Good morning Lemmings!
I woke up yesterday and on my way to the cafe for a much needed strong dose of caffeine I couldn’t help noticing half the people are now proudly displaying a taped banana to their foreheads?
Asking “WTF’s going on”, I’m told we all just APED into the BORED APE YACHT CLUB
Brooke Shields poking fun at the “Art Basel Banana” with a selfie on Instagram
This morning I awake to find everyone now showing off their MEEBITS
Meebits
So, what the fuck is going on? The money bloated and often brain dead NFT scene is now hyper trend changing every 24 hours? 10,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs sold out instantly, followed the next day with 20,000 Meebits from Larva Labs.
Let’s first deal with the Monkey See, Monkey Do aspect of NFTs, perfectly epitomised by The Bored Ape Yacht Club Crew.
The Bored Ape Floor hit 21 ETH the instant the FOMO turned into an APESHIT event. May I pass on my congratulations to the flipper! Meanwhile I always thought the cage floor for apes is eventually covered with shit? I’m sure it’s written in the Bible somewhere?
The self fulfilling laconic tautology of Apes Aping being justification for its existence is symptomatic too much money needing to find a collectible. BAYC is the perfectly balanced combination of the aesthetics of NFTs, the psyche of the immature and FOMO. The floor is all important, yet the floor when it comes to APES is eventually covered with shit.
Talking of perfectly balanced shit these NFTs remind me of the time I walked into a toilet cubicle during the Grand Prix and seeing in horror & amusement the bog clogged with a can of FOSTERS beer thrown in. Sitting on top of the beer can was a perfectly balanced turd. I was awestruck at the ability of humans to be able to perform such feats and today I’m similarly impressed with @BoredApeYC.
….and yet I LOVE the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, like everyone in the NFT space does. The reason is as simple as they are the synthesis of everything appealing to NFT Culture.
If you were to design the perfect collectible for NFT collectors to APE into why not start with Apes, cynical bored Apes, then make 10,000 variations (the same number as Crypto Punks) and then finally create a club.
“The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs— unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits, the first of which is access to THE BATHROOM, a collaborative graffiti board. Future areas and perks can be unlocked by the community through roadmap activation. Visit www.BoredApeYachtClub.com for more details.”
For more information watch..
2,900 ETH traded in a couple of days, 2,400 owners (Bored Ape Yacht Club members) , damn when you’re ON to something new, you really get it ON.
Sorry, couldn’t resist the Gary Glitter reference when I should’ve gone with T-Rex instead
Bored Ape Yacht Club members, Get it ON, bang a gong!
This is the best BAYC in my humble opinion, incorporating “The Great Wave” by Hokusai (in the ubiquitous NFT pink/blue colouration).
Hokusai’s Great Wave shows a wave about to strike the boats as if it was an enormous monster, one which symbolise the irresistible force of nature and the weakness of human beings.
The Game is on to create the perfect NFT project for maximum Ape Appeal.
Like BAYC, Meebits are Perfection in Manipulation, then again that is the nature of the beast when it comes to collectibles.
There is a difference between a COLLECTIBLE and ART despite some blurring of the lines between. I cannot help thinking BAYC & Meebits are today’s digital collectibles, the same as Porcelain Collectibles were in the past, catering to the lowest common denominator, often passed off as art, limited edition and claims of holding if not increasing in value.
Meissen Porcelain
“MEISSEN has always stood for the highest quality porcelain, and has produced important works of art in every era starting in 1708.
Mass appeal is the name of the game
Don’r kid yourself, with millions to be made, mass appeal, massive flipping profits creates Hyper FOMO and it’s all predesigned.
…and the 300 pound Gorilla just walked into the room in the form of Meebits from LarvaLabs.
Forget everything, the only thing that’s important is MEEBITS sold USD$80,000,000 worth overnight.
The morning after this Meebit has sold for 300 ETH , just short of USD$1 million.
&
The ever rapacious Pranksy tweeted …
And we’re off to the friggin flipping races …
Larva Labs as everyone know created Crypto Punks which started off with barely any interest let alone trading for anything other than pennies.
Crypto Punks I am willing to argue are now considered to be works of art as well as markers in the region of earliest NFTs. They came out of nowhere to slowly infiltrate our consciousness with their simplistic beauty.
I am also willing to argue they had a vastly different origin purpose than Meebits
It’s hard not to be a little cynical with Larva Labs which has all the street creds and history to be able to launch the next perfect project. Coupled with the price history of Crypto Punks, Meebits have all the superior genetics to break the internet and they did.
That doesn’t mean they’re crap, far from it the team from Larva Labs have done a great job making these as well as making them reach Peak Fomo.
Please don’t be naive and think this project is just another art NFT that happens to make some money. Their pinned Tweet is perfect not so subtle manipulation linking Meebits to Cyber Punks to Christies = big bucks
“So what” you say, and there’s no crime in making money.
As the NFT scene grows it will become impossible to to come close to being able to have some overview. Instead what will happen is it will naturally fracture into communities that have similar interests. There will no longer be a NFT world, there will be NFT villages, where those interested in collectibles don’t end up mixing much with those interested in Art NFTs, or those into Generative NFTs. There will be a Blue Chip scene, regional groups, gender/sexuality, NSFW etc. This is to be expected and it’s perfectly fine.
Meanwhile, if you love BAYC or Meebits, I’m fine with that, just know you’re buying a collectible which doesn’t seem to matter in the NFT Market because there are many collectibles that compete with art for the high prices.
Maybe this will continue? I come from the fine art world and collectibles do not come close to matching the high prices of art. Maybe I’m just old in my thinking that the same will eventually apply with NFTs?
Finally there’s not much else I can say, might as well pose for a photo to proudly show you aped in.
…and I have to admit, I kinda like BAYC and MeeBits just as much as I dislike them.