All I wanted was a nice dinner. Thirty candles on a cake. Maybe some presents. What I got was a four-hour lecture on blockchain technology from my cousin's new boyfriend, Chad. Yes, his name is Chad. He wore a shirt that said "WAGMI" and I had to Google what that meant.
It started when someone asked what I do for work. Before I could answer, Chad jumped in with "But have you heard about Web3?" Nobody had asked, Chad. Nobody wanted to know. But for the next two hours, he explained NFTs to my grandmother, who just wanted to know if she could print one out and hang it on her fridge.
He showed us his portfolio. It was down 87%. He called it "an opportunity." He said the words "diamond hands" unironically. My aunt asked if it was gambling and Chad got genuinely upset. "It's the future of finance," he said, while his phone showed a graph that looked like it was drawn by a seismograph during an earthquake.
The cake came out. I made a wish. I wished for Chad to leave. He did not leave. Instead, he suggested we convert my birthday gifts to Ethereum. My mother, who spent three weeks picking out a sweater for me, looked like she was about to commit a crime.
By midnight, Chad had convinced exactly zero people to invest in anything. But he had convinced everyone to never invite him to anything again. Small victories.