How Nigerian Youth Can Co-Curate Identity and Capture Value Using Non-Fungible Token

New technologies have been both a curse and a blessing to many young people around the world. Many young people have used mobile phones and social networking sites to create, post, and distribute content that has resulted in cyber and physical attacks. These technologies have also been used by youth to promote and market various cultural values, norms, and knowledge. In this regard, many young people who toe the line have done well for themselves and others. This is the case of Adisa Olashile, a Nigerian youth who began photographing people, places, and objects in 2016. Adisa Olashile, a Linguistics and Communications graduate of Osun State University, Osogbo, recently enlivened Balzer’s (2014) idea that “curating always follows art, not the other way around – that would be awful” by photographing an elderly drummer in Ibadan with the intention of raising the drummer’s socioeconomic status.

The elderly drummer goes around the city entertaining people with his drumming skills without making a lot of money. Olashile, who enjoys listening to drums and dancing, took a series of photographs of the drummer. Olashile tweeted the images and expressed interest in expanding his curation activities by minting them as a non-fungible token (NFT) on OpenSea and selling them for 0.3 Ethereum (Eth) each. People purchased the photographs, resulting in a total revenue of N1,000,000. Olashile gave the drummer half of the money.

According to Forbes, “An NFT is a digital asset that can come in the form of art, music, in-game items, videos, and more. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos.”

Olashile, in my opinion, has fulfilled one of the core characteristics of a curator by minting the images and selling them on NFT. According to Balzer (2014), curated materials or objects must be value-laden. Olashile has demonstrated that curators must prioritize value whether it exists in the materials or objects by not limiting themselves to taking photographs and tweeting them. His activity also suggests that curating cultural materials and/or objects may benefit both curators and possessors.

Emerging Respectability Politics for the aged Drummer

What the aged drummer lacked in formal education and technological devices that would have allowed him to market himself using NFT was compensated for by the youth’s rising socio-educational status and understanding of how emerging technologies work for marketing personal identity. This, in my opinion, resonates with Pitcan, Marwick, and Boyd (2018)‘s idea of respectability politics, which stated that upwardly mobile young people of low socioeconomic status in New York City crossed socio-political boundaries by rejecting socially and politically-driven stereotypes on social networking sites.

However, in the context of the aged drummer, respectability politics is more associated with the fact that the drummer was able to come into the limelight after several years of displaying his drum artistic and knowledge despite public perception of traditional drumming as a bad job for upward economic status through co-identity curation. After giving the drummer 50% of the money, Olashile opened a bank account for him to ensure the money’s safety. He also bought a new phone for the drummer and gave him a large photo frame.

Basically, Olashile has a technological tool and a better understanding of how curated culture functions, and he used them to curate his own brand identity (NFT creator) while also promoting drumming artistry and knowledge of the drummer. “This is a very good example for our youths to emulate. It is a neat and pure, transparent transaction and the guy was sincere by fulfilling his promise to the old man,” Olayode Olayiwola Jacob said while reacting to the video that captures the curation process and virality of the drummer.