Dating, Dupes, and “Delulu:” Lovers and Outlaws

Melissa: [00:00:00] Life is art for sure. And I'm going to submit. And there we go.

Phillip: [00:00:05] All right. So now you got to go to your email. You'll see an email: Archetypes by Future Commerce, and it'll say, "Open for your Archetype."

Melissa: [00:00:15] Okay, Awesome. Open for my Archetype. I probably will get the Lover archetype. Everything I do, I try not to be as emotional with my decision making, but I definitely fall into the emotional bucket of "Do I like this? Do I like this dress? Is it going to look nice on me? Am I going to like it in five years?"

Melissa: [00:01:14] I got it. Of course I'm the Lover. Duh. "Your archetype is The Lover." I knew it.

Brian: [00:01:26] {laughter}

Phillip: [00:01:27] Perfect. All right. With that in mind, Brian, let's open the show.

Phillip: [00:01:57]  

Brian: [00:03:21] Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast where we explore the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:03:29] I'm Phillip. Today we have writer and Founder of the Violet Verse and friend, local Miami resident, and probably one of the cooler people I've ever met, first in the Web3 scene, but just just rad people in commerce altogether. Welcome to the show. Melissa Henderson.

Melissa: [00:03:50] Hi, welcome. Thanks for that amazing introduction. Definitely in the Miami scene. Yes.

Phillip: [00:04:00] About time we had you on the show. Of course, you have been you brought a new column to the Future Commerce audience a couple months ago called Lovers and Outlaws. We'll get into that a little bit here later on. We'll talk a little bit about your Archetype a little bit later on, too, which you may have heard in the cold open. But it's just phenomenal to have you here. When I met you, I was introduced to you because we were building our Archetypes activation at Art Basel last year and we had our Archetypes book and we were looking for contributors. And it's rare to find people who sit at the intersection of one, building at the edge of new commerce experiences. You're a web3 founder. Number two, people who understand the power of words and journalism and speaking to cultures and subcultures. And then number three, you have a background in zine creation.

Melissa: [00:04:56] Hmm mmm.

Brian: [00:04:56] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:04:57] And that is, I think what really made me feel like I need to get to know this person on a deeper level. Tell us a little bit about some of that background and how it's informing your current work.

Melissa: [00:05:08] Yeah. Oh my gosh. So the first time I published a zine was in 2015 and I was at a point of my editorial life where I really wanted to have ownership over my work, and I wanted to publish articles that were long-form and a little bit more thought-provoking. At the time I was working with Elle magazine, I was working as a managing editor at AOL.com, and there was it was a very small window of creative writing. I was really just publishing a lot of sensationalistic articles to keep up with these algorithms and keep up with the mass media. And I went on a press trip and this Italian journalist created her own zine. And she was telling me about it. And she had these newspapers that she printed out and she had 100 and she was just giving them out on the press trip. And I was like, "I want to do that." And so I went back to my small Harlem apartment and I meditated. And my great-grandmother's name was Violet, and she didn't really have a voice. She grew up in the 1900s. So I wanted it to be a reflection of her. Violet. I love summer because it was the winter time and I was like, really looking forward to summer. It was an outlet and then zine. So that's how Violet Summer Zine came to be. So 2015 was all about relationships, love, and dating. Actually, that was issue one. And I was going, I was traveling to different parts of the world. Tinder was like really like a big thing back then. It was kind of the latest dating app and people really didn't like to go online dating. That was not really a thing. So I was exploring journalism, but then creative writing in this zine and I printed out 100 and I sold them to my friends because I wasn't working. So I was like, "You guys have to buy this for $30 and I will give it out to everyone in New York." So that was like my little side hustle and my creative outlet.

Phillip: [00:07:23] Good for you.

Brian: [00:07:24] I love that. Yeah, I love that. Your way out of algo chasing was to do something on your own and do it printed. Physical format is the way to free yourself from the algo because no algo beats handing out your zine to people. That's awesome.

Phillip: [00:07:44] Also being super ahead of the curve. I think print is very trendy at this moment, but in 2015 it certainly wasn't. And certainly in that scene and in digital publishing, which was your background. So I'd love to hear a little bit from you about the transition to Miami and how that's sort of changed your perspective on your writing and definitely, I'm guessing Covid played a role in your relocation. Tell us a little bit about that.

