NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

“When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat,” MetaKovan said in a statement published by Christie’s. “And here’s why — it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can’t hack digitally is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It is worth $1 billion.”

lol

$69M was the third highest ever sale for a living artist, btw

this all gives me flashbacks to how in like 2014 there was a certain kind of annoying person who would pepper any conversation about any aspect of any kind of creative project with "you should totally do a kickstarter!"

wanna hear my latest dystopic vision, which i think black mirror has already done? imagine a world where NFTs - assigning value and commodifying things that previously were not in a "market" - are ubiquitous, and the whole early 2021-era where the discussion was temporarily focused NFTs and digital art seems hilariously old-fashioned and irrelevant. why not tokenize experiences, or people? shouldn't every person have a NFT value that can fluctuate and go up or down depending on the market forces. at least some people will think this is a wonderful idea, because they believe that the "market" would "reward" "good" "people". then it's basically like that one black mirror episode after that, you know the one

commodification and financialization of everyone and everything def not far fetched -- college students can now sell portions of their future income streams iirc.

and that happening in a shared digital space while the natural world burns up around us also seems pretty likely.

another layer to this is that a lot of the hyped NFTs are just, like, bad art. Like the Beeple thing -- it is very skilled and obviously took a lot of work, but it just seems kind of bad to me. Like the images don't work together well at all as a single giant image -- it reminds me of that million dollar page website. Individual images have a digital Banksy vibe.

like very /trench

yeah, it fucking blows

i was making images kind of like that for a while and it actually made me physically ill after a while, just the whole process and the way it came out in the end. on the other hand, maybe i just sucked lol

but yeah, it's just like for THAT to be the digital artwork of our time, blehhhhh

like, maybe ian cheng's Emissaries, that would be a candidate for me

it reminds me of that million dollar page website

or just like a big cloud generator website that stamps a giant FREECLOUD.NET watermark all over it. if you zoom in and look at how the individual images fit together in the mosaic, it's just a fucking turd sandwich

It's easy to dunk on the art, but I get that the current art isn't the point at all, it's just proof of concept shit, right? And unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg most likely.

yep

tip of an iceberg trying to melt itself

Isnt this all just an elaborate, digital version of what Marissa whatserface tried to pull 10 years back?

"My art is worth 10K so Im saying it is, pay up"

"My art is worth 10K so Im saying it is, pay up"

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, March 15, 2021 10:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

hell yeah 😎

https://mintable.app/music/item/GLOTTUSLP1-THEFIRSTGLOTTUSLPSPECIALEDITIONEXCLUSIVEREMASTER/sVa9rL9JkGReJZ4

everyone buy my nft thanks in advance

Shit, forks should put up his video game collection on foundation, they’re probably worth 8 trillion

This is a dumb trend.

(The environmental impact feels specious. The explanations I read about its environmental impact relies on asymptotic models that are completely detached from the realities of “mining--” the basic idea that computation is different (e.g. power consumption and clock-rate trade-offs) on graphics processors or FPGAs than desktop CPUs especially for Etherium's proof of work problem. But you’re all smart so I’m sure there’s something I’m missing!)

Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're "buying" and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon

— Jonty Wareing (@jonty) March 17, 2021

Honestly, I have been trying to come up to speed a little so that I can not “eat shit publicly” so often, and I’m still having trouble identifying trustworthy/informed sources. I’m like a Facebook grandma now, it’s awful.

On the environment/energy impact, I mean. A lot of the most detailed writing about it comes from blockchain advocates, and a lot of blockchain advocates seem like craven monsters. On the enviro side, there are plenty of well-intentioned people grappling with yet another unforced self-own of humanity, they’re exhausted, and there are a lot of basic errors/misunderstandings.

Arguing with blockchain fanatics is exhausting, yes. A lot of the same kind of life-in-a-vacuum thinking that you get from hardcore libertarians and presumably a ton of overlap.

Deep down it does admittedly make me mad that being (I still think) right about blockchain makes me $0 and being wrong about it has made many of them millionaires.

Oh, for sure. When people chant havefunstayingpoor, it is a sad defense to have to say “You don’t have to be rich to have fun”

I mean, I can also say “I look down from my perch at you being a fucking dick” but it doesn’t seem to be working for some reason

Oh well. I have nothing to do with these people. I cannot affect NFTs. I don’t want to make art that gets mistaken for any of this, and I haven’t been for a while. I guess that’s all I need to do.

the whole thing reminds me of the poker ecosystem, where 85% of them claim they're winning players. but the money's gotta be coming from somewhere!

I don’t want to make art that gets mistaken for any of this

also, i understand, "art", digital or otherwise, has nothing to do with NFTs. art is something NFTs can encompass and financially manipulate, but there's no inherent connection between art and NFTs. it'll go away, or it will dominate the world, or a form of it will dominate the world. it seems like it will dominate the world. i am the canary in the cryptogoldmine.

