NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

That you retain a strong sense of its unreality seems healthy to me.

You know your totally legit community is going great when "rug pulls", the term for when a scam artist runs away with everyone's money, happen so frequently that the term is further shortened to just "rugged" https://t.co/deLANEjGSH

— JP (@vectorpoem) November 15, 2021

Goodbye, Staples Center. Hello, https://t.co/KvGn47hmkL Arena https://t.co/d9mC0R50Ta

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 17, 2021

Visitors will see one clear change at the entrance to the arena from L.A. Live, adjacent to the statue of Magic Johnson, where 3,300 square feet will become a dedicated Crypto.com “activation space” featuring crypto-centric interactive experiences for sports or music fans. Crypto.com has also signed with the Lakers and Kings as their official crypto partner.

SICK

Enron signed a 30-year deal to have the Astros ballpark be called Enron Field for 30 years. The name lasted less than 2 years.

crypto.com can keep the naming rights when it becomes a site selling online mausoleums for your loved ones

tee hee

https://www.inputmag.com/culture/bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-nyc-ape-fest?utm_campavign

I'd kind of assumed that this was a zoomer thing and the reason I found it incomprehensible and bizarre was because as someone born in the 80s I was just too old, but most of the people quoted in this article are in their 30s?

Ape Fest 2021 will culminate with an extravagant “warehouse” party in Brooklyn featuring surprise appearances by Lil Baby, the Strokes, Questlove, Beck, Chris Rock, and Aziz Ansari.

Wouldn’t have thought Questlove would need the money.

"Yay, I'm in a group!" —every Bored Ape collector

I think this appeals to the same people who would have gone to Fyre Fest.

Also surprised Jamie Hewlett hasn’t sued these guys their cartoons look too much like the Gorillaz.

Lil Baby lol

It makes sense it would skew to those in their 30s, or those that are at a point in their life that they have more discretionary income to spend/waste on jpg’s. Still, at 42, I feel ancient in the space.

it being disaffected ppl in their 30’s (like moi) makes the most sense to me. If I didn’t believe in climate change, or thought some hand-wavy technology would fix it soon, I would absolutely be doing crypto shit.

It is very clear to me that in this economy, and likely for the rest of my life, if you don’t have a highly valued and very scarce skill, working is just not a viable path out of precarity (and even if it was, for a lot of reasons, many of them generationally common, I am so fucking bad at work now!)

But that isn’t enough to make me want to save the down payment on a house by turning up the dial on the machine that burns the blood of future children. I’ll just take my inevitable medical bankruptcy instead, thank you!

US pro sports teams are already up to their hips in promotional agreements with dozens of janky start-ups flush with VC or IPO cash, looking to ride a team's coattails into a kind of respectability. crypto.com just looks like a particularly high roller in that game.

Enron signed a 30-year deal to have the Astros ballpark be called Enron Field for 30 years. The name lasted less than 2 years.

Enron is gone, but those sports teams are still there, pulling down those sweet promotional dollars and minting money by the double fist full.

It seems so transparent that it's monopoly money shit for people who:
a) don't have lives or hobbies outside of working/hustling/making money;
b) have too much discretionary income as a result of a;
c) don't have many friends or a community because they're boring people;

and

d) have absolutely fucking abysmal taste in art, music, poetry, and pretty much any artform you can think of.

There are exceptions, of course, like our Jeff, but that's the only read I can get on the situation

The abysmal taste thing sounds snobby, but what the fuck ever, this "art" is fucking hideous garbage

There are exceptions, of course, like our Jeff, but that's the only read I can get on the situation

looking to ride a team's coattails into a kind of respectability

it's less about respectability (though that's still probably a factor bc crypto weirdos are very insecure) and more just cryptocurrencies being a ponzi scheme that require new users to buy in to keep the value going up, so aggressively promoting it is necessary

Here’s some NFTs for everyone.

