How to fight anti-crypto psychosis?

The issue is not that crypto is to hard to use, it's that they don't see the reason to use an alternative in the first place

Monero community is extremely red pilled and people are afraid of the shocking truth.

imo. best option is, to every now and then talk with your closest people abt. this.
"Have you seen this new debanking?"
"Have you seen this crazy money printing chart?"
"Look, I bought fruits from a farmer in Spain from xmrbazaar."

Then at some point just install them a wallet and give them 10$. After that f.e. if you go out eating and forgot cash, say smt. like
"can I just give you the money in xmr?"

etc. pp.

Exact same reason we've built xmrvcc.com because people say "you cant use your cryptos in daily payments like netflix , amazon , airbnb " But with community growth day by day people does awesome startups like Xmrbazaar, monero forum , kycnotme , monerica , our project " Xmrvcc.com " you can pay your monero to everywhere like netflix , airbnb whatever you think.

@beer Honestly, I really don't like this perspective and think you should reconsider how you are interpreting this situation.
On the one hand, You're going to drive yourself mad trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced and don't care. It's better to just focus on yourself and promoting cryptocurrency adoption to fellow chads. We had a thread on here a few days ago that had some discussion on that concept and I really agree with what Monerica was saying. My post in there is pretty good too: https://monero.forum/thread/normies-dont-matter-usually

But on the other hand, saying they are "too far up their ass" is mean and I don't think you are trying at all to look at this from their perspective. They have a "just werks" system: they get money from their job, they use a credit card that instantly pays for everything, they get a mortgage, and save up for a vacation or a car. Cryptocurrency isn't on their radar because it immediately introduces friction at every step of the way.
Why would I need to convert to a cryptocurrency if everything I want I can already buy?
Why would I use cryptocurrency when I can already instantly pay for groceries/gas/whatever by using a credit card?
Why would I spend time learning about something that has a much weaker reputation and no insurance?
Why would I not just use these websites that everyone else is using and that works?
Why would I be concerned about being debanked?

@esna7 Has the right idea. The strategy should be to not belittle them, but instead to speak matter of factly about inflation, or of data surveillance. One of the best examples of this I have heard is this insane story about a girl who started being targetted with ads for pregnant women. She would find out only a few weeks later that she was pregnant. Stories like this, which demonstrate the scope of how much data is being collected, will have an impact on even the normiest of normies.

The last thing I'd point to is this talk that anhdres did at Monerokon. https://youtu.be/SMMIQ9nIKU8

I think anhdres does a tremendous job here of summarizing these challenges, and he sort of concludes that it is all about "being cool". Our mindset should be that Monero is already cool, and that we should just think of it as one "cool" thing that is part of our lives. So if we live an interesting life style, and do interesting things, this will attract people to Monero by virtue of it being cool. He has a lot of other great points in this talk too with a really great framing of how to approach this issue.

I would say don't go for complete normies. Advocate and help people use Monero in technical or privacy focused communities.

I have helped like 5 people get into Monero in the last month. The thing they always ask after they are sold on the idea is how do they get Monero.

Good points. If the chads start adopting it, the normies will follow. It's unfortunate that normies go by such waves/trends, but it's the unfortunate reality. That's why they're called normies.

@beer In economics I've generally been more successful when I start from barter then up to gold adoption, then gold warehouses, then quickly onto debasement & fiat.
Some people just need to be challenged at a deeper layer than economics. You'd have to challenge their trust in governments (and their currencies) or deeper than that, to philosophy etc..
It's a lot of effort but you can invariably succeed because you're in the right. Worst I've had happen is people give up the argument, basically a win for me at that point (even if they don't adopt another currency on the spot); It's ground work you can build upon later (people are stubborn).
There's something to be said about your effort possibly being better spent elsewhere to get at the source of fiat-friendly thought.

@xenu Maybe don't pearl-clutch over OP's venting? I'm sure he doesn't call his interlocutors dumbasses or anything like that irl.

I agree with the people pushing back on the idea of 'how can we get these damn normies to use our shit!', because history has shown that you can't force people to use things when simpler solutions exist, and work.

people get debanked, but (I/the normie) don't do any of that weird free speech stuff, so it doesn't matter to me.
unironically I hope more and more news articles like this get released. people will start opening their eyes when they're not allowed to use their own money to buy the LEGAL things they want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd4l7CSvYMs

@beer The average person doesn't see a problem with the way they live. They are fully entrenched in the fiat ecosystem, which provides everything they need.

Think about the benefits of fiat: stability in prices, middle men who can reverse fraud charges, sky miles, cash back and other small perks, access in case they forget their password, a credit score that enables them to borrow money they don't have to buy things like land or a car, ability to rack up debt and pay off over a long period of time, access to essentially every product and service on earth directly or converted to other currencies via a bank. Why would someone give all of that up?

The average US household is over $100K in debt. So, it's not like they can escape even if they wanted to.

The average person is more afraid of losing fiat value than gaining any benefit of privacy or self-custody. They want get rich quick, fairy tale stories. Is it any wonder why memecoins are what normies want? Look on TV, pretty much every sport that's aired is shown with gambling commercials. Gambling has become normalized and hard work is stigmatized.

Living off Monero has more challenges and pretty much in all cases it requires converting to fiat through a prepaid or gift card at some point. USD is how XMR is measured in almost every case.

It isn't really a great path to think of others having "psychosis" and being some kind of crypto imperialist.

The more productive way to look at this is to say, we have everything we need to build out an entire economy just with Monero. It is possible to live completely off Monero. Once someone is living completely off Monero then it becomes less important what the average person thinks because then one is in their own world, in the Monero ecosystem and trying to connect the dots and make those connections stronger.

If the goal really is onboarding new people, then make videos, podcasts, guides and so on to explain it as easily as possible. There is probably an entire market just educating people about Monero. It's probably better to try to make money off people's curiosity and willingness to learn instead of attacking them.

Mind you, my idea of a "normie" is even more charitable than you'd think. It includes artists, game developers and other such creatives who struggle to make a living, both because of their governments and because of VISA and Mastercard. I see them frequently complain on social media, but lose their mind when you mention crypto as a solution. My thread always had the people who notice issues with fiat in mind, but they can't see crypto as a solution to their problems. I should've been more explicit and included this. For them, the mindset is "fiat is bad, but crypto is worse". I do believe they are very misinformed and likely propagandized to think like this, but there is also a tribal distaste to crypto: "us" vs "cryptobros". There is a moral righteousness to avoiding crypto.

@beer yeah I agree that people have this "tribal distaste," so I like to explain that I sympathize with them, and am even on their side in that regard. What I mean: there are the bitcoin cryptobros and then there are us monero users. The cryptobros see it as just an investment or get-rich-quick scheme; they don't actually care about the benefits of anonymous, private defi. In contrast, most monero users are using xmr as an alternative to the corrupt fiat system, to give themselves financial freedom and privacy. So explaining that the xmr ecosystem is different from the popularized bitcoin/altcoin ecosysetm is helpful.

I also will mention how bitcoin has a foundation, zcash has a CEO etc., whereas monero has essentially nothing but developers. So for the developers, it isn't a scheme to get rich, they actually care about having a privacy currency. I think that alone makes monero more trustworthy than other cryptobro coins.

Maybe some people will like the term "decentralized finance" better instead of cryptocurrency, Like "yeah you have x problem with fiat, you should try decentralized finance" etc. Then explain how it works without actually saying it is "crypto," but eventually mention "yeah most people call it crypto but it's very much unlike all other cryptocurrencies so I didn't want to present it as one of them" or something similar.