I'm having a hard time deciphering how many levels of irony this article was written under.

Ironic distance requires at least some level of self-awareness, so I'll say none.

is anything real?

Considering the number of outright fraud artists and charlatans masquerading as "c level executives" of dozens of different cryptocurrency firms, isn't the whole thing an elaborate LARP?

My fear here is that people are using events like these as a tool to generate believable false identities (for opsec purposes. watch the grugq's video).

Recycle a few key identities between events and you can build something really useful.

Was thinking similar thoughts - if the characters are reused at a few parties, meet a ton of people, and those people go on and bring up memorable characters in the future they can eventually connect. Outside validation immediately makes that 'character' a real person to those who met them or read about them.

To me, the end of the article seemed to suggest that Salem might be a contrived identity used by a larper larping as a larp organizer:

>Suddenly I’m curious about this strange person. From the balcony, I ask her where she’s from.

>“The U.K.,” she says.

>“Where exactly?,” I follow up, wondering if it’s London, Scotland, or wherever.

>She squints back up at me, surprised by the question, and repeats, “The U.K.”

>I watch her walk quickly down the block, hail a taxi, and drive away forever.

The fact that enough of us are a) thinking this b) that such a strange event has such reach, and c) involves Monero, leads me to believe that this is the true purpose of this event series.

I do ARGs and Nordic LARPs and generally know of everyone involved in organizing events of this nature and this is totally off my radar.

All my crypto friends agree I am rich, the wider world not so much.

Goodness me, this was a chore to try and read. I guess points for postmodernism? Not sure what else to take from it.

I don’t get it. Can someone explain in plain English what this article is about?

Lacking any other suitable explanation, "postmodernism"

Not just any old postmodernism, though. This is blockchain postmodernism.

The entire story was also surprisingly bland and boring.

Headlines like this make me feel old.

Thank God!

As a veteran of LARPs and raves, this read like something extremely boring!

I will pay you some fraction of a dogecoin to get off my lawn.

such lawn....

This reads like Douglas Rushkoff’s Ecstacy Club novel for modern times.