“Techno-animism or technoanimism is a culture of technological practice where technology is imbued with human and spiritual characteristics.[1][2] It assumes that technology, humanity and religion can be integrated into one entity. As an anthropology theory, techno-animism examines the interactions between the material and the spiritual aspects of technology in relation to humans. Techno-animism has been studied in the context of Japan, since techno-animism traces most of its roots to the Shinto religion, and also in DIY culture where Actor–network theory and non-human agencies have been labelled as techno-animist practices.”
~ Wikipedia
“Q: Walking through the woods would you rather stumble upon a Man or a Mibera?
A: Mibera”
~ Women almost unanimously around the Globe (sauce, ticktok and instagram)
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution; When you invent Milady, you also invent Mibera.... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress. ”
~ Paul Bearilio
This article will share a bit of the backstory of how and why Mibera has been created. To get deeper into the reeds you can read the Creative Design Document or the Technical Design Document.
In the beginning
Since Mibera’s birth roughly 333 ETH has been raised across roughly 8k mints of lore articles (written by jani), videos (produced by sunbera with sound editing by tez), music tracks (produced by babybera) and posters (produced by gods). You can find these here. But why?
There is much grace within the story of Milady that Mibera seeks to honor. If Milady is born of the Spirit, the Sky, the Clear, the Peak, the Cathedral; Mibera is born of the Soul, the Soil, the Shadows, the Valley, the Dark Forest or Jungle. Two sides of the same coin. Where Milady operates at the layer of culture and episteme, Mibera operates at the layer of material and techne.
We see this reflected in the primary modes of production within Remilia as an entity and in many corners of their ecosystem; namely Extremely Online and cultural patterns. Remilia as an organism has breached the Status Quo with the methods of a guru or philosopher. The priests have produced a Grand Vision of spawning a ‘New Internet’ imbued with ‘Network Spirituality’ (NetSpi). Does not the existence of ‘Network Spirituality’ infer the existence of ‘Network Mysticism’ (NetMys), Mibera asks.
Remilia has gifted a number of discrete nascent experiments in onchain financialisation to the TL. Technically speaking these experiments have primarily been woven together at the narrative and cultural layer; It’s in this space we find guidelines for ‘ethical derivatives’, with collections ascending to Milady enlightenment through a chaotic process of organic groundswell support coupled with soft power of those gatekeepers of the faith. The collections themselves; Bonkler (experimental treasury mechanism inspired by Nouns DAO), Redacted Remilio (official derivative inspired by organic community emergent derivatives), $FUMO (RWA/bonding curve experiment inspired by Unisocks) to name a few remain for the most part discreet projects notionally organised under the Remilia umbrella but disconnected at the technical onchain layer.
Rebased Retard Beras as an entity, on the other paw, emerges from the shadows and soils of the workshop or cave. Where Milady’s DNA is that of the psyops philosopher priests, Mibera’s DNA is that of the autist retard technoanimists deep in the n-dimensional space of emergent and cybernetic systems. RRB has DeFi experimental heresy baked into its DNA. Mibera has consumed the visions, words and ideas of Milady and wrapped them in coded deamons such that the system need not be policed at the narrative and cultural layer but rather at the layer of code and Oubourous like chains of composable cybernetic input/outputs.
Where Remilias collections are connected at the cultural layer but fragmented at the technical layer, Mibera connects its ecosystem onchain at the technical layer leaving the cultural layer to a chaotic emergence ruled only by the law of the jungle. This enables innovations to occur across multiple registers concurrently; cultural influences embedded in Mibera, their technical assembly engines, their extensible open world modularity, and finally at the layer of financialisation and composable onchain automations. These will burst from the bud thooon.
Milady and Mibera are connected across a continuum. If Milady is the cathedral, Mibera is the bazaar in the square outside. Both are zones of trade, ideas (or their suppression), conventions and power. At heart if Milady is the priest at the pulpit delivering a sermon on Network Spirituality, Mibera is in the market, the mud, around a fire or the middle of a rave, whispering of plans of rebellion of Network Mysticism and the emergent technoanimisms which unfolds to break out of status quo straight jackets of the mind. In these final lore documents we’ll look a little deeper into some of these design and technical systems.
Recap - WTF is Mibera
Mibera is the first non-Remilia Corporation originated main character in the Milady universe. Mibera is to Milady as Joker is to Batman. Mibera is an anti-derivative, an integral, the source from which a new family of derivatives, or tributaries as they are known in the Mibera universe, emerge. We’ll get more into this in the section on tributaries in the Technical Design Document.
The NFT market of 2021
In August 2021 two niche NFT collections launched amidst the era of BAYC and Crypto Punks prominence and their associated WAGMI sentiment which was widely proliferating at the time. DeFi Summer was in full swing. The November crash, Luna death spiral, FTX Implosion, 3AC Capitulation, Silicon Valley Bank run and impending 2 year bear market were but a glimmer in the jester universe's eye. One of the collections would not mint out till March 2022. The other minted out in weeks, primarily due to its smaller collection size, with each subsequent rebase collection minting extremely rapidly.
