Originally published at: Map of celebrity NFT shenanigans | Boing Boing
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The term of art is…
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Wow, so happy I didn’t fall for that one [NFT’s]…
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Or…
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Originally I thought that digital only artists could use this to sell “originals”.
But now it is just a tulip craze all over. If only I had no scruples, i would try to sell some haha.
If you wouldn’t pay the same amount of money for a hand drawn image of an Ape (and if this was someone like Bansky or Picasso, maybe you would) then you sure as hell shouldn’t be buying an NFT of one.
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It has repeatedly struck me how the forced-seeming “this is so cool and fun and it might even make us rich” rhetoric of the NFT pushers is so eerily similar to the cosmetics MLM rhetoric that hit social media hard a few years ago.
I see very little difference between “This ape is so me and it’s already worth twice what I paid for it” and “This face cream makes me look so much younger and they’ll give us both Lexuses if you’ll join me in selling it.”
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Except that unlike the face cream the claims of the NFT-pushers actually are true – in the short term anyway. It’s stupid and wasteful and will collapse in the end, but for now people actually are making money. Until they won’t. Like with the Beanie Baby craze in the 1990s.
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Well no the cosmetics MLMs work the same way. If you got in early, you could make money. It’s the exact same grift. It’s a variation on a pyramid scheme.
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I guess it depends on the definition of “early”. I know people who actually made money on Beanie Babies (because they got out before the crash) but all the people I know who were taken in by Amway and the like lost money – the money went to the executives, not the chumps actually trying to sell the product.
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Yes no one makes money selling products with an MLM, that’s not the claim. But other than executives, the people who make some money are people who get in early and recruit enough suckers that they get money from recruitment bonuses and get a percentage of their “sales” which are not real sales but the initial bit of product that sellers are required to buy upfront when they get started.
NFT’s are the same in that the most money is made by the people offering coin or running exchanges but some money can be made by an early adopter is if they don’t get caught in a rug pull, or another more direct scam. But getting in early is just as dangerous as getting into MLM or other pyramid schemes because of rug pulls and pump and dumps etc. Its just as hard to tell when early is early enough or when a particular scam will pan out even for the early birds.
Edit: And unlike Bennie Babies and other physical collectibles when the bottom drops out of the tulip craze, there won’t be people still into just collecting them for display at more reasonable prices.
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world of web3? WTF is world of web3?
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Web3 is what the Cryptobros and associated griftosphere are calling the mythical vision which is “The Web”, but built around blockchain, bitcoin, NFTs, and virtual something something probably who knows.
It’s like they’ve proposed an entirely new and inevitable society and economy and industry, built entirely around Beanie Babies, tulips, and land speculation in the South Sea. No-one who’s proposing it can say how any of it would work, and everyone else is pointing out that the whole concept sounds about as useful as a chocolate tea kettle, but they’ve got very glossy brochures and they’re raking in cash hand over fist from people who think they’re getting in at the ground floor.
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Web 1.0 was where most people visit static webpages.
Web 2.0 is where most people post and share their own content on webpages.
Web3 will be where most people keep a ledger of everyone else’s content using constantly updating blockchains, which are claimed to have all sorts of benefits besides currency speculation, but also that’s all anyone cares to use it for.
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Yes.
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The Atlantic posted a good commentary on this phenomenon and the bizarre Kimmel clip.
And kudos to Max Read for uncovering the maggot-encrusted CCA connections that are preying on unsuspecting naïfs.
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You’re right in terms of how it got used, but IIRC, the moniker Web 2.0 was more technology-inspired forward thinking than usage based. Original web was mostly static html pages, but the rise of JavaScript and AJAX transformed passive pages into dynamic and reactive app-like pages, which inspired a new way to think about the web as connected apps. That was a big deal and changed how people thought of the web and it’s possibilities. This new Web3 tag doesn’t have that inspirational quality, because no one understands it and it’s not clear what it would be good for.
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“The Metaverse” is definitely part of the whole Web3 concept. I wish it wasn’t coming, but there’s too much money behind it now. I’m watching it carefully, but only for my clients and to find ways to make sure it doesn’t make my own life worse.
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