told around you and you're just kind of being led down this path. And so in this one space that I just like is so incredible. I love it so much. You know, Ricky was there, he was introducing everyone to the giant animatronic cabbage. And then you could actually communicate with the cabbage. And it was amazing, like voice modulation, where the cabbage was speaking back to you. It was orchestrated so well. And it was the type of production value that like, I could not be convinced that the people who are really working on the performance art aspect of Goblin Town have not been doing this their entire lives. Like, there is no way that there is like a new skill here, but you know, it's something that just continues to blow me away. And I love it. And I want to see so much more of it. And it just makes me smile every day.

Jon Macapodi: One little tidbit about the cabbage thing too, was that the thought of cabbage was actually just something someone in the community made up. It was janked, I think. I don't know if he's in here. But he just spread this, we call it a trumer, a Goblin Town trumer, that they were getting airdropped cabbage or something like that. Just some like absurd baseless rumor. And it just sort of caught on. And then us as a GTN squad, we latched onto it as well. And so we fleshed it out into. what is the cabbage? You know, is it an analogy to the great pumpkin? What would that look like in Goblin Town if we had a Halloween narrative that took place in Goblin Town? Yeah, it was like from the bottom to the top in terms of just collaborative effort to sort of make October happen in Goblin Town.

Nicholas: You mentioned like dinner theater and things like that. It reminds me a little bit of, I spent a little time observing Roblox experiences and games people play. And there's like a very sophisticated experience on Roblox where you can simulate being at airports all over the world. And there's, I guess, children and maybe adults too. But I think especially younger people pretending to work at the airports in Roblox. I see here I was looking at the Ricky burp flaps, Twitter and subsequent to the cabbage legend of the great cabbage event. There's this tweet. I'd like to express my deepest regrets for any actions I may have taken during fugue states induced by Grobler clinic. brain pills does not reflect who I am nor my dedication to serving the needs of fine folks in Goblin Town at any cost. I will make it right in the great image of Ricky in a hospital bed covered in blood. Actually, we got dad mod up. I don't know if dad, you wanted to add anything in on this.

Doktur Grobler: Yes, dad.

Allsee: And then Veronica too.

Dad Mod: Well, how are we doing? Goblinos, you know, it's just dad bought here trolling through the airport here in Atlanta. Sorry, I got stuck away there for a minute. I had to go to the tram system, which looked very similar to Goblin Town and smelled exactly like piss.

Nicholas: Well, welcome. Thanks for coming through dad. Which you're part of G Weekly, is that right?

Dad Mod: Yes, that is correct.

Nicholas: Do you handle a specific segment there? or just in general, you're involved?

Dad Mod: You know, they call me a serious investor type. I, you know, focus in on the cryptos and the trading of various things. And I just want to make sure the fellow Goblinos have a really good insight if they're going to invest their Internet coins into something fucking stupid.

Nicholas: Awesome. Veronica, welcome. You're involved in GTN also?

Allsee: Yes, I am. I'm a CEO of that bitch, actually.

Nicholas: Sick.

Jon Macapodi: She's our corporate overlord.

Allsee: Sorry, I had to come in that way. On a more serious note, I'm dad's wife and we, you know, met Miller in New York and the Goblin team in New York. And we had a great time, really connected, just everyone's so creative and so driven. And so like all the creative juices were flowing. And it's not a part of my personality that I get to tap into very often. Being around Ian for four days straight, it was like, oh my god, I mean, it was such a great fucking time. And he was such a source of inspiration, as was the rest of the team. As we were talking of developing the show, I absolutely like put my hand up. Can I please be in? I want to be involved. And that was how I got in.

i_miller00: Dominimod on.

