Originally published at: Celebs sued for promoting crypto crap | Boing Boing
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This promotion by Fallon, Hilton, Goopy, etc. was more sleazy than the celebrities doing paid endorsements for cryptocurrencies in TV ad spots, which is saying something. However it happened, they should all face consequences for shilling on behalf of pyramid schemes.
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Professional shillers chose the wrong crap to shill.
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What? Someone with such a pristine and scam-free history as Gwyneth “Goop” Paltrow being involved in yet another obvious and creepy scam? Why, that’s … pretty much par for the course for her.
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If this is a sign of anything, then those celebrities are in a shit load of trouble of hawking things they don’t understand
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oi, pyramid/ponzi schemes promoted by celebrities …better build a bigger boa… er, prison?
(hell, even trump supported Amway, or perhaps the other way around? “sweet Krishna on a cracker, trump is the personification of ponzi scheme”)
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In April 2021, Yuga Labs released the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of cartoon apes with a computer-generated combination of features and accessories, such as gold fur, a sailor hat, laser eyes, 3-D glasses, a cigarette, as well as “hip hop” clothes, a “pimp coat,” a prison jumpsuit, a pith helmet, and a “sushi chef” headband.
Hmm…has anyone checked to see if the sushi chef headband isn’t really a kamikaze pilot’s headband?
Narrator: They did.
Take one of the apes’ characteristics, which Yuga calls a “sushi chef headband.” Brennan reads and speaks Japanese, and saw the headband actually said “kamikaze,” which has been used as a slur against Japanese people.
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While a lot of people are gonna get away with this by using the “I’m dumb, I didn’t know what I was promoting” defense, at least something’s happening to hold someone (anyone?) accountable for this mess. But like always, it’ll just be the people not quite rich enough to mount an effective defense.
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They should shill something credible like sports book betting.
/s
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I’m glad to see these celebrities facing repercussions. Forgetting about the ponzi-esque elements of these NFT projects, it’s clear that ALL of the celebs were paid by Yuga Labs, but failed to disclose their endorsements.
After getting paid by Yuga to promote BAYC, many of these celebs even launched their own NFT projects, promoted them without disclosing their connections to them, then left their fans holding the bag when the projects quickly lost money. For example:
- Justin Bieber claimed to have bought two BAYC NFTs with his own money, but it’s clear that he was given both of them (and was probably compensated for his endorsement)). Soon afterwards, Bieber began promoting an NFT project called the InBetweeners. He claimed to have found this project and promoted it to his fans out of pure love, without EVER admitting he was a co-founder of the project.
- Gwyneth Paltrow also used industry contacts to promote several NFT scams, including the FlowerGirls NFT. She colluded with other celebrities like Brie Larson, Reese Witherspoon, and Eva Langoria to all do heavily promotion of the product on Twitter at the same time, then quietly selling at the peak of the hype, all while pretending to be long-term fans just interested in the art.
Other celebs like Logan Paul and Floyd Mayweather have launched huge NFT projects then pulled the rug without ever shipping any product to their “investors”, but at least they openly disclosed their connections to the projects. Unlike Paltrow, Fallon, Snoop, and other a-list celebs.
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A fool and their money are soon parted.
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I’m curious how the two legally distinct, but frequently commingled by NFT projects, aspects will end up interacting.
Neither is all that novel individually: you’ve got the strictly NFT side; which, in itself, isn’t terribly different from any other distasteful veblen good you’d find a celebrity trotting out to suit their interests; and you’ve got the assorted-shitcoins-and-exotic-derivatives side; which is a veritable menagerie of problematic finance: some ponzi schemes, some pump and dumps, lots of insider trading; but mostly rehashes of old favorites with a weird techbro reskin.
What’s going to be interesting to watch is how a claim that really rests on the combination of the two ends up being interpreted: even if they technically would deserve it it’s hard to imagine that the various undeclared endorsements would be taken all that seriously if the good being hyped had no financial instrument characteristics(dubious fashion lines, someone’s badge-engineered celebrity booze, that sort of thing); while the almost-certainly-criminal finance side of things seems much more likely to be treated as a crime in itself; but it would be something of a departure for the celebrities that were brought in to hype the associated veblen good with the financial side of the operation that the SEC is more likely to take a direct interest in.
It’s like a penny stock scam with a Thomas Kinkade gallery grafted into its brainstem(or perhaps the other way around?).
Can anyone think of historical analogs that I’m missing of a similar phenomenon where there’s a probable financial crime; but the the celebrity mouthpieces associated with it are at one step remove because they were actually hyping a degenerate status symbol that’s distinct from; but architecturally tied to, the financial crime?
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NFTs are the stupidest waste of money I’ve ever seen. You csn print the damn things from any computer connected to a printer. Don’t get me started on Donald Trump’s digital trading cards. Same damn thing except political.
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“Racism is different these days — you can’t be so overt about it. You have to kind of trolley,” Dash said.
[citation needed]
I wonder if HP has put its ink carts on the blockchain
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