Melissa: [00:08:15] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Miami was very serendipitous for me because I never wanted to leave New York. I was one of those people that was going to stay on that island until eternity. And I think with Covid and a lot of us, really just said, "Listen, we have another plan for you and New York City isn't it." And so it was a great place for me to just like unwind. I was very much just in this bubble of go, go, go. And when I came to Miami, it called me to just chill, be in Little Havana, and really think about where I wanted my career to go because I was a strategist at that time for The Onion. But I was also trying to figure out my next move because I knew that media was changing. I was seeing it from my very own eyes trying to get all these brand deals for the publications I was working on, but then exploring different social channels like Clubhouse. So that brought on just a new lens of me saying like, "Who am I as a... Am I really a writer? I haven't really published anything. I've been writing brief documents, B2B brief documents." So I didn't feel like a writer. But then when I went online and started discussing with other fellow writers via Clubhouse, it kind of rebirthed another side of me. And being in Miami, where everything is very fun and playful and tropical and everyone's on vacation, I just really, really enjoyed this new life. So I stayed in Miami and I got hooked up into the Miami tech scene, and I've pretty much reinvented my niche as a writer. So instead of Mel writes NYC, it's Mel writes Miami. And it was really about the tech scene. It was really about blockchain and crypto and can I sell my writing as an NFT? Because at the end of the day, I really wanted to document the spirit and personality of my work, my community on chain. So it never the mission's never changed. It was just documenting in a futuristic format like blockchain and NFTs and VR and all this. So I would say Miami was definitely a catalyst for me to play and color beyond the lines, I would say.

Brian: [00:11:56] So cool. It's amazing how place can have such an effect. I feel like the context switched for you. And place is one of the most important contexts that we have. It's who we are with and then where we're at. And so I love your story and how it's completely sort of revitalized or changed how you view yourself and how you view what you do. And so I think that's so exciting. And as you come to the series that you're writing for us, Lovers and Outlaws, can you tell us a little bit more about what it is that you're up to for Future Commerce for those that only listen to the podcast and should totally be reading our newsletter as well.

Melissa: [00:12:43] So Lovers and Outlaws, I would say this was a year in the making, honestly, Phillip, because when we first met, I had a different assignment and I was really, really just interested in how we maintain relationships and this like Marxist Lover ideology. I wrote this story in 2014 for the Huffington Post about this concept called Marxist Lovers by Alain de Botton, which is a philosopher, a European philosopher. He's amazing. And this theory has always stuck with me throughout my 20s. I wrote it in my 20s and it just really talked about like how we are attracted to people, how we get disengaged with different people that we're in relationships with. It's kind of like another spin on the conscious uncoupling. And so when I came to Phillip on what I was thinking about eCommerce, I wrote this maybe 500-word piece and it simmered for a while, I would say for a few months. And then we came back to it a few months later and I guess the birth of Lovers and Outlaws really explores how our relationship status is and how we buy things, consume things, and choose products are interconnected. So in today's world, we have so many options, endless options of where to buy, what products to buy, and our shopping preferences, and then our shopping preferences, are they really related to who we choose as our people, as our partners, whether we're single, whether we're dating, whether we're married, or whether we're just walking along the world trying to find someone that matches our internal decision making. So that's kind of like the standard with the column. I know Phillip has some thoughts as well, but really it gets into modern marketing and also the five stages of consumerism, which are need for recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase evaluation. So the five stages of consumerism have been around for over 50 years, so I'm pretty much remixing it and modernizing it to really explore.

Phillip: [00:15:16] And I think what you've done, too, is you're sort of giving that overlay into the various stages of relationship and the way that you've tied it back to what I've gathered is there are a lot of parallels between the way that we're shopping for products and how that informs the way that we shop for relationships today because they both come through the same device. And so the way you buy and the way that you consider purchases is very physically adjacent and maybe even mentally adjacent to the same device that you use to shop for and pursue a love interest as well. Let's talk a little bit about those interesting sort of parallels because your first piece definitely touched on this idea of the status of your relationship and who you're with and how that informs what you buy. And I think that's just generally true because Brian and I are old men, and this show always talks about Costco.

Brian: [00:16:24] Hmm mmm.

Phillip: [00:16:25] Because that's the stage of life we're in, the stage of relationships we're in. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about how that's informing your perspective, too.

Melissa: [00:16:35] So I think being a fashion journalist for over five years, just going back to my roots of dealing with these shopping categories. So I was always the person to publish shopping guides and "Five Things you need to buy for Valentine's Day." "Here are five things you need to buy for Christmas." So that has always been a part of me as a writer, just writing these very short form stories about what you should buy and then turning it into going a step further and saying, "Okay, you're buying these things because A) you might be married, B) you might be exploring other things to make your life easier.