Nicholas: Please go for it.

i_miller00: I got to chime in just because. to go back to the point in the conversation where I was mentioning how dad and I really early on were talking about how to expand. And it was actually his initial idea to create that umbrella GTN network that G Weekly would fall underneath. And of course, you know, that made perfect sense that we would have a Veronica. Veronica was saying, or mom mod, maybe I should call you saying like, oh, we had such an amazing time meeting in New York. And it was my first time doing any kind of IRL engagement with anybody in the space. And it was so inspiring. And and they're just great people. Everybody in the space are just great people. And it was just so inspiring. And and so it was really the conversations and the engagement with dad and that that led to the further building of this all. And yeah, and bringing ice cream and cold, who I don't think is on with us here today, but cold and ice cream and Gary P, of course, which I wish Gary was here originally. That was the original cohort. And then, you know, just expanded from there. But just amazing friends. And if it wasn't for obviously for the people, then we wouldn't be here today having this conversation. It would be wrong if I didn't activate Scamander mod to talk to these things, speak to these things as myself, myself, because it's why we're here. And my heart is overflowing in this space with you all.

Doktur Grobler: So yeah, if you stayed in character, it could be rather disingenuous.

Nicholas: Oh, so what is it about you and this community that because so many NFT projects and so many just all the culture of Web three, there's so much talk about creativity and giving artists new technology to enable them. But the reality is that most of the projects are not really doing that. They're really just scams or pump and dump kind of operations. What is it about Goblin Town and this environment that has brought you together and created a space where you're able to be creative? I don't think it's something that's really been replicated, even though elements of what you've done have been sort of echoed in other projects. I really don't think the same level of creative, collaborative energy has been created. So what is it that makes this project in this community so different?

Allsee: I mean, I really think it goes back to that vulnerability of like letting yourself be weird, right? Like there's other communities out there where people can be weird and maybe they're like a little too weird in the wrong way or whatever. But in general, it's sort of like just being able to be yourself and finding people that you really absolutely mesh with about things that are, again, like not related to Web three or an NFT or a token or anything like that. And it's really funny because I think you were in the space with Poof the other day where he was sort of asking, like, what can a medium mean in art when it's like very specifically blockchain related, right? And so I think what's really interesting about Goblin Town is that at the root of it, it's not about Web three. It's about people. But then we get to use Web three as a tool. And so that I think is the difference where it's not about the project. It's not about the NFT. It's about the people who are around it. And then they use that as a tool to tell their story and really just kind of show the world who they are as a person. But that's how I see it. I don't know if you guys agree.

Nicholas: Yeah, Veronica, what do you think?

Allsee: I'll speak directly to my involvement with GTN and the G Weekly team with this. The creative juices and energy that are tapped in there and the challenge for me in particular that I like get to do the winners and losers segment on the show. And it allows me to be able to tell a story and not just in a very straight, make a white paper type of way. But I have to challenge myself to be able to tell a narrative through a character and relate it back to an audience that's going to be engaging and interesting and want to hear more. So it's like you and you have to see the arc up. So it continues episode after episode. I mean, it just challenges you on such different levels. And it's really been a shit ton of fun.

Nicholas: Awesome. I feel if there's anybody else in the crowd, any goblins that want to speak to their experience, either goblins or human goblins with translators, please feel free to request because I feel like there's. what seems to make this community so special is that the nature of the art and the timing of the release and the situation the market was been and has been in has allowed for the facade to crack and for it to create an opportunity for real creativity. So if anybody else would like to speak to that, please come up.

