Why NFTs Are the Next Big Thing (If You’re A Complete Moron)

Chris Snellgrove is an English Professor by day and a pop culture writer by night. You can read his thoughts on celebrities over on Instanthub, thoughts on games over on Gammicks, and thoughts on everything else over on Ebaum's World.

These days, it seems like nobody can shut up about NFTs. And we’ve reached a fever pitch of people trying to sell them to us that ranges from Tony Hawk to Jimmy Fallon to Paris Hilton.

While their motivations may differ, all of them are preaching the same gospel: that NFTs are the next big thing. But we’re here to tell you that these are only the next big thing if you’re a complete moron.

Don’t believe it? Keep reading to learn why NFTs are already the stupidest idea of the century!

You Don’t Own Anything of Value

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/nft-non-fungible-token/

First, let’s start with the obvious. No matter what the weird crypto bros try to tell you, you don’t actually own anything of value when you buy an NFT.

What you have is a crappy jpg. Nothing keeps me from making thousands of copies and distributing them to everyone. And we all have the same quality image, so it’s not like the original owner has a nice oil painting while everyone else gets basic prints.

Instead, all of the alleged value of an NFT is tied to the blockchain. And these stupid images are only worth as much as investors can make people believe they are worth. At the end of the day, NFTs are just a newer, dumber version of the old scams where you could “buy” a star somewhere out there in the galaxy.

A Solution Without A Problem

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/09/09/nft-trading-volume-plummets-but-analysts-say-nft-craze-is-far-from-over/

If you give a crypto freak a minute or two, he will inevitably start spouting off about the different possible uses of NFTs. This includes using them for ticket sales, using them to authenticate information, using them to better secure important data, and so on.

But here’s the thing: we already have simpler and more reliable ways of doing all of these things. NFTs are about as innovative as carving some Flintstones-style rock tires and asking us all to pretend your car is better now than it was before.

At the end of the day, the best thing we can say about NFTs is that they are a solution without a problem. And that’s always going to be a tough sell to someone with half a brain.

Terrible For the Environment

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56371912

It’s a pretty safe bet most of the people that invested their entire personality into crypto don’t really care about the environment. But for everyone else, it’s important to know that NFTs in their current form are really terrible for the environment.

Why? First of all, most NFTs are bought and sold using cryptocurrency. While some coins are switching over to a less harmful proof of stake model, some of the most popular coins (including the NFT-friendly Ethereum) use what is known as a proof of work model. And this model consumes insane amounts of electricity.

The more popular NFTs get, the more popular crypto gets. And whether you are making NFTs or simply buying them, you are party to a major negative impact on the environment during a time when it is vitally important we conserve energy across the planet.

So, So Ugly

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-bored-ape-avatars-are-taking-over-twitter

You may or may not care about the wild economic impacts of NFTs. However, it’s important to realize how badly these things fail in terms of being “art.”

NFT superfans love to squeal about how NFTs are the new art. They let digital artists get paid well and potentially open the world of art to everyone and not just the high rollers and money embezzlers who buy classic works of art (though make no mistake, the world of NFTs has plenty of embezzling, too).

But if we could be brutally honest for just a moment, the vast majority of NFTs are just unforgivably butt-ugly. I mean, have you seen those Bored Ape NFTs? They look like the kind of thing that you’d commission someone on Fiverr for, and you’d probably want to get your money back. However, the mutants selling these things will look you right in the eyes and insist these NFTs are worth hundreds of thousands (and sometimes even millions) of dollars!

Putting People Out of Work

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-01-14-video-game-voice-actor-troy-baker-is-now-promoting-nfts

Whenever the conversation turns to the value of NFTs, true believers love to brag that NFTs actually empower digital artists. And in some cases, that’s true: there are certainly cases of artists, most of them young, making life-changing amounts of money by selling NFTs online.

But for every one artist that NFTs benefit, there are countless other artists that get screwed over. For example, imagine someone forking over thousands of dollars for a crappy jpg. Previously, that person might have commissioned a one-of-a-kind work of art from a skilled artist. Now, he is spending it on a randomly-generated variant of a kindergarten-style drawing that literally anyone can copy.

And the more NFTs try to innovate, the more ways they find to screw others over. For example, beloved voice actor Troy Baker was originally going to partner with Voiceverse before fan outcry made him back down. And the whole deal with Voiceverse was that it would use advanced technology to recreate someone’s voice and make them say just about anything. Baker only backed down once enough of his fans pointed out that the inevitable application of this technology is to run other voice actors out of the industry!

Easily Stolen

https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-exec-used-the-platform-s-influence-to-pump-his-own-nfts

When an NFT nut talks about things like crypto and the blockchain, they love to emphasize how secure everything is. In fact, that’s supposed to be the whole deal with the blockchain: this open ledger of different transactions is at the heart of all those different security and authentication applications for NFTs.

However, every month (and sometimes every week) there is a new story of NFTs getting stolen. For example, New York art collector Todd Kramer told the internet in late 2021 that “I have been hacked, all my apes gone.” He wanted sympathy for losing over $2 million worth of crappy jpegs, but the internet primarily responded by turning his sad pleas into a meme.

More recently, a phishing attack on OpenSea resulted in hackers stealing $1.7 million worth of NFTs (in this case, 254 of them). OpenSea was recently valued at more than $13 billion and was previously seen as the best and most secure way to purchase NFTs. And the successful attacks on OpenSea users prove one thing: that OpenSea is about as “secure” as that crappy ape is “valuable.”
 

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