GordonGoner (Wylie Aronow) 🍌

I don’t think I’ve ever shared this, but Jane and I stayed in close touch over the last few years. We became penpals after Yuga began donating to her legacy foundation. We’d hung out a few times in SF and LA, and she’d graciously sat down with me on camera for a documentary. She’d send me these beautiful letters telling me all about her grueling travel schedule and all her adventures. I’d tell her how my health recovery was going, about what Yuga was doing, and what I was trying next.

Sometimes she’d very, very gently suggest to me veganism, which I always found sweet. Last year she had convinced me to go to an experimental clinic in Mexico.

She was always so concerned for me. She last reached out to me recently, asking me how I was doing, and I was trying to find the right words to tell her my health hadn’t improved lately (without bumming her out). I feel really sad I didn’t write her back sooner.

I admired Jane greatly throughout my life. She was staying with my friend when she passed and he told me that she loved me and that she was asking about me. I think she was the closest I’ll ever come to knowing a saint. She had this compassion and profound sense of mission, but there was also this dry sense of humor and wit and a kind of childlike wilyness that I’m not sure everyone around her could perceive. She was infinitely charming and I loved her.

I’m staying off social media these days. But I just wanted to stop by and say I love you apes and I’m proud that we get to contribute to her life’s mission.

I think if you’re struggling to meet women you shouldn’t go up to them and say “may I meet you” because A - That’s weird, don’t do that, and B - You should instead ask girls where to get good BBQ.

Let me explain.

Seven years ago I saw this cute girl’s photo online and couldn’t stop thinking about her so I DM’d her if she knew of any good BBQ places in her hometown.

My opener was: “Hey do you know any good BBQ spots in X.”

I was in Asheville, North Carolina. She told me she was now living Seoul, South Korea and didn’t know of any BBQ spots back in her hometown and politely shooed me away by informing me she had a boyfriend in Seoul, and that was that.

I then drove four hours to her hometown anyway in this kind of fugue state and ate a random hotdog stand, sat and wondered what I was doing there, and then drove the four hours back home.

I spent the next month drifting off to sleep while imagining she was sleeping on my chest in this hammock in my favorite park across town. It helped me fall sleep.

She moved from Seoul to Asheville about 3 months later.

She DM’d me, “Hey I just moved to Asheville.”

I joked, “Hey that’s crazy, I just moved to South Korea.”

Our first date was at a steakhouse I could barely afford and then an ice cream parlor. Even though I’d been on lots of dates before, I hadn’t been on one in a long time, and I was ridiculously nervous because every time I looked away her face seemed to change shape.

I mean that literally. It kept shapeshifting. Like her face couldn’t decide what form it wanted to take; there were multiple versions of her: similar but entirely different faces. Also, there was this incredibly soft and otherworldly glow about her, like light emanating off her skin in ways I still have trouble describing. I was startled by it but I kept it to myself and assumed I was having my first acid flashback or something, and just tried to keep my cool despite worrying I was losing my mind.

Our second date was takeout Thai and watching the finale of Game of Thrones on her 13” laptop at her new apartment filled with her unopened moving boxes and a stiff vintage sofa. Her face changed shape only a couple times that night and that etheric glow was starting to settle. We shared our favorite music with each other on Spotify after we were done talking shit about the finale. We discovered we both listened to shitty ska punk when we were teenagers and we both still knew all the lyrics to “Born to Die” by Leftover Crack and we sung it together.

Our third date was in the hammock in my favorite park and she fell asleep on my chest, exactly as I’d imagined it.

It was fall. The leaves were orange in Asheville. We had a wool army blanket. We smoked a little weed, which I hadn’t done in years. I wrote compulsive notes in my phone while she slept, which is what I do when I’m high. Then I looked down at her. She was just one face then, and the weird emanating light was now gone. She was the version of her face I had seen online and in my fantasies.

That was a little over six years ago. We’re still together, still in love today.

The hot dog place I’d driven to that day in a fugue after I messaged her ended up being a few blocks from her childhood home. We bought our first home together just down the road from it a few years later.