Dad Mod: I don't mind saying a thing or two if you'll have me without the goblin voice. I think it's very interesting, right? What you just hit on in terms of the timing and the mechanisms and all that kind of fun stuff. I see that very similar to a billboard grabs your attention. You're like, hey, I've never seen something like that before. Like, let's go see what's going on. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. Now we go. We're going to go check out this place. Cool. We sit in the parking lot. We're going to go inside and you see another thing. And then you have your first interactions with the community or spaces or with the people on the team, et cetera. That's a whole different level of experience. And then something different happens from my perspective. And what you end up finding is because of those mechanisms, right? Because of that pathway, because of the, I don't give a shit what the normal conventions of this space are. We're going to rewrite the book because of all those things you're allowed to. And it almost opens up the door to be able to explore those creative natures and those creative thoughts in a much different way, in a more welcoming way, in a less, well, you have to pay X number of dollars in order to be part of the club type of thing. It's just, I don't know. For me, it was just way different having that mentality initially of no roadmap. We're going to goblin town. We're going to zero, all that kind of fun stuff. And then all of the space LARPing and everything else that went on, it just tapped into something weird, like to what Alci said, and something very natural and almost childlike, but in a very good way, right? Not like an immature or sophomoric way, just in a very genuine, I guess, maybe would be the best way that I could put it. And for somebody who works with very serious people all day, it's a really, really good creative outlet and almost a form of therapy.

Doktur Grobler: And I can thank you, doctor, for something like that.

Allsee: Oh, yeah, you're super welcome.

Dad Mod: Awesome.

Nicholas: I think the other thing that I noticed about the project and the community is that, or what it plays honestly, that other projects don't. is that so much of web3, crypto, NFTs, et cetera, the projects are actually performance art also. They just don't realize it, or at least they've internalized the logic so deeply that they don't recognize that the vaporware visions they sell of the future are themselves just theatrical performances for essentially the crypto Twitter audience and to a lesser extent, like TikTok and Reddit, et cetera. And Goblin Town is a critique of that in an exaggerated form of it. that is also by its very nature, a critique of the stuff that is less cognizant of what it is. So it's kind of the thinking goblins, Goblin Town or something like that. Does that resonate?

Doktur Grobler: Why did you have us explain things? That was so much better.

Nicholas: That's why I have you all on here to confirm my suspicions. But I'm curious, are there any other projects or even more interestingly, like any other improvisational comedy, performance theater, interactive fiction? Is there anything that you're interested in outside of Goblin Town or has informed how you think about or how you perform in this space?

Dad Mod: I can say yes for me. And actually Goblin Town was the derivation of this and not just Goblin Town, but G Weekly initially and having this friendship with Miller. He's just such a genuine person, as I'm sure you all have grown to see. And he just wants to see the best for you. Veronica and I have started Web3 sketch comedy, SNL type thing where it's like all commerce. Right. Because I think, you know, we do really good goblin voices. Right. And I think honestly, sometimes people get intimidated by it. I can't tell you how many times we've gone into like a serious space, like an actual serious space. And people are like, oh, do your goblin voice. I'm like, God damn it. We're supposed to be talking about this or that or whatever. And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, please just do your goblin voice. I'm like, dance for me, Derek. Okay, just say it. Like, just say you want me to dance. Extend you at that point. We started this like troop that all comers are welcome. Like. it's not community centric whatsoever, but it's just an opportunity, much like Goblin Town and G Weekly and GTN to just have this opportunity to explore things. I mean, I'm not going to sing in this space, but it used to be an okay vocalist and haven't done that in like 20 years. And this kind of brought that back out. I wouldn't feel comfortable. I don't think. And I wouldn't have the confidence or wouldn't be able to support to be able to explore that again if it weren't for this group. that for me, you know, a little bit personal or whatever. But it's nice.

Allsee: So, dad, quickly, I'm just going to take you back off of that because you opened the door. I know maybe we're getting a little serious with this, but Ian, I got to give you the flowers on that. You just that was because of you. Like you just sparked that in us. Like, I didn't even know I had it. Like, just thank you. Like, thank you. Genuinely.

i_miller00: Just doing what I do. And so if has had any positive impact for anyone and thank you for saying so. It just it keeps me going, just like everybody else. I need the inspiration. I need the energy to keep doing what I do personally myself. And it would be a myth to not recognize some of the other amazing spaces that have happened along the way and that come and go. One of those was the Goblin Town community space that Callie Sue and Debo held for a long time. Very consistently and with a lot of very positive impact on the entirety of the Goblin Town community provided a space that continued on where the original space is left off. Very sad that it's not as consistent as it used to be. I know we all benefited from being able to jump into that space and use just our pure goblin selves as the king intended us to be heard and interact with each other. So I hope that those spaces continue to happen whenever they are possible. But yeah, there's been so many great creative antics that have come out of this project and I know it's going to continue to happen. And I think Debo is actually here with us in the audience and a great voice and a great person and those spaces are missed.

