How Twitter Betrayed Artists and a Defense of NFTs
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2024
- NFTs have been and still are an incredible boon for the artists who get into it, both big and small.
All the big anti-NFT claims are either academically or observably false, maliciously spread by people who pretended to care about artists for years, only to be willing to do ANYTHING and turn a blind eye to everything in order shut those artists up.
The Long Version:
• How Twitter Backstabbe...
Music
Seth Makes Sounds - Good vibe background music
Loveless1017 - Stars and fields prod by flames360
Erokia - Suspense horror drone 1
Kjartan Abel - Hypnotic and dreamy track comprised of a single minimalist ambient evolving synth
Seth makes sounds - Dark Moody Beat
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Drakensson - Rogue Planet Mystery ambient
00:00 Start
00:21 "NFTs Don't Help Artists"
01:26 "Money laundering and Wash Trading"
02:07 "NFTs Don't Help Artists"
03:29 Stats "Proving" Artists Don't Make Money
04:49 "Rampant Art Theft"
06:30 "It Hurts the Environment"
11:24 "Its all a Scam"
18:25 The "Pro-Artist" Betrayal
31:49 My Theory for Why this Happened
The thing is just that, like... none of this requires the block chain. All of this could be done without it.
It required the blockchain to be decentralized, but you are correct, an almost identical system can be achieved if some company just grabbed a handful of servers, but then it would be centralized.
@@davidxu5466 Who cares if it's centralized? If there's one thing that was made clear over the course of the last year is that decentralization is not a good thing. It's not desirable. All decentralization does is enable and empower crooks and grifters to run countless scams with zero repercussions. It leaves legitimate users extremely vulnerable. It leaves victims without any recourse. Lawlessness is never a good thing. See: The Wild West.
@@atomicshroom I never said that decentralisation is a good thing, but I have never seen people push for a centralised alternative to NFT's anywhere near as much as people have harassed NFT artists
There's a section on this in the big video, but to paraphrase:
A blockchain is easiest to think of as a decentralised database. It manages records, only people can make their own records with their own rules and send them to other people.
This makes it great for digital collectibles, especially independent creators like artists who can't just make a database (Let alone a trusted one), but the main appeal is for collectors, the decentralisation. This is because with CS:GO skins, TF2 Hats, your Genshin Acount, ect, you have to rely on a company to manage the record of your collectible, where as with a blockchain, the company that made it doesn't have full control, YOU do.
Here's an actual collector explaining exactly this: twitter.com/MagusDevon/status/1691708968278581533
"they want to support an artist and own a cryptographically signed proof of their support in their account. Nobody can forge the signature and anyone can validate it.
it's like how anyone can right click save the jpegs from a gacha game and yet people still enjoy collecting the actual gacha jpegs themselves in their own accounrs legitimately. There's no way to cheat the servers or fake your collection. But in this case you're giving money directly to the artist instead of middlemen, and you can trade them with other people."
and that somehow justifies hate to artists. goddamn
This video gave me an overwhelming need to go outside and touch grass. I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.
40:23 This is a straight up verifiable lie. She didn't kill herself after being harrassed online. She wasn't harrassed. You can literally see the tweets in the wayback machine.
Many such cases of Uniquenameosaurus being a liar, yeah.
@@Hifuutorian honest question. What are the other cases?
One thing that has always ticked me off about NFTs is that everything they claim to do, can be and has been done without the blockchain. Take a look at OC adopts for example. and I've already seen people doing online auctions for digital art as well, no blockchain needed. So yeah I still think NFTs are dumb
It's just different ways of doing the same thing, online auctions probably use a physical certificate or ownership is logged on a private server, that the public can check.
Another thing is, that NFTs work on last fool rule. You need to pay for setting up your account or to upkeep it, so you are more incentivised to invite people into the system, so you can sell anything, and than the buyer has to sell it for more, or he will be left with just empty investment, and than the next buyer also has to do that. With OC adoptables you at least own the thing and can do whatever you want with them. NFTs you only get a ticket you might sell to other fool.
@@WwZa7 in what way do you own an OC adoptable, that isn’t just a centralised version of what NFT’s already are?
@@davidxu5466 Don't you get rights to that OC when you buy it?
@@WwZa7 Okay, but I guess that means even if you don't own the OC you can still screenshot it and have it saved on your computer, I'm pretty sure every artist that sells an NFT gives the rights of that artwork to the seller, it would massively devalue the NFT if that wasn't the case.