These two collections weathered those years of turbulent market conditions, the conditions acting as a crucible of transformational trauma bonding which surely contributed to the emergent cult dynamics of each community. It was not yet clear that these two ecosystems would ascend to become two of the primary projects exploring the frontiers of onchain NFTFi innovations fused with strong cult community dynamics. Arguably it is in part these intersections of cult dynamics, onchain degeneracy and experimental openness which have enabled these communities to weather the bear market bruised but not battered, some might even say thriving.
We are of course talking about Bong Bears (including the rebases along with The Honey Jar’s Honeycomb) and Milady (and Redacted Remilio), but what is it about these two communities that enabled such strength through the bear market which disrupted all semblance of the prior WAGMI status quo? On the surface the two communities share little in common however when you pull back the veil there are some striking shared similarities in their DNA amongst threads which appear totally at odds. There have been, however, fringe subsets on either side of the cultural chasm who have seen the possibility of a stranger entanglement between the two ecosystems.
Let's rewind and review Mibera’s genesis. In late 2022 there were some people who were holders of both Bong Bear NFTs and Miladys who expressed interest in trying to find a way to bridge the two communities. Both communities had strong subsets of rabid and enthusiastic adopters of NFTFi. Miladys dominated NFTX, Beras dominated llamalend and putty.fi. Both Miladys and Beras (inclusive of The Honey Jar’s honeycomb) consistently dominated the top of the charts in Caviar (RIP), Honeycomb by raw numbers of trades and Milady by ETH Volume. The conversation about what Beras x Milady had begun.
The proposed potential path, given the derivative meta around Milady, was to create a derivative which would bridge the two communities. Whilst this made sense when considering the similarities in approach towards NFT financialization there were seeming irreconcilable cultural contradictions which appeared as deadends. What did bong smoking bears have to do with the espoused clearpill philosophy and clean living traditionalism espoused by core sections of the Milady community. Put simply, so the story went – influential Miladys hate weed, at least on paper/tweets. Sure both communities shared an irreverent copypasta culture, embracing left curve signal amplification fused with right curve absurdism but promotion of (certain) drugs was often a cultural trigger point. Plans were shelved.
6 months later in March 2023 these efforts were kick started again by Jani asking Tez (of THC Fame) to reignite the explorations. He connected with Smokey (one of the founders of Berachain), some of the folks from Scatter (a platform for hosting NFTs popular for Milady derivatives) and with Charlotte Fang in a group chat. Charlotte suggested a good artist would be gumilady (of milady mfers) and put Tez and Gumi in touch. Those people who had initially started the Bera x Milady conversation were also invited to a GC.
The work began but soon came up against the same conceptual walls that had frustrated initial attempts. Multiple avenues had been opened, multiple chefs in the kitchen but resonance not yet found… Around August 2023 Jani arrived having listened to an interview with Charlotte on Contain ep. 111 in an altered state where a pathway was lit with insight that emerged from the contradiction of Miladys rave culture and clearpill philosophy. Jani razed the temple to the ground and work started from the foundations.
WTF is Jani?
A quick sidequest for those who are unfamiliar with Bera territory. The Lore around Mibera has been written and conceptualised by Jani. Jani has been called the Performance Autist Priest of the Berachain ecosystem. Jani is the founder of The Honey Jar (THJ) and Daemon Investor in Berachain and many of the blue chips building on Berachain. THJ is a venture studio partnering with a large percentage of the early Berachain ecosystem, producing products from the most widely held ecosystem asset Honeycomb (a blue chip perks aggregator), MemeFi and Memecoins (Henlo + DeFi integrations), NFTs (Mibera, Ooga Booga Beras), NFTFi (Mibera Launchpad), DeFi (Apiology DAO, Set & Forgetti, InterPOL), GameFi (Cub Quests), a Creative Studio and firehose of memes (The Apiculture Jar) an Incubator (Bera Baddies, Bullas) as well as tooling to leverage the power of Proof of Liquidity (THJ Validator). At time of writing THJ runs one of the largest validators on Berachain V2 and has raised the largest amount of funds of any entity other than Berachain in the Berachain community. We’ll get more into the relevant specific aspects of Berachain in the Technical Design Document.
Back to Jani razing the temple to the ground… The insight was as follows. There lay at the heart of Milady a set of contradictions which would inevitably rip apart factions of the community around Milady. One portion of the Milady community preaches clean living, clearpill path whilst another portion of the Milady community promotes raves as one of the primary cultural distribution mechanisms and community anchors. Scroll through any sample of Milady holders and you will see that a non-negligible portion of the community are degens who like drugs. Charlotte herself states that her first exposure to Bitcoin was through Silk Road. It’s not uncommon to observe the schizo unfolding of Miladys concurrently celebrating aspects of rave culture whilst dogpiling accounts for promoting the wrong type of drugs or cultural expressions. Anyone who has hung around online communities long enough knows how such schizo gatekeeping plays out over time. The unfolding tensions between in groups and out groups is a story as old as divided and conquered time.
What was clear to Jani at the time was that producing a derivative was a dead end path. At the level of degen and DeFi experimentation Beras and Miladys are peers. Given the contradictory DNA within Milady there was no way a Bong Bear derivative could fit within the Milady Contradiction without angering The Powers That Be. It was from this insight that the anti-derivative path opened up with Ravepill as the guiding light. And that is perhaps enough of the backstory for now.
