⚓️ final mega mutant revealed
⚓️ final mega mutant revealed
gm. NFT NYC is officially underway! please respect my privacy through this trying time.
ALPHA ⚓️
the most anticipated event of the week, ApeFest, kicked off last night.
and to make it memorable, they revealed the newest (and final) Mega Mutant on the jumbotron for all to see.
though I don’t love it (or the Mutant art in general), I still respect how cool an idea it was. I’m somewhat sad that this era of Apes is now over and that they’ll be moving their focus over to the Otherside (though I’m sure the “mutant serum” idea is sure to be copied by NFT projects for years to come).
otherwise, it’s interesting to see the reaction to the rest of ApeFest this morning. for the most part, it was a “free” party to reward the Ape community. however, as is the case with the NFT community a lot of the time, the expectations were high…leaving many asking, “is that it?” by the end of the night.
it remains to be seen if the acts will get bigger as the days go on, but keeping the headliners a secret did Yuga no favors here.
that being said, it all sounds pretty cool to me still. but I’m easy to please; all I need is the open bar, really.
BETA ⚓️
I watched all of ‘Bored Ape Nazi Club’ on YouTube so you don’t have to.
yesterday, the rumor that ‘BAYC is racist’ resurfaced again, thanks to a new conspiracy documentary posted by Philion and retweeted by none other than Ryder Ripps.
you may never have heard of the former (unless you’re really into conspiracy theories), but you’ve likely heard of the latter. Ryder Ripps has been pedaling this theory for months now and the night before he launched his RR/BAYC project, this video came out (convenient).
here are my takeaways:
Ryder Ripps is so clearly and obviously behind this documentary, it’s laughable. they refer to him as “one of the most innovative artists of the generation” at minute 3 and it closes with a plug of his new collection. he didn’t make the video, but I can say pretty confidently he bankrolled it for marketing purposes.
it’s otherwise a pretty standard conspiracy documentary. it gives you a lot of information…connecting traits in the Bored Ape collection to racists in history…and bombards you with facts so quickly that you have no choice but to come to their conclusion: that Bored Ape Yacht Club is actually run by neo-Nazis.
their thesis is essentially this…as former-writing academics and secret internet racists from 4chan, the Yuga founders are hyper-aware of subtext. the video references the “iceberg theory” and implies that the Apes (in their funny little hats) aren’t what they appear at all. in fact, the Bored Ape Yacht Club was created to “troll” the normies…for reasons unclear.
its strongest argument is that Yuga has been very intentional in its messaging and story-building from the jump (as former creative writers would be). so why would they willingly choose traits (mainly the hats) that are so problematic and rooted in Imperialist and World War II iconography?
but because the documentary is is all about “subtext” and “under the surface” intentions of the Yuga team, they can basically nitpick like this and connect points however they please. you can’t prove they’re right, but you can’t prove they’re wrong either. I liked what @0xarch had to say about all the heavy lifting the video has to do in order to get you to believe them.
ultimately, there is a CTA (call to action) at the end for everyone to “burn” their Bored Ape (something I’m not sure a single person has done or will do at this point), but all it ended up doing was burning an hour of my day.
DELTA ⚓️
see? NFTs aren’t all bad!
I’ll be back with more news from NFT NYC tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what people complain about this time!