After watching this video, I went and looked at a large amount of NFT artists just scrolling opensea and foundation. I found a mix of decent, smaller artists with pieces I enjoyed, abstract stuff I was less a fan of, "hypebeast" promoting content, and a couple other niche things. A lot of it was animated, which I think is honestly probably one of the biggest selling points for NFTs over other forms of monetization for those artists. You can't sell prints of an animation, you can't promote yourself as well on places like twitter because it takes longer to make each piece, and commissions are probably a lot fewer and far between. While I personally was never a fan of hypebeast stuff in general, and find shit like supreme shirts to be a supreme waste of money, I cannot simply use that to ignore the number of legitimate small artists that I saw who had found some form of success on the platform. My favorite stuff was a lot of pixel art scenes which I had always loved on places like twitter, but never really seemed to have a way to monetize them properly until now. So all in all, good stuff.
That said... there's a few issues I have with some things about the marketplace. First of all, there seems to be a significant lack of a proper way to tag or categorize pieces, or search for them, outside of communities based around stuff. Which, I guess is sort of because of the scene around NFTs being highly community focused, but I'm sure is still disappointing for both people looking to find certain types of NFTs and people who want to sell pieces to a niche audience. The second, much larger issue, is AI art.
AI art is already a bit of a controversial subject as it is, outside of NFTs as a whole, but the sheer number of AI generated NFTs being minted recently was....disappointing to say the least. I suppose its an overlap of audience, the same sort of people who would be cryptobros are also likely to be fans of AI artwork and creating it, but given that all of our current models of AI art generation are doing so by copying the style developed by real artists without giving those artists any of the credit is...frustrating. The majority of the AI art I saw there was generally high quality, some were even painted over pieces after they were generated, and in general I think that AI art is still art because someone has to curate it and that in itself turns it from a random image into art, but the fact that it's hard to say how much of that work was just lifted by the AI from an artist without their consent, and without any proper tagging that it was AI art, is...frustrating.
This of course doesn't mean that I think that it's bad for artists, it seems there are many who do make it work for them, it's just. It feels like the tools here could be made better for artists than they are currently, ect. Relying on outside sites for this obviously has its own issues given the way twitter is currently going (yikes), but currently that seems like the best way for it.
Either way, as someone who only got a couple hours into the original video, this condensed version is a huge improvement in delivery and pacing, and it's significantly easier to share to other to help explain to them the points. If I could ask anything, maybe a pinned comment or something with links to some of the articles you quote in the video would be helpful for more easily backing up the claims made here, fact checking ect. That said, thanks for the great video!
i personally see some unimaginable potential in ai art, imagine the stories people can put out without being limmited by time spent drawing or even animating eventually. For example storytime youtubers (ammaziong/jaidenanimation/oddonesout/etc...) could use this to help them reduce the time spent animating quite a bit, while doing fluid animation and not those still images
@@euoplo1007 there is a huge potential there, I just think there are some issues with artist consent and credit and disclosure that needs figured out sooner rather than later.
@@ShaddyFromHatena true
Disclosure of an piece's AI origins is important for sure, but as an IP abolitionist I can't really bring myself to get up in arms about the 'using real artists' work without their permission' part ^^;
@@crapshoot yeah, even if you went through the effort of crediting the art of everyone you used, the credits list would be thousands, if not tens of thousands of names long.
I'm not sure what to think of this video. I think the first half is a solid explanation about smallers artists and how they benefit from NFTs, but the latter half of the video just seems like a bizarre angle shoot against left wing politics and political commentators that makes me feeling like I was listening to an unhinged rant. Which is a weird feeling, because again, the first half was a solid explanation (though I guess parts were a bit ranty about 'pro artist twitter' but I have to agree 'pro artist twitter' can be weird as hell sometimes so I don't think its undeserved).
This isn't to say every criticism of left leaning politics here aren't true. Many of them are genuine issues, but I think there's a line blurred on what is "left wing" and "centrist democrat" which makes it seem unhinged to me as a left wing, politically engaged person.
I get that feeling. My politics are hard to describe but I listen to and love a ton of left-wing creators. It helps to remember that Uniquenameosaurus is genuinely being nuanced here. Yes, there's a fine line between concern trolling and genuine criticisms. However I think he deserves that open-mindedness standing with all the work and effort he's put in to be so clear and forward with his biases.
@@VagabondTE unrelated but thank you for reminding me of the term "concern trolling"
the vaccination and trump examples, especially , this could've done without. both represent great harm and/or threat to society/people at large, race/religion/politics be damned. i agree some do go, quit overboard, but there's a reason antivax and MAGA types don't tend to be given much respect, especially by the left. covid can kill you, period, the choice not to vaccinate not only puts yourself at risk, but everyone around you. as for trump, not to say the other options are necessarily any better, but he's generally demonstrated himself to be a not great guy, and his rhetoric has brought out of the wood-works some extremely scary and dangerous people. and let's not forget that these people are more than willing to threaten, smear, assault, etc... you based on "not being republican enough".
another tidbit, similar to all leadership positions : the current president very often gets to take the credit for the previous president's actions. or likewise, credit for all the work done by the group/organization. sometimes blame, too, but leader types are famous for passing the buck more often than admitting/accepting fault. at least, the ones you hear/read about.
