103 - Gone Apes: An NFT Postmortem (feat. Nate Lamagna)
Added 2023-09-06 06:25:00 +0000 UTCNate Lamagna (@vrunt) helps the lads escape apes as they trudge through the mire of the varied and artistically bankrupt world of Non-Fungible Tokens. Topics include the history of cryptocurrency, the life-draining art style, and what to do in a world where, at last, all your apes are gone.
Want more TWOAPW? Get access to the rest of this episode, our full back catalogue of premium and bonus episodes, and add your name to the masthead of our website by subscribing for $5/month at Patreon.com/worstofall!
Nate Lamagna - Twitter // Venmo
Media Referenced in this Episode:
- The Whole Dang Playlist
- We Met The Founder Of Ethereum, VICE on HBO, Season 6 (Bonus Scene)
- How To Play CryptoKitties
- The Red Ape Family | Episode 1
- We’re All Gonna Make It
- Paris Hilton Surprises Tonight Show Audience Members by Giving Them Their Own NFTs
- The Trailer for Seth Green's NFT Show.
- I animated the audio of Dana Snyder reading the "slurp juice" tweet because Aqua Teen Hunger Force is my all-time favorite show.
- Day in the Life: Interviewing Bored Ape Customers at NFT NYC x Apefest 2022‼️
- Confessions from the Hart - Official Trailer (2022)
- Eminem, Snoop Dogg - From The D 2 The LBC (VMAs)
- HV-MTL Forge Explainer Video
- Line Goes Up by Dan Olson
- Tildeverse
- Cryptokitties Postmortem
- TIME magazine cover story on Buterin: “The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto’s Future” by Andrew R. Chow. March 18th, 2022.
- Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains by Vitalik Buterin
TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Comments
"Think of all the things you could do with that money!" Shame on all of you for not seizing the opportunity for a JCS reference.
murt pie
2023-09-11 01:48:06 +0000 UTCyeah the bored ape logo itself is pretty similar to the totenkopf. ultimately it just would have been a little too much to fit in this episode but we could easily do a whole other episode about the connections between tech and organized white supremacists
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2023-09-10 01:02:44 +0000 UTCCursed topic, great episode. It's so funny to think back on the timing of that slurp juice tweet. Also I've heard clips of that horrible song before (I think it was featured in Line Go Up?), but remained blissfully unaware of who made it until now. May Eris have mercy on us. As a sidenote, I was a little surprised the topic of Yuga Labs and their content being shock full of esoteric nazi dogwhistles didn't come up, and I'm wondering if you hadn't heard about it or just figured it'd be too much of a sidetrack. "Yuga" itself referring to the Kali Yuga and so on. If you hadn't heard and wish to poison your brain even further with the knowledge, there's an hour long video essay from a year ago that got deep into the nitty gritty of it: https://youtu.be/XpH3O6mnZvw?si=nyahMjtA85m-VvWp
Elaine Åhlfeldt
2023-09-09 13:40:37 +0000 UTCmy 69 pops coins are still going strong baby
Ciara Rhiannon
2023-09-08 07:21:40 +0000 UTCaj is very sweet even though he goes on a horny rampage every 2 or 3 episodes. also the filename of this one is "103 apes full length" and thats like the best porno title ever
BrianAlflordIsGoodActually
2023-09-07 23:27:26 +0000 UTCGreat episode! One of the things that bummed me out most during the NFT craze was Sean Lennon promoting skull NFTs because they weren’t “cute and for babies” like other NFTs. Those skulls were generic trash of course.