Phillip: [00:17:24] Exploring other? You're married and exploring other relationships, is that right? {laughter}

Melissa: [00:17:28] No. {laughter} That's a different column.

Phillip: [00:17:32] That's column 3 or 4.

Brian: [00:17:34] That's 17.

Melissa: [00:17:36] 17. Very spicy. I would say, you know, based on what you buy, I think mirrors your relationship. And one thing that is going to come up on our third column is this idea of how singles choose partners and products. And this is a stage where they're kind of needing recognition. So these are people who are going through dating apps, they are buying dupes and this whole ideology of what's a dupe. And they are also in their delusional phase, which is like a huge thing on media now being delusional and you might be like going on apps and going on dates and also buying products that you don't really need, you know? So it's just like dating dupes and being delusional. All are interconnected as well as making somatic decision-making based on your partner and saying, "Okay, I'm just going to go to Costco because it's best. I don't want to start World War four in the House because I bought the wrong ply toilet paper." It's all like connected. And that's what I'm finding with just writing it. I mean, I'm just going with my writer voice and my intuition. Going back to my Archetype as a Lover, we really go with our gut feelings and intuition. So I do have this overall hypothesis, but just getting the feedback from a lot of people who have read the column, I think the marriage column really hit home with the Amazon wishlist and people being overly dramatic on their wedding registries. {laughter} So it's just been a real rollercoaster, I would say.

Brian: [00:20:49] It seems like people are a delulu, as our producer Erica said to me just yesterday, delulu through every stage of the relationship. {laughter}

Melissa: [00:20:59] Okay. Okay. Yes.

Phillip: [00:21:01] I'm glad you said it, not me. I honestly didn't even know what that meant when she said it. I couldn't even Google it.

Brian: [00:21:07] You didn't even want to Google it.

Melissa: [00:21:12] And I will be... There will be actually a glossary on the dupe and singles column because there's some definite new terminology. Dupes...

Brian: [00:21:25] Yes, please.

Melissa: [00:21:25] Delulu or delusional. Having this main character energy. And sometimes it might be the demise of single people as well. It's like you're scrolling through these apps and it's like, "Oh, you're not going to date this person because they're an Android user?" Like that is a very...

Brian: [00:21:47] {laughter}

Phillip: [00:21:47] {laughter}

Melissa: [00:21:47] You're going to cross out a whole subset of a person because they're an Android user. And that kind of is the precipice of why singles are just like grabbing hold...

Brian: [00:21:59] Still single?

Melissa: [00:22:01] Still single.

Phillip: [00:22:02] It's an interesting point that you're bringing up there is it does come back to Archetype and you mentioned in passing there... So your Archetype is?

Melissa: [00:22:12] Lover. The Lover.

Phillip: [00:22:13] Okay, so you're The Lover. And if you're listening to this, and you want to find your Archetype, obviously, we premiered our Archetypes brand at Art Basel last year and you can find both the book that accompanies it, the 240-page Journal, and the quiz to find your own Archetype at ArchetypesJournal.com/quiz. But Melissa as The Lover it seems like you kind of romanticize a lot of things, so no wonder you're romanticizing the way you buy things, where you buy them, and the means by which they those things connect back to other things that provide significance for you. So far you've mentioned sort of your place in the world, like your neighborhood or your city, maybe the status of your relationship certainly has an impact there. But you also have this challenge around being a founder and having had to become a tech founder. And would you say that part of your tech founder journey with The Violet Verse, which I think you've called like the Refinery29 of Web3 and this idea of sort of this culture reporting, this industry being centered around a city that you happen to be in... How did those things and your place in the world there impact the way that you were thinking about commerce and the way that you were thinking about the type of company that you were going to build?

Melissa: [00:23:45] Yeah, yeah.

Phillip: [00:23:47] Give us a little bit about that because I'd love to get to know a little bit more about how that changes you as a builder and the types of things that you're building in the world.