But why in the hell does it have to be through crypto? Why is there any reason to buy through crypto instead of government backed currency?
And I hate the idea of it as an investment because I don’t think most people will care enough about buying specific pieces of art from each other just so they can have ownership of that specific one on the blockchain. Maybe some people buy the pieces from each other once in a while but those people are likely already into NFTs, does it really have any reach outside the community? For those using it as an investment opportunity I think a lot of people are going to be left holding the bag when they realize most people who are interested in owning an NFT have already purchased their own and are likely hoping for others to purchase those NFTs so They can get rich.
For something with historic or cultural value like owning the rights to the first tweet or things like that, maybe that has purchasing power, but if you’re buying an NFT of a painting of a waterfall because you think it looks pretty and hoping someone will be interested in buying your waterfall painting NFT later down the line, what stops them from simply buying a different waterfall painting NFT that looks similar enough to be pleasing that you don’t have to pay the extra cost of buying off someone? Someone who buys a painting they like physically or a print of it digitally or whatever is buying it because they want it in their home or on their phone wallpaper or whatever. They either want it in their home because that’s the only one or the artist is selling multiple prints and people are buying those for decoration. Someone who buys a painting for investing purposes is usually using it as an asset, for money laundering, or because there is cultural importance to the artist. If you’re buying it because you like it then why does it have to be in NFT form and if you’re buying it as an investment how do you know anyone will care enough about the NFT link to your piece from a small artist that they’ll want it in the future? So if it’s just about liking and owning the piece whats the point of doing it through crypto and in NFT form?
Maybe it possibly benefits some artists? But I think there are a ton of people who think they’re “investing” who are very misinformed due to the hype and culture around it and will be left having spent money on something that they’re not going to make anything back on.
Edit: I considered unfollowing, but when I looked through your past videos to remind myself what I liked about your videos, rewatching your video on asmr and remembering your videos on writing, convince me to stick around. I disagree with a lot of what you’ve argued here and I think some of your points rely on fallacy, but you’ve built up enough goodwill with your previous videos that this isn’t a dealbreaker. I’ll stick around for a bit longer to see where you take your channel in the future. Whatever that’s worth
Also the point about it being the same as stuff like hypebeast merch, I hate to break it to you, but the general population also thinks hypebeast merch and Supreme fridges and designer bags are wastes of money. That’s not some own, its just saying that there is an audience, but a large part of the regular population wouldn’t buy a designer hoodie either because that’s a waste of money because you’re just paying for the brand name. That doesn’t disprove the argument that its stupid because you’re simply over-paying for a brand name, that just compares that there is an audience for both things.
@@bibubbletea It isn't supposed to disprove that, it's supposed to disprove the notion that it's inherently scam or money laundering. If you think it's dumb to spend money on such a thing - well join the club, but people pay money for autographs, gacha waifus, and anime recap movies with almost zero new content in them. That doesn't make it immoral to make those things - if people will pay money for that, why shouldn't people be allowed to make a living off of that demand, regardless of how ridiculous it is?
@@satelliteprime that makes a little more sense but I still think people should be allowed to criticize it as stupid if they think it’s a waste of money. And I’d argue it is immoral to make things like anime movies that are basically just recaps because it usually involves false advertising that fans are paying for new content (and movies like that are usually met with criticism too) and people who make gacha games are also immoral because it uses addictive techniques to encourage users to unhealthily spend money on it and they aren’t even getting anything of value in return- it’s just a gambling addiction that the vast majority of users seem to feel negatively impacts their lives. I wouldn’t really argue for either of those things to be banned legally, but that doesn’t mean I’d think they weren’t worthy of criticism and for those in charge, some disdain (the disdain doesn’t apply to artists or purchasers for NFTs, I would disapprove of the people in charge for all 3 examples, not for the average people who are just consuming the product). If I see someone addicted to gacha games I definitely wouldn’t treat them with disdain, but I’d still try to get them help if I could and I wouldn’t think it’s valid just because there are other people who also waste their money. I don’t condone abusing those into NFTs but I’d attempt to convince them out of it if I thought it was unhealthy just like I would for someone with a gambling addiction or someone paying money for overpriced designer shit. I still feel like it’s not immune to criticism and the existence of people taking the criticism too far doesn’t mean that everyone who dislikes it is also wrong.
And why does it have to be in crypto rather than regular currency? I don’t understand why that’s necessary. Thanks for replying and explaining some though
@@bibubbletea I think the only real use case for crypto, is for countries in which currency transfer can't be done, in which case, crypto isn't really useful anyways because it also tends to be regulated for the same reasons you can't buy shit in usd, and also, to buy drugs. Unfortunately my drug purchasing is made much harder by the speculative elements of the crypto circle causing crashes and cashouts rather than some stable fund.
Wow people are scary when they feel that they are justified in what they do
Sadly, nothing is a stronger motivation than telling people they can hurt others while being morally justified in so doing.