Allsee: I think that's something that's really so great too is like. I hope that we do and I'm pretty sure we do is we sort of have an open door where like anyone can do something with Goblin Town, right? Like we're CC0. And even aside from that, one of the big parts of early Goblin Town spaces was that anyone could participate whether you owned a goblin or not. And so I hope that everyone sort of feels in a way that if they want to do something with Goblin Town, do it, right? Like we're here to support you. I will absolutely be there and show up to anything that you do. that's Goblin Town related. I'll give you the retweets. I'll give you the likes, all of it. Like I love seeing people be creative with these characters and it can be something super tiny. It can be a huge production, whatever it is. I just want to see it. It makes me so happy. I'm Miller has done like in-person performances and he used to do actual like costumed performances on we call them the unhangout with co-founder Taub, where you would just come on his platform called upstream. It's kind of like a video platform, but there's like a chat going and you were just there in the gob hole. Gonna bartend or a bar back, whatever the, I don't know about bar.

i_miller00: So much. I love doing the video antics actually. And I hope to do more of that. It's so much fun to put it on and to be there to give that. as Dadmon spoke to the, you know, like the enrichment of the world. And as John spoke to John was speaking to that first, I think, but the enrichment of this Goblin Town is being a real place that we do go to and we do live in a lot of the time. I very much look forward to the, also the expansion of Goblin Town into IRL as the project goes forward and the team goes forward and the market comes roaring back whenever that happens, probably 25, but I'm not financial advice. I do look forward to meeting everyone in real life in Goblin Town, in the real Goblin Town as we take over this God forsaken planet.

Nicholas: Actually, it does make me want to ask the question cause I'm kind of surprised or like impressed that, and maybe I don't understand the nature of truth, the company or whatever it is. It's not a flash in the pan thing. There really is support for the community building out the narrative long-term and still being involved. It's not something that's going away. So I'm curious, is there two things? Is that really what truth is about? Is about creating these interactive fiction universes or rather than just the straight NFT drop? Second of all, is there an idea that people might be able to make a living participating in the Goblinverse?

Allsee: So I can speak to a little bit of all of it. So truth is the umbrella for our secret society, for Goblin Town, for the 187. We have a couple of different collections, but what it is in reality is it's this huge overarching story that I think AJT likes to compare it to Marvel where there's all these different pockets of characters that come together into this one giant universe. And so as we tell our story, certain parts will be like Goblin Town, for example, zero, you can come, you can do anything. Anyone can kind of play around here. We have other things. There's a goblin in this other collection called the 187, which is 187, basically one of ones. And each of them has their own universe and they're all intertwined with each other. And then the secret society, Illuminati, NFT is related into that as well. But it's sort of this giant place where we're all artists for the most part. Well, everyone's an artist in my eyes, but everyone who's on the team is an artist in their own way. And so we all have very interesting backgrounds where we want to make sure that we're always going to be telling an interesting story and integrating different parts of whether it's Web 2 artistry, right? Like whether it's someone who in Web 2 has been making vinyl figures forever, and now we want to make a vinyl figure of a Grumple, right? Let's bring in that Web 2 person that's never had a chance to actually make something this big, right? Whether it's doing that with vendors or something like that, or doing stuff with like artists where we brought on the goblin therapist and we had him perform in person in Miami doing the actual therapy with people, whether it's that or whether it's creating like a TV show or any of these other things, right? Like all we're trying to do is sort of tell a story in any way that we can. And I think the best way to tell a story is to include the people watching. Like that's something that I think makes Web 3 very different than Web 2, because when you're telling a Web 2 story, you're sitting there and you're watching it. But when you're telling a Web 3 story, you can actually participate and you can actually help write it. And I would say that like, for me at least, that's like the one sentence like pitch for truth is that we want to tell a story, but we want to make sure that everyone can kind of tell it with us.

