A lot of people have been talking about web3 lately. As in: “Our next round of investments is all web3,” or “Can someone please explain web3.”

Also – it’s not Web 3.0. We dropped the “point 0” a while ago. “Point 0” is so Web 2.0

If you want to know about web3, I’ll explain it in a few buzzwords: De-fi. Crypto. Blockchain. Non-Fungible Token.

Still not clear? Try these: ERC721. IPFS CID. DAO. Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Just in case you’re only pretending to understand, I’ll explain it as if I’m a tech-guru paying a visit to your senior living facility. Web3 is changing how the internet economy works so that, instead of a central government making currency for spending, and big tech companies controlling the flow of information, everything gets handled by thousands and thousands of people with computer setups that are way cooler than yours. While they compose Spam emails and trade deepfake-Punky-Brewster-hentai on Discord, their computers are making sure every transaction on the “blockchain” is totally legit. For this, they are awarded “cryptocurrency.”

In order for the cryptocurrency to be worth something, it needs to be spent on something. Since actually making something of value is pretty hard work, and can’t necessarily be done from the comfort of your own basement, web3 lets you buy and sell “Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)” which can be anything from an animated GIF of a monkey to an animated GIF of a monkey in a baseball cap.

Now, instead of wealth accumulating in the coffers of Big Tech giants, it accumulates in the crypto-wallets of disenfranchised hackers. Which is great. They deserve it for outsmarting the system and creating a new system that rewards those who know what certain acronyms stand for.

But whatever. I’m already onto web5.

I would explain web4, but it only lasted for twelve minutes last week. You kinda had to be there.

The first thing you need to understand about web5 is that time and space don’t actually exist at a quantum level, so when the first quantum phones hit the shelves, I was smart enough to get one before they were invented. Right now, I’m distributing every byte of data to every other quantum phone on the “clockhain,” so I can decrypt it and recrypt in reverse-time. It’s a whole protocol thing. Sorry – just got a notification telling me you don’t understand. If you had the Samsung Q12, it would be a lot easier because I could communicate directly with your phone which is way smarter than you.

In the early stages of web5, we tried the whole metaverse thing but had to give up after we discovered every avatar that was created had to be named “Zuck.” Some of us have started coding plugins for the meta-metaverse, which is a reverse metaverse that’s so much like the real world that you might mistake it for a perfect simulation of the imperfect simulation we were living in.

Imagine the Matrix, except everyone is Neo, and the blue pill is the one that brings you back up the rabbit hole (which is actually a wormhole) only to discover we were actually robots who thought we were humans who chose the red pill. It’s kinda like that.

The most obvious advantage of web5 is that everyone is a tech billionaire. Not just everyone in Silicon Valley. Every global citizen. The second you’re born, your crypto wallet is minted on the clockchain and it’s preloaded with a personalized crypto-currency with a value synced to the number of calories you consume. You’re actually a tech billionaire right now, you just haven’t installed the update that lets you believe it.

It works like this: Every time you make a purchase for anything, your ultra-fast quantum phone simultaneously decrypts and verifies some other blocks on the chain, instantly refilling your crypto-wallet to replace the amount you’re about to spend. The more you spend, the more currency you make. That’s right. Your job is just to spend. You’re a consumer and producer at the same time. All income is passive because the product of your passive work is more currency. Your device does all the work.

You can also mine currency by minting new stuff. Anything you post online gets minted on the clockchain and has a value. A recipe for chicken parm? A photo of your husband dressed in a bee costume? A flirty email to your kid’s teacher? It all gets tokenized to become part of your massive wealth. The more data you make, the richer you get. Want to make money by breathing? Just let your respi-band log each breath on breathchain.eth.

Here’s what else is happening with web5:

  • Yachts are the new Razor scooters.
  • Mansion upgrades get unlocked every time you complete a level of Candy Crush.
  • On a plane, every seat is first class. Economy class is just a life-size Alexa in a cramped seat who we all make fun of. Tray tables are just called traybles.
  • Instead of crops, farmers can grow those mushrooms from Mario Kart.
  • You can get porn in lavender, lemon-verbena or pine-scented.
  • An app that lets dogs walk each other.
  • Brick and mortar Minecraft.
  • LinkedIn is basically just Etsy for people making knock-off Beanie Babies.
  • An app that lets you choose what color fur your baby is born with.
  • If you’re friends with a guy named Trevor, you’ll automatically become friends with every other Trevor.
  • If your mom friends you, you get to meet your clone.
  • Your gender and pronouns get updated automatically based on the photos you heart.
  • A streaming service that lets you monetize your dreams by playing ads for related content from other people’s dreams.
  • The moon’s phases are determined by how many phones are switched to dark mode.
  • Custom “just-for-you” music composed on the fly based on health data collected from the earwax on your air pods.
  • When kids attend the stage version of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell comes back to life from the sound of just one hand clapping.

And that’s just a taste. You better hurry up so you don’t miss out. I’m already hearing good stuff about web6.