We discovered we had lived in multiple cities at the same time across the country over the prior decade and didn’t know it; Seattle and Chicago and Miami, at one point us even living on the same block in Chicago a decade prior. We had eaten at the same local restaurants in the same timeframe and yet somehow never saw each-other.

It was as if we had been circling each other for years, looking for each other that entire time.

I am omitting several details here that are so unbelievably kismet, you wouldn’t believe them if I told you, but they are better left a secret between us anyway.

One night in bed, about a year into our relationship, she confessed that she had moved to Asheville to be with me but that she couldn’t explain it. After I had DM’d her asking for a BBQ suggestion she couldn’t stop thinking about me. She had this profound sense that we were supposed to be together. She said she had a sense I was meant to do big things with my life, and that we were meant to lift each other up to greater heights. She said it felt cosmic.

She knew nothing much about me other than I was clearly broke and had been chronically sick for about a decade. I had yet to start my company where I would attempt semi-big things.

She just had to follow this impulse, she said. She knew no one in Asheville when she left to come find me. She said she loved my name: Wylie Aronow.

That same night I confessed that I secretly thought she might be a shapeshifting succubus fed gf that I had accidentally conjured into existence and I half-worried sometimes that she might stab me in my sleep and eat my heart with a spoon as a kind of completion to an occult ritual. She thought that was cute. I did too.

Our strange little romance. Sick online boy and demon goth girl. We are still a happy couple and I really hope we get to spend the rest of our lives together because we make each other satisfied in ways I thought were bullshit before I knew her, and we did, in fact, lift each other up to greater heights.

I think my point is that if you want to meet girls you can just capture cute shapeshifting etheric gfs living in South Korea by DMing them about smoked meats and having pleasant thoughts before bed. The world is your oyster.

Man, that was really an incredible weekend. Thank you to everyone who flew out to Vegas to come hang with us, listen to some great music, see some internet frens, and gamble like degenerates. Thank you to everyone at Yuga who made this ape fest such a flawless experience. And thank you especially to everyone who came up and said hi and wished me well. It meant a lot and I was stoked all night just seeing old faces and meeting new friends.

There is nothing like this club anywhere. Every single time, five ape fests down now, I hear the same thing from new members and their +1’s: ‘I get it now.’

Going to spend the next two weeks recovering. Lost my voice and everything fucking hurts, but I think it was worth it. Hard to describe, but seeing everyone really re-energized me and reminded me of what I need to do and why.

Had to reinstall X just to make this post, and now I’m deleting it again and focusing everything I have on healing up in 2026 so I can get back to doing what I want more than anything, which is to help build weird and fun shit on the Internet for this community.

In the meantime, I couldn’t be more proud of Garga, Figge, Cam, and everyone building in this ecosystem. I think 2026 is going to be a great year.

Love you all.

Incredible seeing Adam’s conviction in Yuga Labs and Otherside. Proud to call him a partner. What really strikes me is how much he cares about the worlds we’re building together: the mythology, the scope and ambition, the stories behind the curtain, the absurdity and fun that goes into creating an entirely new place for the internet. That’s exactly how I feel, too.

See you on the Otherside.

Been really struggling lately with some health shit so going to be even more offline than usual. Apologies if I take forever to get back to you or miss some shit. My head is just somewhere else right now, and I feel better when I’m not obsessing over my digital life. Will come back to mint NFTs all cycle long, when stuff pops up I want, because it’s still ridiculously fun.

See a lot of talk about how the move is to only invest in 2021 or prior NFTs. I don’t agree. Obviously I think some of the 2021 (especially BAYC) or prior collections and established independent NFT artists are essential if you’re a collector, but the space is maturing and a lot of capital (especially in ETH) is waiting on the sidelines.

Incredible emerging artists and new high effort projects with solid teams and ideas are going to make their mark this cycle.

I think it will require more discernment than 2021 if you are just looking to make a quick flip, but I wouldn’t want to miss out on the next round of really high demand fine art NFTS or community-centered projects this space is going present.

❤️