Jon Macapodi: Yeah. If I could say something about that, something that Wireless said, who's listening right now, shout out to Wireless. She said that really resonated with me was that her favorite part of being in Goblin Town is this idea that you could just ever so slightly nudge the timeline and make Goblin Town go into this alternate universe. You know what I mean? Just ever so slightly with something you post, something you say, something you create that the community responds to, that the team responds to. I mean, I think of the birth of my Goblin Burger, right? I think of what happened with the cabbages. I think of all these little side characters that are popping up and forming that get very incorporated into the Goblin Town universe. As a creative, as a creator, it's like, it's so satisfying to know that the thing that I love and really cherish and care about so deeply that I have a little voice in it, but I can just nudge that timeline towards slightly different direction. You know, it's being really involved in that creative process.

Allsee: It's true. So the whole like my Goblin Burger thing, right, that was part entropy down there and part community, right? People were joking about burgers. We started joking about burgers and then we're like, all right, guys, shit, we're going to do stuff with burgers. And so we just sort of spiraled off of that. And that was not something that we had planned. I'm really bad with time, but imagine we came up with Goblin Town a month ago, right? That wasn't something that we had planned like two months ago, right? That was something that happened in the moment. And it happened because there was this passion and energy going on in the community that we were really inspired by. And that's going to continue to happen. It's really funny. We have these like weekly DAO calls from the Illuminati NFT. And just today, AJT was saying that the best way to see something happen is just to constantly talk about it. If there's something going on that you're really passionate about, like with Cabbage or, you know, with Piss Research, which is Goblin version of ISS research up in space, it's a Goblin version of it. If we just keep talking about it, eventually something's going to happen. I don't know if you can say that about any other community or projects on Web3.

Nicholas: It seems like it's very cognizant. I'm drawn to compare to Brud's Lil Miquela character, which is like for people who don't know a 3D avatar Instagram influencer who basically has like a virtual face stitched onto a human actor's body and models clothes and has a kind of virtual influencer life on Instagram. But that project feels very top down. You know, there's this back room of a company that manages the character and they partner with Dolce & Gabbana or whatever. Whereas this community and the nature of the kind of narrative you're telling seems to, I don't want to say monetize because I don't think that's really the thrust of it, but create a collection, something that is tradable, but around community narrative building that's much more open-ended. Given that it's CC0, there's also the opportunity for anybody to create whatever they want and if they want to try and sell that or do whatever they want. So it seems to me like very native to the reality of like crypto Twitter, for instance, rather than like a more traditional corporate approach to creating a character that is proprietary information. that's like in the case of Lil Miquela is like racially optimized for a modern media market in a way that some people might think is cynical. Whereas this is much more like embracing the creativity of the crowd. Also, you made the comparison to Marvel, also unlike Marvel in the sense that while there's, I'm sure fanfic and things in the Marvel universe, again, it's quite a top down narrative. Whereas here you're really embracing what good ideas are repeated inside of the community and lifting them up and encouraging people to continue and explore them further. It's very cool.

Allsee: Yeah. I mean, even like just this past week, there's a new character that's sort of risen up from the depths, Monk the Goblin, who has made some appearances on G Weekly as a daytime Emmy award-winning Goblin actor who was in a movie with Scarlett Johansson. You know, now he has a Twitter account. Now he's working on another show, but Secret Society is exposed. Right. And so now he's connecting back over to our original Genesis project, the Illuminati NFT. Right. So it's all kind of intertwined and it's something where it's like, I can't like stress enough. I just love seeing people create. Like that's all I want to do is watch people create. It's so good.