💀OMG WHO RIGHT CLICKED ALL OF THE #NFTs?☠️
🛳🏴‍☠️ https://t.co/o0YRK78AkL 🏴‍☠️🛳
👀 pic.twitter.com/g74TFqzX0n

— geoff 👋 🇵🇹 (@GeoffreyHuntley) November 18, 2021

ahhah, just came to post that. I have a NAS at home with ~12TB free, a few terabytes short. Which is a shame because I'd love to download every NFT that exists just to immediately delete them all.

own 20TB of the worst art of all time

Had this come up as an ad on a concert review:

https://www.lelandsnftstore.com/

^^Mellow Mafia Bass Master Leland Sklar's NFT business

Saw an ad at the movies for Crypto.com and it was a hilarious hard sell to men in the audience: "Are you a man or wuss? Victory goes to one who dares, ya cuck!"

Surprise everyone!!! I am very excited to share this news with you. These mergers of art, music, digital paintings and animation came out better than my highest expectations. Thank you @RollingStone for the premiere. More soon….https://t.co/2ECy5t2yW2#digitalart #NFT #nftartist

— Serj Tankian (@serjtankian) November 22, 2021

I cry when the Amazon deserves to dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee

is there somehow not a zappa coin yet

Dweezil probably tried but had the rest of his family quietly sue to stop him (again).

the only artist whose involvement in NFTs is "acceptable" to me is BT (Brian Transeau), because he's such a fucking dork that he was probably dreaming about this shit in the 90's

https://www.altcoinbuzz.io/nft/is-wolf-game-the-next-nft-craze/

I missed out on this silly wolf game. I think it would have been profitable for about 5 minutes.

I cry when the Amazon deserves to dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, November 22, 2021 3:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Right-click This NFT!

When this tweet was posted, the price of $WOOL was $0.06 USD. The current price is $0.138 USD (And falling after another exploit was found). Currently, Sheep produce 10,000 $WOOL a day, or $600 USD a day. That is more than the yield of a CyberKongz Genesis.

#MacysIsCancelled pic.twitter.com/OBCsPYBwHT

— Ben Ritz (@BudgetBen) November 25, 2021

They are appropriately ugly at least.

This is so fucking good

whoever made this has captured the spirit of DS9 to a degree that is uncanny pic.twitter.com/Lb5LWYM0Pr

— broccoli rob 🥦 (@turnip_tops) November 28, 2021

amazing

stellar

Well done!

DEAR STALKERS,

WE WANT TO GIVE A DETAILED COMMENT ON YESTERDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF NFT-BONUSES FOR S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

GSC GAME WORLD IS AN INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO. WE HAVE NO PUBLISHER, BUT WE DO HAVE WONDERFUL PARTNERS, AN INCREDIBLE TEAM, AND A DREAM OF A GAME THAT YOU WILL SINCERELY LOVE. JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER DEVS, WE NEED TWO MAIN RESOURCES: TIME AND MONEY.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: HEART OF CHERNOBYL IS TRULY THE BIGGEST AND THE MOST COMPLEX GAME WE HAVE EVER CREATED. ALL THE FUNDS THAT WE EARN DURING THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS (INCLUDING THE POTENTIAL INCOME FROM NFT) WILL BE SPENT ON IMPROVING THE LONG-AWAITED GAME TO MAKE IT EVEN BETTER.

WHY DID WE CHOOSE NFT? IT’S A NEW TECHNOLOGY, AND WE ARE EAGER TO «DO NFT RIGHT»: GIVE CERTAIN FANS AN OPPORTUNITY «TO GET INTO» THE GAME WITHOUT INTERFERING WITH OTHER PLAYERS’ EXPERIENCE. THAT’S WHY THE TOKENS ARE ENTIRELY OPTIONAL AND HAVE NO IMPACT ON GAMEPLAY OR STORY (NO WEAPONS, QUESTS, LOCATIONS, ETC.) AND CAN BE ACTIVATED ONLY BEFORE THE GAME RELEASE.

YESTERDAY WE ANNOUNCED THE FIRST TOKENS — THE FACES OF SEVERAL NPCS. THEY AREN’T EVEN INVOLVED IN THE STORY. BUT SOME OF YOU THOUGHT WE WOULD GO A BIT TOO FAR FROM HERE. THAT’S WHY WE WANT TO TRANSPARENTLY DISCLOSE OUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE NFTS. WE ARE GOING TO IMPLEMENT (NICKNAMES OF THE OWNERS ON SOME IN-GAME DESKS/WALLS/ETC (PLEASE REMEMBER IT’S A LARGE OPEN WORLD WE’RE TALKING ABOUT), GLOVES/TATTOOS, SKINS/BADGES FOR THE MULTIPLAYER MODE (RELEASING AS A FREE UPDATE AFTER THE STORY CAMPAIGN) AND COLLECTIBLE CARDS (DMARKET PLATFORM ONLY, NO INTEGRATION IN S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2).

