“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” - David Graeber
Hello!
3 words that might describe me: perhaps “esoteric cowboy anarchist,” or “light, truth, freedom.”
I have often thought that I might be lost at sea – I think it would depend if I was alone or with others. Having lived in the bushes on the side of the highway for a while, and given my anarcho-primitivist leanings as a young oogle, I’d like to think I’d make a pretty good survivalist. Probably I would be able to purify water and catch fish with line made from plastic bits of a raft, and also tell ridiculous stories to keep morale up.
My name is Billy, and I got here on a different path than probably most. I don’t come from a tech background (although I am learning cryptography and how to code, out of fascination and so I can contribute better) – I’m interested in esotericism, a writer & a reader, and have heretofore lived a mostly analog life, often without electricity or running water. I got interested in the Cicada puzzles a few years ago, which led me on a crazy winding esoteric path into technology that has bordered on what you could say (with some cringe) is almost spiritual. The fact that the Status logo looks like the main turbulent flow whirl in Van Gogh’s Starry Night caught my attention – coincidence or not, I dug deeper and finally found what seems to be a tech organization whose vision & values align with my own.
Many years ago, I was part of an anarchist workers’ collective in NYC that ran an activist bookstore & community center. It was a formative experience that shaped who I am, but ultimately I left the city life and became a hitchhiking. train-hopping oogle for a few years before settling down to become a cowboy. I had dreams of becoming a world champion bull rider, but it turns out I wasn’t very good at it and stopped after I broke my leg 
I enjoyed the cowboy life, though – I got to run cows on big land and train wild mustangs. Somewhere in there I also did a brief stint as a wildland firefighter. When Covid hit, I decided to pursue my writing more seriously – I’d always done it, an almost unconscious compulsion, but I wanted to actually make something with it. I went back to school to finish my undergrad degree in English, and did a year at a Creative Writing MFA (which was fully funded, but still a mistake). I started going further down the rabbit hole with web3, cryptography puzzles, the stock market, and finding Logos, and I felt like school was actually getting in the way of what I really care about (this).
So now I am trying to figure out my place in the puzzle of all this and how I can contribute to building something. I’m a big fan of former contributor Andy Tudhope and have a similar vibe. I have some ideas, but I’d also like to talk more with y’all and see where you’re at and what you need before I get started too much on any of them. Perhaps I can hook in somewhere. At the least, I’d love to help get more conversation going, because to me, nothing is more important, interesting, or exciting.
Glad to be here! I’m always available to chat – frillbilly@protonmail.com, @frillbilly on discord, or find my Status chat key here**
** I’m still working on shortening it to an ENS without buying SNT through Coinbase… and also I lost my previous address because I, an indigent vagabond, of course left my keys in a storage space in another state, if not lost them altogether… a problem I would like to help work on, as I think it’s a (common in web3) barrier for mass adoption.
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