Thread by @hmsnofun

it is extremely funny how often nft guys, and even people writing nft-critical articles, straight up just don't know how nfts work. for instance: did you know that nft art is NOT stored on the blockchain?

if you buy an nft, the only thing actually on the blockchain is a hyperlink. the art itself is stored on a server just like any other digital file, likely one owned by the company producing that particular brand of nft.

the supposed advantage of the blockchain is its decentralized nature, right? everyone has a copy of the ledger, so unauthorized changes get caught immediately. this is only feasible at scale if the ledger itself is relatively small. hence: actual media must be stored elsewhere.

naturally i can hear your thoughts, and yes, this DOES mean that if an nft company stops paying their hosting fees (like, say, if they go out of business) then the owner of one of their nfts can no longer access the art they paid for. unless they saved a copy, of course.

the blockchain doesn't need to fail for the nft to fail because it's not the property itself that is stored on the blockchain, but rather a forwarding address to that property.

so, again, i know for a fact that you're now asking yourself, well, if the holy immutable blockchain actually has nothing to do with the art, then what's the point of an nft?

oh, that's easy! the point is money laundering.

there's been a tremendous economic push to popularize nfts (and cryptocurrency in general) with breathless utopian visions of a world liberated by the blockchain. these visions have absolutely no relationship to material reality, but when has that ever stopped silicon valley?

it's so pervasive that if you simply lay out in plain terms how an nft works, you feel like you have to done the math wrong somewhere. how do you get to "we've saved digital art from the tyranny of reproduction" from "you can pay one million dollars for a hyperlink to a jpeg"?

this confusion is entirely by design. it's all just marketing paid for by billionaires whose main criticism of the already extant speculative art market is that it's (somewhat) regulated and doesn't involve a digital infrastructure that they own.

if you can get rolling stone, the verge, and the new york times to regurgitate your uncritical nft speculative fiction, even tech-savvy people will end up second guessing themselves. because, surely, if nfts were THAT bad, the paper of record would have said something!

you look at nfts and you say to yourself, well, this is ugly as sin. and that cost HOW MUCH? if nft companies actually cared about the art, the art would be good. it's not about the art. it never was. but they need you to believe, at the VERY least, that *they* believe it is.

nft guys love misinterpreting walter benjamin's "aura" in these conversations because, you know, scarcity creates value so, uh, a scarce digital object, that has the aura! that's dumb but, knowingly or not, they HAVE successfully created an "aura" around the nft as a concept.

[sidebar re: walter benjamin's aura. the go-to summary, that mechanical reproduction is bad because it removes the aura from art, is the opposite of benjamin's conclusion. thanks to @SamFateKeeper for helping me with this one]

nfts are like any pyramid scheme. the rich guys up top recruit loyal suckers to turn it into a lifestyle brand and NEVER shut up about it, until eventually enough people accept the basic (false) premise that even david fucking lynch falls for the grift. confusion IS the value.

that's the "aura" of the nft. if you just say out loud how an nft functions, it seems antithetical to the vision you've been sold by people you trust. nfts wouldn't be so popular if critics were telling the truth, right? i mean, come on, if DAVID FUCKING LYNCH is minting nfts...

i like to dunk on nft guys losing everything to the grift as much as the next talking farm animal, but at a certain point i don't think it's totally fair to blame the scammed for having been scammed, not when the scam is funded by people with more money than most countries.

the aura, the confusion, the utopian visions, these things are essential to getting more people to buy into the scam, which further legitimizes the scam, all of which brings more money into the system, which increases the speculative value of nfts, and on, and on, and on.

telling the truth about nfts may feel like spitting against the wind at this point, but eventually this bubble will burst and the rich are going to make off like bandits as always. if anyone can be saved from this scam before then, that's better than the alternative.

so, to conclude: if you write about nfts, GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT. take no assumption about their nature for granted, otherwise even your criticism serves to empower the grift.

however, if you REALLY want to spend money on something non-fungible, why not a token trans woman?
ko-fi.com/sarahzedig