Nothing is worse than someone who knows what's best for you. Unlike someone who just wants to use you, a busybody is tenacious in their works because there's an end to reach. Then we can go into the argument of deontology versus consequentialism but I'm not a philosophy major.
Righteous fury is still fury after all.
"people are making money, how could it be a bad thing?"
Politics on social media is hell. People participate in the most brainless and malicious shit because it's so easy to just comment and retweet something. No one person has to think about the greater image of what they're pushing along, they just follow their feelings, crushing anything in their way, regardless of how ethical or moral it is.
I guess you can we crave for attention.
Government funded socket puppet accounts are a bigger issue. China's 50 cent armies muddy the waters for everyone and they're just the most notorious.
Yeah and the problem with left leaning politics is that its all a numbers game, if there is large groups agreeing with a position vocally, then the other position must be wrong. If there is a base for people with the "wrong" opinion, then ban them and make them unheard
@@froggywam tbh the internet makes both sides reveal their authoritarian side. They both want a single narrative to unite under regardless of how true it is
Personally I don't care about if it's big businesses or individuals making NFTs. I see the concept, in its entirety, is a Fake value that is hyped up all about nothing. They made alot of money? Awesome. I still see it as a scam
And I mean Scam, not that it's ripping you off intentionally, but that the Concept is snobbish nothing rather then something tangible. It's just the digital equivalent of buying an "original print"
The funny thing is that this kind of tech COULD be useful for things like access passes or reservations, it's just being used on FUNNI MONKE
An NFT is literally a receipt saying "you own the link to an image".
Well, you could argue that the concept of money itself is, “in its entirely, … a Fake value that is hyped up all about nothing,” because that’s what money is at its core- a make-believe stand-in for actual wealth that must be believed in to function. Of course money is worthless if no one believes in it, but I wouldn’t call it inherently a scam. I know that the analogy isn’t perfect, but it’s vaguely accurate (my biggest issue with the NFT industry is how ownership is handled). I’m not even saying you’re wrong, I just wanted to point that out because NFTs aren’t an inherently worthless concept just because you need to believe in them for them to have value, otherwise money would be worthless
@@GeraltofRivia22 yes, and it means nothing. It's a fake ownership that nobody of character actually values. It's like owning the Idea of your house, and not the house itself
The calculations is done by all those competing. It just takes the block of the first to finish. Meaning all other competitors energy consumption is wasted.
That’s a great point
true, but he was saying that system doesn't get worse by more people using nfts. the power is to run the system, more interactions don't affect how much energy is used.
also, ethereum did recently change their system which resulted in a 90% or so decrease of energy consumption. now as big as ethereum is, they are far from being the only one. but this is a sign that the energy consumption can go down instead of up over time,
I also don't believe that. He may be correct about the level of input needed to create NFT but having more transactions will mean that more energy is needed. Since computers use different level of energy when it is processing data.
@@Kcoldraz if you think that you have no idea how the block chain actually works.
1 block can be 1 or thousands of transactions.
the number of blocks is fixed, they don't get more or less.
the only way more transactions can result in more energy, is if the increase is large enough for the prices to go even higher.
which can make even more people build computers for the race to solve the puzzle process you mentioned.
and tbh even that has a fairly small affect on the increase.
@@randompolygon8401 That assumes that crypto-mining does not grow with the popularity of crypto, which is historically false.
regarding the industries energy cost thing, i think a valid counterargument is that even if crypto consumes considerably less than some other uses, it consumes a lot more relative to value the energy used provides. Like, a lot of it is wasted energy yeah? (ie an AC makes sure you don't get heatstroke, a mining rig crunches numbers to maybe get a unit of some artificial value. normal currency is artificial too, but it would be like if a thousand different people had entire money-printing factories which all used the same amount of energy, but the collective money printed was the same as if only one of the factories were running at that flat single-factory energy cost)
While I am generally not a massive fan of digital ownership and the 'investment purchase' culture especially, I'm would be less wary of NFTs if you did the same thing except while burning a lot less energy, which I don't think is particularly impossible.
i'm aware some people reject the idea of digital ownership altogether because of the lack of extrinsic value and the artificial scarcity it employs but i'm not very pressed on that point. While I do think it's a bit silly and mainly for people with too much money than they know what to do with, people do already participate in similar systems in other existing contexts like video games and whatnot (see tf2 hats and csgo skins; or even in thing like gacha games where you 'own' characters, granted you can't sell or trade them so i'd almost suggest that the investment culture issue is circumvented here, most of the time people roll for characters because they like them, not because they are better - obv gacha games have other issues but i digress [oop this entire bit is mentioned in the vid right after i typed it lol]) so I assume such widespread pushback is largely a result of the collective separate irks, from minor to major, which come together to make a bigger negative reaction ig
The negative pushback does have that "Venn diagram of things I hate" vibe to it.