Melissa: [00:23:56] Yeah. Oh wow. That is a very layered question. So basically I feel that as a founder, I wanted to build products that I wanted to use. So that's first and foremost as a builder. They say build products that you want to use and also build products that actually solve a problem. So being a writer for over ten years, I knew that there were outdated content management systems, there were outdated payment systems, and also outdated data storage. And I know that for a lot of writers, it's really hard to build a community, especially if you're freelancing and you don't really have the means to maybe start a newsletter list or continue to get recognition over your work. So I wanted to build a product that was totally decentralized for me as a writer, and anyone can come on, they can log in and they can create their own wallet, blockchain wallet, and then from there, they can start interacting with The Violet Verse, whether it's writing stories or giving tokens, giving recognition to the writers through a tipping system that I created. And then also being in this ecosystem, once they log in, we automatically have their wallet address and we can send them digital collectibles. So I think that really, really was kind of the foundation of how I wanted to use blockchain as commerce through an engaged-to-earn lens. But I did not want to create barriers to entry for people who didn't know anything about blockchain. So at face value, it's a magazine. But then when you give us your email address, you kind of unlock a world of blockchain interactions. So as a founder, I do think that I'm like cosplaying a little bit as a blockchain developer, as a fashion developer, because the industry is such that it's still early, we're still building the future and there's so much wild stuff that goes on. But that's for me as The Lover, I can't even begin to tell you like all the... I've only been building Violet Verse for a year. But it's been really interesting to see the phases of a software and how this software kind of just dropped on my lap. I always wanted to be a writer. But now I'm like writing software, and it's just just wild. It wasn't on my bingo card, but I'm going with the flow, the motions. And really, just like that, The Lover, they dream beyond their wildest dreams.

Brian: [00:26:58] I love that. You said you felt like it was kind of a bit of cosplay, and I do think there's something going on right now in the world of commerce tech and actually beyond. Everything is sort of cosplay right now. Everything is like a LARP. And actually that Daisy Alioto, who is the founder of Dirt, which is another publication that we're big fans of, she said everything is a LARP right now. And I totally agree with that sentiment. I wonder, as we get further into your column and I'm so excited for the next installment here, the next few that you're looking at it'd be really interesting to explore that idea that everyone sort of feels like they're just playing a part, playing a role. It's not necessarily even who they actually are. It's cosplay and how that plays into relationships, but I know you've got a lot of head planned for what you're going to write. Maybe give us a bit of a peek ahead into future ideas that you have and what you're hoping that people will take away as they read your column.

Melissa: [00:28:14] Oh, my gosh. So the next column is obviously going to explore singles. It's obviously going to be touching on a little bit about my personal life and kind of how I'm developing in relationships and how I'm LARPing, I guess, as a blockchain founder, but also embracing the unknown and this idea of intuitive wandering and how we land on different products that we don't think we need, but we do, and how we land on different people that might not fit our date me docs but are amazing. And we'll also touch on a little bit of astrological elements of it. So really excited about that because post-Covid, people really want to understand the world. We were really kind of like blindfolded and now we're in a space of like, okay, post-Covid, how do we interact? Who am I as a person? And I really just want to have people think, just like stop scrolling their X feed, stop scrolling their Twitter feeds and really just think and journal. And I think I'm definitely striking some chords because I've already been getting some great feedback. I love the X or Twitter responses that I've been getting. I've been getting email responses and just a lot of people are like, "I've never even thought of it from that angle." I just want to like guide people in a better direction and as a hopeful, as someone that is really optimistic. I want to continue to share my optimism with other people because this world we're in, we're in a bear market and we're in a tough time right now and just really be intentional about their products and their purchases.

Phillip: [00:30:22] That's awesome. And I can't wait for people to continue to read it. I've just been very moved by your column because it also gives me a glimpse into, I think, the way that you see the world. And that's really what I think we do differently at Future Commerce is we're reporting on our view of the world, and we have a lot of principles around that. I think that what you buy and where you buy it is shaped by who you are and who you're around. And I think you're exploring a totally different aspect of that through this concept of love, sex, dating. These things have an impact on how we see the world and they become part of who we are. And so understanding who we are is, I think, the mission of every brand. And there's an inherent multifaceted side of the story when it comes to how brands talk to their customers. A lot of the people that listen to this podcast or subscribe to Future Commerce and other channels are people who have a say so in how they build their brand, what products they create, the price at which they sell them, and the direction of their brand. And I think it's an amazing reminder and a really fun way for us to be able to shape the future because we're talking to people who have the power to shape the future. And I can't wait to see more from you. Melissa, thank you so much for partnering with us so far.

Melissa: [00:31:54] Thank you so much for this opportunity. This is like a writer's dream just to be able to explore without boundaries.

Phillip: [00:32:01] Awesome. And the next thing coming from us... If you want to find out whether you're a Lover or an Outlaw, you can do that next week. Subscribe to the newsletter and you'll have that quiz drop into your inbox. FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe. Of course, founder of The Violet Verse. Melissa Henderson, thank you so much for coming on the show. And you can find her column Lovers and Outlaws at Future Commerce.