Discord Mods and Metaverse Builders — Six Figure Jobs of the Future
It’s always been kinda weird to me that people moderate online forums for free. When subreddits, Discord channels, and other online gathering places amass hundreds of thousands of members, I’ve never understood who exactly signs up to manage them for nothing more than anonymous internet clout.
For a really hopping community it’s truly a 24/7 job to manage all the bs. People complaining, trolling, asking questions that are answered in the FAQ section, and just generally being dicks. The list goes on.
Pretty much every legitimate NFT project has a Discord or Telegram channel for NFT holders to connect and communicate (with each other and the project leads — it’s also the customer service channel). A competent community mod team can be the deciding factor in a project’s success.
With successful NFT projects generating millions of dollars, why wouldn’t the mod(s) in charge of managing the community fetch a six figure compensation package? This feels obvious, but I’m old enough to remember the days when forum mods were indoor kids looking to wield relatively meaningless power over random internet strangers.
How far the mods have come.
In a similar vain, the top NFT metaverses — Decentraland, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels — are ramping up (2022 is their year) with millions of dollars flying around on digital land, wearables, games, and more. Digital casinos already exist in these worlds, as do clubs and bars. Also theme parks.
I’ve worked with a few clients looking to launch ideas from a digital music festival to a yoga/meditation studio, and the first question is obvious: who knows how to build stuff in the metaverse?
If you own digital land, you can build whatever you want on it. Some digital worlds make building easy (The Sandbox probably has the best DIY building tool), but if you want to make something custom and legit (i.e. a digital music festival) you need to have someone who knows their way around 3D rendering software. Think of it exactly like building a website yourself on Squarespace vs. hiring a talented dev who can customize everything.
The fundamentals are simple: metaverse land owners will continue to find new ways to monetize in-world experiences, and there will be a massive shortage of people who can bring the most innovative ideas to life. Those who can do it will be compensated accordingly.
The mods will get theirs soon, and so too will a whole legion of Minecraft builders and underpaid industrial designers who know their way around CAD modeling. Weird but (probably) true.