there is no mining involved in anything in crypto other than bitcoin and some random inconsequential stuff. bitcoin isn't related to nfts. it can go to 0/disappear it has no relation to the smart contract platforms like ethereum which are proof of stake
all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin (and other PoW) use almost no electricity. All NFTs are minted on PoS blockchains that barely use electricity
@@HaineGratuite Oh, I haven't been keeping up, didn't realise ethereum had fully moved over to PoS back in september. afaik, PoS has some security concerns and whatnot, but here's hoping it all works out ig
the other big issue that i'm surprised this video didn't address, [i can't say for the first because youtube was being useless the day i tried to watch it.] is the contribution to the chip shortage. and you want to speak of wasted resources/value, that is not insignificant. the part which mining rigs tends to exploit is the graphics processor, and crypto mining is, albeit one source, it is none the less, a source of problems in the global chip supply. considering how many people find themselves in a position of "needing" state of the art hardware [that's a whole 'nother can of worms in itself...] , especially to run games or develop them, that isn't something that should be overlooked.
the other issue i haven't seen addressed here, is actually withdrawing your crypto. all i've ever heard is it's not all that straightforward and tends to carry some exciting transaction fees.
as for the scams and money-laundering, those aren't by any means small fish, either. and at least a few have consequences to others not even associated with crypto at all.
i'm actually pretty disgusted here how the whole thing has been handled. i don't believe at least as much that the entire "pro-artist"/leftist crowd knowing all the facts would have conducted themselves quite like this. as always, a group of the few led/brainwashed the many into behaving a certain way, including by covering up facts which were inconvenient to their rhetoric. both sides do the same all the time. that said, could have done without some of those examples.
A much better video than the original. Concise arguments instead of an excessive amount of unnecessary evidence. Also accessible to a wider audience. Also less angry and feels like something informative instead of screaming at literally everyone while ignoring that many people aren’t on twitter and those who are may not interact with the art community or just scroll past whenever they see a mention of crypto (because if you don’t click into a thread of someone advertising their new work then you won’t see the harassment)
I will also say Clarence Thomas is a f-ing a- whose wife tried to enact a coup, which he did not recuse himself from ruling on, who is going to get his marriage illegal in some states by being blinded by his hatred of the lgbt+ community (along with my parents’)
"Unnecessary evidence"? Just how much 'evidence' he showed?
@@nnnnmhughuuhhjiijj9457 Unsure about the how much part, but the original version referred in this comment is almost 8 hour. Check this video description for the link. So, a lot of evidence? Or redundant information? Idk
couldn´t have said it better myself
@@nnnnmhughuuhhjiijj9457
Enough to drive the point home really. People get pissy but there's really no such thing as "Unnecessary evidence" the more you have the better.
Hey, I was almost done watching the original
When NFTs were first being talked about, at least when I first heard of them, I thought it had such great potential for digital artists. A way to sell "originals" without being confined to only doing commissions or selling prints. But then the bored apes came out and all the randomly generated images. After being so hopeful about what NFTs could be to seeing almost blatant effortless money grabs and stories of artists work who hard no interest in NFTs having their art stolen and minted under them, I became cynical to them. There's so such thing as a good NFT I thought. NFTs are just the next version of the endless pump and dump coins. But hearing that there are numerous cases of NFTs being used by artists to sell their work and make a living gives me a sliver of hope again.
i agree with most of this but i do think folding ideas did make a fair argument against the exploitive culture and the technical problems with NFTs which i would love to hear your response to. The pump and dump culture and financial market exploitation of the community is a problem and the security concerns on an item that can just stamp ownership which is instantly corroborated by the chain in an irreversible manner is a problem.
because the buyer and seller of an NFT are permenently listed on the blockchain it's actually very easy to check if a peace was minted by the origional artist or owner. scams like the ones you are talking about are not as common as you think, as he says in the video
His response to this is in the Scam rebuttal segment.
Thats addressed in the full video but really TL;DR
His arguments are mostly just stuff he made up on the spot and never did research into if it was true or would play out that way or not.
As with most of his "analytical" content, he just says something dumb that is blatantly false to anyone with knowledge on the topic, refuses to go in depth on it and assumes people will take his word as gospel and never double check him.
@@MizuhanaVT Provably, verifiably untrue, but based on your commentary you clearly aren't interested in true statements, but convincing anyone you can not to give the video a chance. Kinda telling in and of itself, really.
@@satelliteprime
People don't give the video a chance because the premise is fundamentally broken. He's proposing that applying the mother of all DRM to copyright is a good thing, while having a track record of saying less copyright is a good thing.