*CHIRP CHIRP*
*THESE GUYS ARE THE ANTITHESIS OF THE ARTFUL SPIRIT, AVOID THEM! CHIRP CHIRP!*

maybe that's the logical end. i'm living in a bunker, 2064. everyone is rich except for the whiny dissidents. i draw a circle on the prison wall by grinding a dull femur from some bag of bones that was there when i first saw the room. i am art man

the whole thing reminds me of the poker ecosystem, where 85% of them claim they're winning players. but the money's gotta be coming from somewhere!

otm

the whole purpose of NFTs for the crypto weirdos is ultimately to funnel money into cryptocurrencies from credulous artists etc. in order to further inflate the bubbles & make them more money

It’s either that or the petrodollar

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/beeple-everydays-review-1951656

69 million, not nice
http://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2021/03/Beeple-its-fun-to-draw-black-people.jpg

I also heard an interview with him - he seems like a complete idiot. Perhaps even an idiot with no delusion that he's anything other than an idiot.

his audience is as bad as he is

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/nfts-are-driving-stunts-and-diving-into-the-culture-wars

The insanity around NFTs, and what is now for sale as an NFT, has whiplashed from obscurity to frenetic hysteria in just a matter of weeks. While Ja Rule and trading cards and Beeple’s “artwork” are often talked about with perplexity, there are countless NFTs hitting the specialized trading markets almost hourly. Some are stunts, some are pitched as real art, and there’s everything in between. A company that specializes in blockchain technology, for example, purchased a real, physical print by the artist Banksy for $95,000, then lit the print on fire until it was destroyed, and then sold a digital version of it as an NFT for almost $400,000. Grimes, the musician, sold about $6 million worth of music-and-video NFTs last month. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet is currently at auction with a high bid of $2.5 million. A poker player is selling his most famous quotes as NFTs. The TV show American Gods is shilling trading cards of the show’s characters as NFTs. The website Quartz is offering a news article about NFTs as an NFT itself. There’s an NFT house for sale, nudes of the actor Katie Cassidy at auction as NFTs, and there are all sorts of digital collectibles ranging from pixelated punks to impish kitty cats with wings. Now an Unnamed Artist has a bridge to sell you.

If it feels to you like culture is collapsing in on itself and nothing makes sense, that’s because the speed with which these changes are taking place is exacerbating. It’s almost like we’re living in a simulation that has sped up and no one knows where the pause button is. But that, sadly, is by design. Bitcoin, which is only a little over a decade old, was first adopted by the video game culture: nerds who thought it was cool to mine on their computers and collect these odd little coins, but who are now Bitcoin billionaires. They are using that money, like Monopoly money that turned real overnight, to dictate what is considered art culturally. In doing so, they are—some believe—destroying the culture. Like all things tech, what we’re talking about when we talk about NFTs is still up for debate. In the same way that no one knew (or still doesn’t know?) if companies like Twitter and Facebook were “media companies” or “tech companies,” and the financial markets can’t decide if Tesla and its electric ilk are car companies or iPhones with wheels, NFTs are proving to be a ubiquitary that can be hijacked for anything that someone is willing to pay for: music, videos, collectibles, articles, and the most contentious of all: art.

a little over the top, but honestly i'm in burn it down mood so it resonates with me

that's good, reminds me of the Bruce Sterling quote "technology is an infinite powderkeg"

i wish i had made something of myself and had a big following, because I am *STARVING* for a big name whatever to say these words:

fuck all of this. fuck the old art world. fuck this new art world. reject both of those, loudly

i would logroll across the united states to lick the boot of someone important to say this

I see a lot of NFTs for sale on Instagram now for every mediocre piece of digital art there is

Deviantart should go NFT

i thought it did

the absolute hideousness of beeple's jpegs is pretty notable i think. this isn't just the art world elevating a charlatan, as usual, but something worse even than kitsch

we're talking sub-adbusters social commentary here

They are purposefully shocking for sure

I sort of enjoyed Beeple when I thought he was just some random guy with a lot of IG followers. It's kitschy for sure, but sometimes it's fun. But I had no idea he had so much art-world cache.

there is a sickening circularity to it.

beeple creates images that reflect the american grotesque, the whirpool of desire, cruelty, and meaninglessness that lies at the heart of our culture.

and then he is elevated by the "blue chip" art world, ultra-rich collectors, the very people who make our society that way.

whenever these people elevate nihilistic artists -- artists who seem to mock the idea that art should aspire to anything more than, like, a winking acknowledgement of its own status as a commodity -- it makes me angry. it just seems like an example of the rich investor class rubbing our noses in the face that they don't care, that they think it is uncool to care.

beeple seems like the worst example of this. i feel a little like this about koons, too.

beeple seems like the worst example of this. i feel a little like this about koons, too.