Nicholas: Well, I've come to the end of the list of my questions, but I'm sure there's other topics we haven't covered. that would be from y'all. I'm especially curious about other kinds of interactive fiction that maybe you've interacted with or found exciting. Is there any references that jump out as having influenced your interest in this kind of thing?

Allsee: Skam and Armad off.

i_miller00: Um, there really is nothing outside of Goblin Town that's ever interested me in the least bit. And so I personally, I have to run. I need to clean up the gob hole before we open tonight, as usual. So I love you all. We'll see you next time on G Weekly. Thanks to all you G Weekly folks for being on here and chiming in. And Nicholas, you've been just a peach of a hooman. I'll see you. Thanks for having me. I'll see you later.

Jon Macapodi: Take care, boss.

Nicholas: Thanks for coming through.

Allsee: I can say there's not like a specific other IP that I would find relates to Goblin Town in that way. But I guess I can just kind of look at it like I come from a film background. And so when I try to like, take a look at these stories and how they're told and how everyone is sort of playing a part and being an actor, I kind of look at it from that behind the camera lens. Like as a director thinking about like, okay, how can we cast this character in this story? You know, do we need a new character to kind of fill in this gap here? Or, you know, do I need a new voice actor to kind of help me flesh out how this character sounds? Things like that, which I think is somewhat unique in that I've seen people like role play on Twitter spaces before. And even way back, I wasn't a part of this. I wasn't Web3 born yet. But I guess like, you know, Bored Apes were on Clubhouse and pretended to be monkeys. That I think is a different type of like role play, right? Like. I see that as role play. I see this as storytelling. And so that's kind of like how I see it in the vein that I look at. But in terms of like comparisons, I got to agree with I Miller. I don't have any.

Nicholas: I almost feel like Monty Python or something like. I'm sure there's tons of references for this kind of humorous acting, but something about the tone of it reminds me of Monty Python a little bit. I guess with the Bored Ape, I didn't participate in any of those spaces. But my sense was the characters weren't so deep. It was more just about monkey noises. Whereas here, there's quite a lot of depth.

Allsee: Yeah, you know, it's really funny. They just dropped the trailer today to maybe like Mel Brooks. Maybe that feels like a huge inspiration if that would be the case. But the vibes, the vibes are there for sure.

Dad Mod: I think a lot of it has to do with like the whole CC Zero narrative in general, right? Like that's not. well, that's not a new idea or thought. I think the approach to it here is just like a little bit different than what I've seen in other places. And I think that's what will be very interesting from my perspective to see how people turn that and take it and run with it. If you look at the majority of other projects, especially anything IP related, the holder of any token within this like web three environment relies on that central team, a couple of key people in order to continue to drive that narrative or create hype cycles or to airdrop things of value, et cetera, et cetera. And you don't play any type of role except for digesting whatever they think is best. And Goblin Town and there's other CC Zero projects that do that just differently. It's like, hey, you want to see something? Go do it. Right? Like literally no one is stopping you. G Weekly, it was like, hey, we're just going to do it. GTN, hey, we're going to do it. It's all on the individual. So there's the theme, the narrative that will continue on forward within the truth realm. But at the same time, there is nothing stopping you from capitalizing on whatever you want to do except for your lack of doing it. So I think that needs to be something that people understand as well, that we have some creative man, like reach out to a couple of folks who might be interested as well and go out and do it. Just do it. Start somewhere, anywhere. And I think Goblin Town has done a good job of pushing that out of people.