I feel like this video spends more time talking about why the backlash to nfts is bad, rather than convincing people that nfts are good actually. Most people (I HOPE) would agree that death threats and the like are unacceptable under any circumstance, unfortunately this is a known problem in leftist spaces, and one that I hope we eventually move past. But again, this video spends much more time criticising radical twitter leftists for their psychotic tendancies than it does actually convincing me (and I think others) that everything that they've heard prior about nfts and the crypto market as a whole is wrong. It also doesnt argue a side on the broader economic or political level, which I think IS important to an individual when judging whether or not they want to support nfts, those arguments against nfts that bring up capitalism aren't trying to be neutral, it is very clear that they want a more socialist system and assume that their viewers are or should be on board with that too.
We definably do need to improve more on the left. While from many of my previous comments in other comment sections in leftist video I end up in debates. Mostly being the one insulted by the other as I pointlessly bring in Facts that I remember or knowledge I had at my disposal, but I sometimes do get frustrated that I can't help insult weather the person insulted me or not.
I also love how he brings Malcom X and MLK Jr talking about Liberals, but his point is still valid as we end up being not so different.
I think that's the point though. He's not really trying to argue for the promotion of NFTs as a whole, but rather to correct some incredibly bad faith arguments that are widely accepted about why they're bad. Specifically how they relate to artists. And because so many people accept these arguments, they turn a blind eye or even encourage the demonization and abuse of people involved in it.
@@Boredman567 if that's the goal what does this video achieve that saying "death threats are bad" wouldn't
@@Boredman567 "All the haters are wrong this is actually legit" isn't the kind of thing a non-scam opens with
@@fartface8918 well I mean from what I've seen even in this comment section crypto and nft misconceptions run deep.
I disagree that scams have to mislead. Imo Its enough to exploit strong desires,scarcity, unhappiness group pressure or have outrageous prices compared to alternatives.
Except you can't disagree with a definition, that's not how language works. You can say something is disingenuous or scummy or whatever, but you can't simply redefine "Scam" to your liking.
Alright, thats like 5 different ways to define something as a scam but lets go one at a time.
"Have outrageous prices compared to the alternative"
What is that alternative?
And before you answer that, I want to show you what collectors want and why NFTs provide it so you can provide me an adequate alternative
twitter.com/MagusDevon/status/1691708968278581533
Note in particular, this line:
"they want to support an artist and own a cryptographically signed proof of their support in their account. Nobody can forge the signature and anyone can validate it."
What is the alternative to this that costs far less?
my guy really out here saying fraud doesn't have to be fraud to be fraud. ok
Your argument relies on the No True Scotsman fallacy. NFTs look great, when you include only "real" artists selling to eccentric collectors. But that excludes the vast majority of the market. Scams, money laundering, stolen art, low effort copy paste, corporate cash ins, celebrities trying to make a quick buck, scalpers and whatever other garbage are a part of the NFT market. When you include that, NFTs become objectively terrible. There's also nothing inherently special about NFTs aside from novelty. As you say in the video, collectors can collect pretty much anything if they desire to, so what makes NFTs special?
How many of those people you mentioned ACTUALLY make money out of NFTs?
Also what a dumb second argument lol, "Why the Pringles can collector doesn't collect bottle caps instead?"
Also irl when companies or people rip off other brands or arts the artist can pursue legal action, while NFTS/Crypto can be stolen and nothing happens.
@@danielkjm No small artist that wants to not be on an alleyway for all the lawyer fees they would need to pay is doing that lol
@@GamerTowerDX Soo because lawyer fees you rather see your art stolen? lol
@@danielkjm Im just voicing what everyone had been saying about taking things to court, if you are a small artist, it's either getting your art stolen or going broke (Sometimes both in the case of the court), call me fool but i think there might be some inherent risks attached.
I think several points in this video are legitimate. Death threats, harassment campaigns, etc are terrible, many on the left are racist, sexists, antisemitic, etc, and many approach NFTs in an un-nuanced way amplifying the most extreme claims. However, I think your argument in favor of NFTs is pretty flawed.
First, your climate rebuttal. You don't consider the utility for energy, and only compare it to other sources flat. Yes, AC uses a lot of power and if you can use less of it you should, but AC also makes parts of the world livable. Proof of work causes redundant work to be done when there are already much less energy intensive ways to verify a person purchased an artwork. Additionally, if crypto uses green energy that just means it isn't being used to offset fossil fuels, and either way it's still an unnecessary expenditure.
Second, you try to legitimize the market by modeling it as mostly being mostly wealthy collectors buying from artists with people hyping up the artwork to higher prices leading to investors and scammers getting involved. I have to ask, where does the money come from? The high prices you mention could only be justified through their ability to retain value, aka the fact that it's speculative. Collectors often like a challenge, but paying way more on NFTs vs just commissioning the artist makes no sense if the goal is just to own the artwork. Plus, the entire market is tied to crypto, which is unregulated, unstable, and has no consumer protection.
