What happens on the blockchain stays on the blockchain

An old line, often repeated in movies and television shows is, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," with different locales being substituted for "Vegas." This admonishment-to-secrecy has existed at least since 2003, when employed in an advertising campaign by R&R Partners. Some sources, though, posit the phrase's birth from a much earlier time period.

While the above might be true for real life, depending on the human capability of holding a secret, it is not true for the blockchain. "What happens on the blockchain stays on the blockchain" becomes a precaution for us to carefully consider what we post, whether we are authoring an original post or commenting on someone else's post.

A centralized website can always lose funding or be bought-out and subsequently terminated. Among the myriad examples are: imeem, PicPlz, Panoramio, TerraServer, and ValueAmerica. But remember that all blockchains remain as decentralized entities. As long as there are servers and witnesses, the data will live in infamy.

—Brief side tangent:
For a fantastic short story, check out "The Last Witness" by @negativer !!!

Yes, so as long as that Last Witness remains alive, so does the blockchain. I suppose a transhumanist might muse that the blockchain is a good first-step in making us immortal. Long after I am dead and gone, my granddaughters and their granddaughters will be able to read these humble words of mine. An amazing thought, isn't it? And that is precisely why some people like @sultnpapper and others are blogging on the blockchain, doing it for posterity.

In fact, that permanence makes the blockchain a perfect tool for storing precious memories, family photos, and other treasures that will be impervious to fading-over-time, for surviving a house fire, and for outliving the lifespan of any centralized website or cloud storage platform. It will become a treasure trove of human thought, human images, human foibles, and the dreams of a crypto-generation. And probably a few LOL-Cats as well.

So, with that comes the caution to be careful with our words. What we say in carelessness or heat-of-the-moment passion will live forever, and our granddaughters' granddaughters might be reading it. Whatever we post, whether it is worthy of a Nobel Prize or just sh**posting will live forever.

What sort of legacy will we leave for future generations?

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~image from TheWeek.com, edited for this post by me~

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