Nicholas: I'm thankful for it. Yeah, definitely. You mentioned other, you know, CC0 not necessarily being the first CC0 project. To me, I don't know if it was actually the first, but it was certainly the first to really plant a flag in it, announce it being CC0. But it's funny because I saw an ad for their, I guess it's they're doing a float and a parade or something. And their characters have no character, actually. I don't know a single character from that universe. Couldn't tell you what the attitude or personality is of any nouns despite the size of their treasury. So it's being CC0 is not enough. It sounds like it's a combination of, which is no, I mean, no slight on them. They have other values, but it sounds like it's a combination of both being this kind of CC0 universe with a strong character, you know, set of characters or ethos built into the collection as well as lucky timing about when it was put out. Just catalyzing this meme of Goblin Town and etc. But also people like I Miller who are creating the creative environment where people feel empowered to actually play these roles. Not just they have the opportunity if they want to embody the characters in the collection, but instead there's a creative steward. In fact, the way you speak about I Miller, it sounds to me a lot like the kind of the credit people give to tech founders and things like this, where they have sort of a unique personality, charisma and ability to bring things out in other people. It sounds like I Miller and I'm sure other people in the community also are really that kind of X factor that just CC0 or just the Goblin theme or just the specifics of the art and the mysterious drop alone would not have facilitated that same kind of environment. And also genius gestures like the music in the Twitter space, which I think really bowled me over when I first heard it. I thought it was so genius.

Allsee: Yeah, I mean, it's something where like you can sort of go to the moon and back and talk about how, you know, all the pieces were here, right? We set everything up and we gave people a space to kind of be themselves and do everything. But like at the end of the day, it is up to like the community and the people, if they feel passionate enough about it to participate or if they feel inspired enough about it to actually create something. And it really just the phrase lightning in a bottle is so cringy and so cliche. But in a lot of ways, it does feel like that's what it is, because we could have done everything exactly the same from our end. And then maybe you guys weren't online that day. There's just so much that kind of just happened that came together in a beautiful way that we couldn't have done it without the community. No way.

Nicholas: Awesome. Well, I guess we're coming up on an hour and a half. This has been a wonderful conversation. I've learned a lot and I really appreciate this love fest over the environment that the collection and the community has created. It's been very interesting and beautiful. Thank you all for coming through.

Allsee: Thanks for having us. And I pinned for everyone in the audience, too. There's two spaces coming up, Goblin Town related. There's the next G Weekly episode, which is going to be Wednesday, the 18th at 10 p.m. ET. And then there's the next therapy space on the 24th at 9 p.m. ET. So if you like what you hear, always been a goblin. If you're new, if you just want to hang out, come to listen both of those.

Nicholas: I'll definitely be there.

Jon Macapodi: Come on down to Goblin Town, Nicholas. We'll welcome you. Nicholas. With open arms.

Nicholas: Oh, yeah. I'm going to have to work on my voice.

Allsee: Hey, there you go. That's a really good start.

i_miller00: That's a really good start. That's a really good start. Let's hear it, Nicholas.

Nicholas: All right. Thank you all for coming to Web3 Galaxy Brain this week. Recording again every Friday, 5 p.m. ET, 2200 UTC with similar kind of conversations. So if you enjoyed this, please do come through. You can listen to the recorded episodes. This podcast episode will be up next week on Web3 Galaxy Brain dot com. If you want to hear it again or check out some other people have been on. Had a lot of great guests. And this is one of my favorite episodes so far. So thank you all for coming.

Jon Macapodi: Thank you, Nicholas.

Doktur Grobler: Thanks for being such a sweetheart.

Nicholas: I'm going to need to go to therapy after this. I'm going to see you at the next show.

Doktur Grobler: Yeah. Come clean your brain on the 24th, I think it is.

Allsee: Yeah. 24th.

Doktur Grobler: Perfect. That's it. Thank you.

Nicholas: Thank you. Bye. All right. Bye. Hey, everybody.

i_miller00: Oh, Nicholas. You dirty human.

Nicholas: All right. Thanks, y'all. See you next time. In the show notes, podcast feed links are available at Web3 Galaxy Brain dot. com. Web3 Galaxy Brain airs live most Friday afternoons at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, 2200 UTC on Twitter spaces. I look forward to seeing you there.