On your political argument, I think you miss a lot. First I'll repeat the left does have problems with bigotry. However, many of the examples of "hypocrisy" simply weren't hypocritical. Generally, if a leftist believes that (insert leftist ideology here) will improve the lives of people in general, including artists, they are not hypocritical for favoring those goals over agreeing with every artist (obviously still not a justification for harassment). At around the 37 minute mark you claim folding ideas is hypocritical for not wanting an, in his opinion, more exploitative capitalist system to replace the current exploitative capitalist order because it would benefit some people in developing countries. This just seems like ideological consistency to me. Similarly, if you aim to help minority groups that doesn't mean you need to ideologically agree with every person in said minority group. I do think the left has a problem with overly policing their own communities, but heck you called out Contrapoints and she's well known for videos on that very topic. Anecdotally, I've frequently heard discussions of these issues, and discussions of why groups tend vote and hold certain positions, such as vaccine hesitancy as you mentioned or support for same sex marriage which you didn't, from the creators you referenced. Additionally, at the end of the day, non of this argument even remotely supports the idea that NFTs are beneficial, only that if you believe unregulated markets are bad you will be predisposed to thinking NFTs are bad.
mad props for not only checking for yourself, but also coming back to the discussion with new arguments and viewpoints.
1. I think is mostly pointing out that the climate issues around NFTs were overinflated and uninformed, eg single transactions have 0 power consumption (though arguably NFTs drove up the value and thus the power consumption in aggregate). It's also mitigated with other byzantine general solutions like proof of stake (which I dislike because it centralizes power) or more exotic solutions in research
2. Whether or not the market is legitimate is immaterial to the artists who can profit off of it, and ultimately it harms no one except the speculators caught at the end of the ponzi scheme, as collectors are happy to own it no matter how much they're worth. He definitely should've covered speculation though.
3. Mostly agree with some interjections. I think Folding Ideas was hypocritical for caring about minorities but pretending artists who profited off of NFTs didn't exist, but you're right that not wanting capitalism 2.0 and it enabling third worlders to make money isn't hypocritical; I didn't quite pick up that insinuation myself but if he did say that I'd agree. As far as support of minorities and agreeing with all of them, that's obviously an intractable position but a large part of his point was the explicitly racist and discriminatory rhetoric thrown at them, eg calling them "coons" or "uncle toms" etc which is distinctly different from ordinary disagreement.
I was... uncomfortable with the insinuation that The Left irrationally hates crypto because it stifles the capacity for socialization, since I'm a leftist/anarchist/left-libertarian and see centralization as a tool rather than an end for systems which cannot be readily decentralized. I don't think centralization and decentralization are really left and right wing ideals respectively, they both advocate for different forms of both. I would sooner think leftists dislike NFT because it represents an end point of rampant commodification, commodifying the very concept of ownership. Not entirely sure why they would dislike crypto, unless they were specifically anti-market and thus consider the creation of a new currency another spin of the wheel of capitalism under new management.
As far as whether or not NFTs are beneficial... I mean, they're good for artists at least. Are they good for Society? 🤷
He didn't go into it much in the video, but the climate argument is incredibly bad faith for NFTs. He mentioned it quickly, but Ethereum moved to proof of stake a while ago which means you CAN'T EVEN MINE IT ANYMORE. Sure you can still mine bitcoin, but bitcoin doesn't have NFTs. 99% of the NFT market is on Ethereum.
Ethereum energy use went down over 99.9%. It barely uses any energy now. NFTs/Ethereum have zero impact on the environment now. This should be talked about more when people keep regurgitating the climate argument since it is completely fucking false.
all are valid points.
In general, the video seems very one-sided, which is never a good sign.
Crypto bros that I know don't just try to ignore the energy issue
Tl;dr: Twitter is a hellscape of horrible people
Yep, I feel like everyone reaches this conclusion every week over and over again, yet for some reason people still use it.
most of his evidence is from twitter anyways
yeah, people who use twitter are so much in a bubble that he thinks a post having only 210 likes is proof that people in general hate artists. You can't use twitter users as a parameter for anything.
@@LDungeon you can use it to realize that Twitter users are just 4chan users that don't have anonymity to hide behind.
@@koalabro6118Same humans, 4chan just doesn't require the mask. It's like people think they are a whole different kind of human.
Thank you so much for this shortened version!
I tried watching the original just a bit after you uploaded it, but my attention is just so all over the place all the time, that I couldn't really get the sense of the essay when it was so long. I think this more concise delivery of the idea is just a lot more fit to the way we all consume information nowadays (with everything getting more and more sped up, shorter and shorter, as is the case with TikTok). I found the way you originally expressed the thesis a little incomprehensible - a 7-8 hour video is like a presentation in which, instead of citing your sources at the end, you present them in detail along with your information. And in the end, if I can use a university work metaphor, RUclips is in general a platform for videos that represent a sort of presentation and not a college paper.
Your perspective is really unique and after having understood it, I really am reconsidering my own positions on the subject, so, truly, thank you.
