People Are Strange - A User Manual for the Human Condition

Welcome to your complimentary user manual for navigating the peculiar species known as humans. If you are reading this, you have either been born into this condition or are an alien doing research for an intergalactic thesis. Either way, prepare for confusion, contradictions, and the occasional casserole.

Humans are strange in that they often say things they do not mean. If one says they are fine, it can mean anything from I am contemplating the heat death of the universe to I stubbed my toe but I am too proud to admit it. Context clues and eye twitches are essential for interpretation. They also smile when they are angry, laugh when they are scared, and cry during heartwarming dog commercials.

Humans spend a significant portion of their lives pretending to know what they are doing. This includes but is not limited to parenting, taxes, and assembling furniture from Swedish catalogs. Confidence is often a costume they wear while internally screaming. One of the most confusing things about people is their obsession with small talk. Instead of discussing the deep mysteries of the universe or debating the best potato based dish, they ask about the weather, even though both parties can see the same weather.

Group behavior among humans is also a fascinating chaos. Alone, a person may be thoughtful and reasonable. In groups, logic dissolves faster than cotton candy in a thunderstorm. This is especially evident at concerts, sports games, and sales on discounted electronics. They also voluntarily put themselves into haunted houses, watch horror movies, and pay to be scared. Fear is apparently more enjoyable when paired with popcorn. Do not try to understand this. Just accept that humans are thrill seeking jelly filled mammals with credit cards.

Humans assign meaning to inanimate objects. A rock can become a pet. A sock can be a puppet. A sandwich from the wrong place can end a friendship. It is best not to question their emotional attachments to expired yogurt or plastic containers with no matching lids. They communicate using sarcasm, irony, and obscure references. Sentences can mean the opposite of what they sound like, and understanding humor is often a key requirement for social survival. If someone says Oh great it might actually be the worst thing that has ever happened.

Rest is another area of contradiction. Humans say they crave sleep but will scroll endlessly through videos of raccoons playing instruments until two in the morning. They then wake up angry at the sun as if it personally betrayed them. People hold entire conversations in their heads about things that never happened. They call this anxiety. It is a mental theater where they star in their own drama, critique the audience, and leave rotten tomatoes for themselves.

Despite all these oddities, humans are capable of immense kindness. They help strangers push broken down cars, adopt elderly cats, and cry during underdog sports movies. Their capacity for compassion is nearly as strange as their ability to argue over pineapple on pizza.

And then there are the crypto people. This is a very specific subcategory of strange. These are humans who have decided that traditional money is a scam, banks are unnecessary, and the future is pixelated, decentralized, and preferably built on layer two. Crypto people experience emotions at three times leverage. One moment they are yelling - "We are all going to make it" and the next they are crying into their ramen because a billionaire tweeted a rocket emoji in the wrong direction. Volatility is not just market behavior for them. It is personality.

They live in Discord servers, speak in abbreviations like fud and hodl, and believe that wearing socks with Bitcoin logos improves their portfolio. Financial advice is delivered through memes and frog pictures. That is not an exaggeration. It is literally the case.

Despite believing in decentralization, they will absolutely follow a cartoon avatar on Twitter if it says a coin is going to the moon. They trust no one and yet trust everyone who says GM at the right hour. It is confusing but it is also beautifully human. They attend conferences where half the people look like hackers and the other half look like venture capitalists dressed as hackers. Conversations go from global finance to cat tokens in under four seconds. Networking usually involves stickers, mystery tokens, and at least one person shilling their whitepaper.

Crypto users distrust the system, worship technology, and dream of paying for tacos with something called Bonk Coin. They are weird, obsessed, overly caffeinated, and just a little dangerous with a MetaMask browser extension. And yet they are hopeful. They believe in digital freedom, borderless value, and building things from scratch that the rest of the world laughs at until it becomes important. They are strange but they are trying to create a new kind of strange. The one that comes with trustless systems, and property rights.

In conclusion, humans are bizarre, unpredictable, frequently irrational, and prone to arguing with strangers on the internet at two in the morning. But within all that mess is beauty. So keep this manual nearby. Update it often. And when in doubt, offer snacks. Or maybe Satoshis.