Nancy Carr
2023-09-07 22:14:23 +0000 UTCugh christ
Elah
2023-09-07 21:06:26 +0000 UTCone of my (josh)'s favorite musicians/djs is still all in on the web3 train. it sucks ass
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2023-09-07 19:04:48 +0000 UTCSpeaking of niche cultural silos, y'all touched briefly on the period when these were being pitched to artists - it was really grim watching the impact of NFTs on experimental electronic music. Musicians in our space are particularly dependent on seeming cutting edge and sometimes are specifically beholden to tech industry interests, and like with the actors in Seth Green's project there were a lot of musicians who didn't have trust funds and therefore didn't always have much of a choice getting involved. (although some of the worst offenders were trust funders who know networking opportunities when they see them.) It felt like the nadir or comeuppance for the gentrification of these scenes that occurred in the 2010s - it had been so exciting to see artists like Arca or Holly Herndon get institutional/mainstream attention back in 2015, even to see money and audience come in for some truly avant garde art from stuff like Red Bull Music Academy, and NFTs definitely underlined the devil's-bargain nature of that attention. And kinda like within the core crypto space itself, experimental music scenes are kinda in this moment where NFTs are a very big scar that we're all trying to talk around. There's just no real way at all to make survivable money making music anymore, musicians can be so horribly susceptible to scams like this even when we recognize it's a scam going in.
Elah
2023-09-07 18:44:09 +0000 UTCI've really been enjoying the "Josh's Trash" episodes as I think they were described in the Shark Tank ep - that and this one, Mr. Beast, Minions, apology videos, etc. - these things offer so much to think about but both the media itself and the culture surrounding it is so hellbent on not thinking about it; and also as a listener I will own up to being siloed in some very niche cultural corners as a lot of us are, and it's very enlightening and healthy in a way to glimpse capital-m Mass Culture sometimes even with the risk of psychic damage.
Elah
2023-09-07 18:34:08 +0000 UTCI think what's starting to kill nfts and crypto is that they made sports gambling legal all across the country and available on your phone. Instead of gambling with crypto and watching the line go up or down, you can gamble on something you know a little about and watch a game. Gambling is the addiction most likely to cause someone to commit suicide. I don't think it should be completely illegal but it shouldn't be at everyone's fingertips 24-7. Too bad all our self-righteous bible thumpers were to distracted by trans panic bs to fight against this huge expansion of gambling. They could've been useful for once
Jimmy McMillan
2023-09-07 01:44:43 +0000 UTCHell yeah, lads.
GREG LANGE FOSTER
2023-09-07 00:00:24 +0000 UTCGreat episode
misterr
2023-09-06 23:44:13 +0000 UTCSounds like these apes have gone bananas! *is instantly shot by a sniper*
John Leavitt
2023-09-06 22:18:02 +0000 UTCMy addled mind just flashes back to the queen looking at her self in the mirror saying "I'm fat! I'm fat!" over and over again. Parents tried to get us to watch the French or Spanish VHS and we just wanted the English.
im so daddy i havent slept in a year
2023-09-06 21:31:23 +0000 UTCI could've sworn to God that AJ was amping up for one of his horror shorts with his Crypto Kitties rant. Also, after hearing there's a Barclay's bank, it's now my headcanon that George Barclay is from a wealthy bank family but refusing a cushy nepo job because of his "calling."
Dergon
2023-09-06 16:06:52 +0000 UTCThe discussion around art is interesting, as it highlights the difference between visual and financial value. If the NFT holders cared about visual value, they could easily afford incredible art by artists they actually like. There's some incredible fan and original work made by artists all over the internet! And it goes for like $500 at most! And I'd argue, for what they /visually/ are, fine artworks are often quite overvalued. I love Rothkos, but they're not worth the tens of millions they go for. A million or 500k, sure. And besides, what matters in acquisition of an art is the respect one has for it, but that's not something markets can measure for. What NFTs actually recreate in a more "accessible" way is the /financial/ side of the fine art market. The purchasing and storing of visual art as an investment, or as a way to launder money. However, in ad copy it benefits their financial goals to /pretend/ they're interested in the visual, the aesthetic side. The whole discussion on "making art accessible" or whatever is just a way to get more suckers in the door. Y'all should do an episode about the art market. It is wild how much "fine art" is actually just "wall street". I went to SMU though, so I'm jaded.
Dylan Wignall
2023-09-06 15:14:12 +0000 UTCWow, that was the longest episode of Trashfuture I've listened too, Milo's accents were great! In all honesty, great episode guys, NFTs are truly the culture of a dying empire.
gulbruth
2023-09-06 11:49:53 +0000 UTCHow dare you force my mind to recall Muzzy. I didn’t go to French school for 10 years just so I could be terrorized by a damn commercial.
James Cézanne-Taipale
2023-09-06 10:33:22 +0000 UTC