DMARKET WAS CHOSEN AS A PARTNER AS A VIDEOGAME-ONLY BLOCKCHAIN PLATFORM. THEY LOVE GAMES, AND THEY WERE EAGER TO WORK WITH US ON THIS KIND OF SOFT NET REALIZATION. DMARKET WORKS ON A PRIVATE BLOCKCHAIN SYSTEM WITH BRIDGES INTO OTHER NETWORKS (SUCH AS POLYGON AND SOLANA WITH PRIORITY TO PROVIDE LOW ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND MINIMIZE CO2-EMISSIONS AND OTHER NEGATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS.

IN THIS STATEMENT, WE ARE AS HONEST WITH YOU AS WE CAN. WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR SUPPORT, BUT AT LEAST WE HOPE YOU CAN HEAR US AND UNDERSTAND OUR REASONS.

THE TEXT TURNED OUT TO BE VERY BIG: THANK YOU FOR READING IT TILL THE END. PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR YESTERDAY’S MISCOMMUNICATION AND ALL THE FEELINGS IT CAUSED. WE KNOW THAT YOU WISH ONLY THE BEST FOR OUR GAME, AND WE APPRECIATE IT.

WITH LOVE,

GSC GAME WORLD TEAM.

AN HOUR LATER THAT, THOUGH, THEY TWEETED THIS

pic.twitter.com/mffnmpiQiw

— S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OFFICIAL (@stalker_thegame) December 16, 2021

Periodically, people suggest that Adbusters should create NFTs, or get involved in an NFT project. So periodically we have to set the record straight.

If you know what an NFT is, you know about their enormous environmental impact. NFTs are generally "minted" on a proof-of-work blockchain that uses complex computations to prove the validity of transactions. These computations use an extraordinary amount of energy and are becoming increasingly energy intensive over time.

But NFTs are worse than a simple bitcoin transaction, because every step of the way requires a new transaction to be verified, from minting to bidding to resales— and all that energy use is multiplied when multiple editions of a single piece are minted.

So they're an environmentally destructive juggernaut... but it gets worse.

NFTs are an investment pyramid scheme. Like Amway, as soon as someone buys into NFTs, they'll be evangelizing about them to all their friends— so that they're not left holding all the useless assets they bought.

NFT evangelists will constantly crow about the artistic community they've found, but in truth there is no such thing as an NFT community. That "community" consists of a group of people pumping up the prices of their useless assets in order to sell them to suckers who want to belong.

Real community is not predicated on exchange, but on gift. On connection. On love.

NFTs are also a method of creating artificial scarcity. And the world we wish to live in is post-scarcity.

Our praxis is the prefigurement of the world we wish to live in.

So we will never have anything to do with NFTs.

whoever wrote that for Adbusters, thank you

longing for those naive months between finding out what NFTs were and realizing they're never going away

if you ever find me in the metaverse you have permission to metamurder me

Brian Eno on NFTshttps://t.co/reT8MjYYqB pic.twitter.com/RtYVVKIcKH

— Michael DeForge (@michael_deforge) December 20, 2021

He HAS tbf just lent his name to a turntable that synaesthetically changes colour to match the music, so

heh, yeah,

but thank god he's not completely fucking wrong on this like so many other artists are. i was dreading clicking that link, just because of the fear that brian eno would be completely wrong on NFTs, and that it would be another "well, that's 2021!" kind of extremely bad, horrible moment. so, phew. at least something is still right.

i haven't yet read this October magazine piece from earlier this year, linked at the top of that interview, but the title alone is worth thinking about

NFTs, or The Readymade Reversed

ha yea i was dreading scrolling down as soon as i saw his name

at least the turntable would be cool to look at on drugs or whatever

honestly had no clue where Eno was gonna come down on this