Poetry

Poetry is the original cryptocurrency, though much less successful. It has no real usefulness. Its value is an illusion. It's a total Ponzi scheme.

The first poem was recited by a crazed shaman and the entire village was baffled, especially the elders, whose first instinct was to ban it outright. But some of the youngsters thought it was cool and decided to join in – the fools.

Immediately after poetry came literary criticism, which is even worse. Analysing a poem is like analysing a joke, except that at least the joke was funny in the first place. Literary criticism was cooked up to justify poetry, the same way cryptocurrency enthusiasts can’t stop going on about Bitcoin all the time, writing huge nonsensical essays about it, trying to convince everyone it’s valuable, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Literary critics, like cryptocurrency influencers, represent a degenerate culture, a derivative product of an idea that was worthless to begin with.

It’s a scam. The poets convince a small circle around them that poetry is important, and then these people go off and become poets, too. But they need followers who will read their poetry, so they develop their own circles, and so on. It’s the original multi-level marketing scheme, and it doesn’t even work well. No one likes serious poetry and only a few people even pretend to, even after thousands of years of being pushed by its lame promoters.

Most of the time, the poets don’t even get rich. It’s the worst pyramid scheme ever.