NFTs were a weirdly mainstream thing. They happened on the internet, as a conduit, but the primary buyers were normie types who think phone apps are for getting laid, they all thought they were buying the next Bitcoin, it was their turn to get wealthy overnight. Instagram got pretty heavily involved, and you know how us neckbeard Redditor types love our Instagram feeds.

The Internet, as an actual community, was against them from the jump. The Redditors, of all people, were one of the first really tech-savvy crews to raise the public alarm, saying yeah, I’m a guy who does computers AND finance for a living, I’ve looked into this from every angle, it doesn’t make sense. I’d stay out of it if I were you, and watch out for your loved ones. Rare Reddit W on that.

The artsy blue haired pronouns of Tumblr hated NFTs from the jump, because scammers started stealing their work pretty much immediately. Everyone on Twitter who wasn’t an NFT shill despised them. NFTs had immediate douchebag energy.

None of us were really down with NFTs, ever. They smelled scammy as hell, and anybody who said boo about them got dismissed as an out of touch old person, even if they were 23.

Some witty person called them “astrology for men” or something like that. The Internet was already burned out from crypto bros by the time NFTs showed up. We were born done with their bullshit.

The crescendo was Dan Olsen’s Line Goes Up, a Youtube explainer on NFTs for people who were honestly pretty savvy about them already.

His deep dive uncovered the truth, which is that all the endless hype was coming from heavily moderated scammer Discords, which were conveniently filled by the Call of Duty players of the world who didn’t fuck with the rest of the internet, they were mainstream white guys, mostly, sports fans, regular types. They were all pretty fucking ignorant about technology, on average, and didn’t have the tuned bullshit meter to stay out of NFTs. Again, they all thought they were riding the rocket to the moon, so they could finally sing along to the rap songs about their first milly and mean it.

None of them were really FROM the internet, they were all outside guys, people who were too cool for the rest of it, here for the pussy and the money, bro, you know? Inside the scammer Discords, where they spent all their time, absolutely nobody was allowed to ask any of the very reasonable questions that a person might ask about a potential investment. All of that was FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, an instant ban, fuck your negativity, bro. Nobody was allowed to ask, do or say anything that might halt the hype train.

Everyone who realized they were scammed also realized the only way out of the scam was to keep the hype up and sell their stupid NFT to a greater fool for more money, so the hype was REALLY hard, everyone was trying to pull in a sucker so they could cash out. That, right there, was the missing fact that the rest of The Internet was waiting on, and it was a huge “Ah Ha” moment for everyone when Olsen dropped that bomb. Finally, the explanation for the giant hype about something that appeared to be completely worthless. Now it makes sense.

It was a cult, and the only people really profiting were the scambros who realized they could just pull fraud after fraud after fraud with rugpulls that didn’t really count as fraud, since lawmakers were still in the “what the fuck is an NFT” phase of lawmaking. It was INCREDIBLY profitable for scammers, they were selling air, even when their projects “failed” no they didn’t, actually, the scammers walked away with thousands, even millions. The chumps got nothing. It was free money, a scammer feeding frenzy.

So you had a bunch of fuckin dudes who barely had a grasp on their iPhones throwing all their money at something that was puzzling to the people who work with computers full-time for a living. Like Olsen said, you don’t “get it” because there’s nothing TO get, if you “get it” you’re being taken by the scam. It’s literally confusing to you because you aren’t stupid enough. It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t make sense, it’s a scam.

Those mainstream, barely work an iPhone guys were getting ripped off left and fucking right. I guess you could just drop things into other people’s NFT wallets with no security so that when your target clicked on the thing to see what it was it triggered some code that emptied his entire wallet into yours, bye bye money, bye bye apes. It was a complete shitshow. That issue never got “fixed” because it was fundamental to how the whole blockchain of it worked, there was no fixing it. Nobody got their money back. Nobody got caught or charged for their thefts. It was a bloodbath.

Axie Infinity turned into digital sharecropping, a whole new way to fuck the poor in the Global South, it’s just, everything NFTs touched turned to evil fucking poison.

DAOs never, ever worked. Not like they were supposed to.

Meanwhile, they were trying to shove NFTs into everything, either because they didn’t get it, or because they DEFINITELY got it, this was better than Team Fortress hats, you could get these morons to pay their life savings for all kinds of nothing. It was better than lootboxes and that takes doing.

The Internet, the actual community, was getting angrier and angrier about it, because we were never on board with this shit in the first place. It was a truly rare moment of solidarity for us all, Twitter feminists and Reddit techbros on the same wavelength, for just this once. They were going to turn everything into a fuckin NFT. They were talking about turning your ID and professional licenses and everything else into this horrible, horrible scam. Never mind the vidya games, they had MUCH bigger targets in sight, bad news everywhere. Everyone who wasn’t stupid said “hell to the fuck no”, and we fought. For once, we actually won. I don’t know if we ever deserved any credit - aside from Dan Olsen - but we won.

And in the end, you get this stupid asshole in the article, all sad like we fucked up a good thing, so I guess he was one of the mainstream dipshits who thought we should all have our lives run by a DAO. Fuck you dude. Sorry you lost the chance to sell us nothing for everything. Man, think of all those kids, what a juicy crop of chumps. No wonder you’re a sad monkey.

Oh, and I don’t have sauce, but years later I think it came out that the guy behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a Nazi because of course he is.

We dodged a bullet on NFTs, and I’m still not sure if we’re safe. That was a GOOD scam, and everyone is a scammer, now, especially corporations. The best scams are the ones the rubes can’t opt out of, so maybe if they just remove the “opt out” part. They’re still thinking, still looking for a way back in. Fucking stupid monkeys.