And I hope you don't feel disheartened from exploring other topics that interest you, because I think your work here on RUclips (at least what I've seen) is wonderfully captivating.
One thing you haven't done here at all is explain how there is any benefit to this nonsense when Artists already had systems like adoptables auctioning and commissions which can be a lot more consistent for the artist in question since the inherent unreliablility of cryptocurrencies isn't a factor.
(Plus the fundamental lack of any legal basis for any purchase or sale of NFTs is still a factor, all you're actually purchasing is a recipt with a hyperlink in it.)
I don't know what adoptables are but he explained that commissions do not only make less money but also restrict the artists creative freedom. "It's called a commission grind for a reason."
Edit:
The commission segment starts at 30:39
@@pumpkin6872 I tried to edit the comment when I got there but a previous edit hadn't gone through and I didn't want to bug it out.
So, firstly, artistic freedom is one hell of a thing to fight for in any market economy. The position you're put in as an NFT artist still means you have to guess what'd "sell" (using that term is weird when NFTs don't actually confer legal ownership but sure) and make that.
Meanwhile for commission artists... there are definitely changes that need to be made, normalising paying them more et cetera... But at the end of the day real money is being used for real purchases which means both the buyer and seller have a LOT more legal protections.
Scams are so prevalent in Crypto for a reason, and while that isn't usually connected to your average artist... It does still damage the legitimacy of the currency they're supposedly getting paid in, and given how difficult it can be to actually withdraw money from crypto, and all of the many challenges to it's credibility from IRL crime to the cyber variety, having your paycheck in it is always a risk.
@@000Dragon50000 well why can't one just take commissions and sell NFT art at the same time? Also from what I've seen u can also take commission using NFTs. Collector wants a certain art from you, you make it, u mint it on opensea, he buys it.
Also I don't think unique is telling anyone to buy it. In the older video, he even says they are worthless but if people perceive value in them, why is it wrong to meet that demand
@@starlord1521 That's the thing, turn that around. You can do all the same things you do with NFTs with real actual money and that has more legal protections for both the buyers and more importantly for those selling the art too. They don't bring anything unique to the table unless you also want to use Crypto yourself, and there still aren't much use cases for it aside from illegally purchasing drugs lol.
@@starlord1521 Economies thrive, live and die on legitimacy and legal protections. If I steal your money, police will show up, they'll try to me, and if caught they'll make me give you your money back and then throw me in jail for theft. If I steal your funni monkey jpg there is literally nothing and nobody coming to help you because your legal right of ownership of it was so comically flimsy to begin with that no rational person will stick their neck out for you to get it back, if such a thing is even possible. There is no NFT defense force coming in to save your crappy ape artwork from someone thieving it off you.
The NFT bubble has burst. They're worthless, and the "bigger fool scam" can now be clearly seen.
Are there good uses for blockchain tech? Maybe. But I don't think the way it is right now is good for anyone.
Bro this is like the 4th time in 2 years "The bubble has burst"
Please stop reading headlines that affirm your beliefs and immediately internalising them cause you WANT them to be true.
twitter.com/Uniqueosaurus/status/1708355802812334375
All the tests I showed you to find profitable artists in the video have continued to work this whole time, no they're not worthless. the actual report itself doesn't even make the claim NFTS are dead and points out a weekly trading volume of $80 which is up like 4 times from the first article that said NFTs were dead back in 2021
@@Uniquenameosaurusi know that this is an old reply and maybe a bit off topic but literally the most funniest thing about nft's were the yugioh nft video lol.
I am unsure why a 1/3+ of this is just a political faction rant, what does it have to do with defending NFTs- making people seem untrustworthy? Idk, I agree with some of the other comments that this could have been cut. It doesn't contribute any value to the NFT discussion, at least not to me.
I think its purpose was to highlight how left-leaning people go after/attack individuals belonging to marginalised groups (eg. LGBTQ+, PoC) who also hold beliefs that don't align with the beliefs typical held by left-leaning people, thus drawing connections with social media's vilification of NFT artists on platforms that *should* be artist-friendly.
In my opinion though, it's a flawed argument. You can belong to marginalised groups and still do shitty things, and likewise, calling out people who do shitty things that also happen to be a part of a marginalised group doesn't mean you don't support the marginalised group in general. It's not mutually exclusive.
Comparing NFT's to hypebeast shenanigans and weird collector stuff doesn't help validate them as much as you think
For a person who doesn't make a lot of money to drop an entire paycheck on an art commission is a big deal. To that person it's a large expense and they're told the end product belongs to them. Its a transaction where they now own the art they paid the artist to create. When NFTs come along selling the idea of paying significantly more to "actually for real" own a piece of art its bound to rub people the wrong way. I understand sympathizing with the artists, artists need to eat sure, but I feel like many arguments about art lately disregard the less fortunate consumers for art. I don't think the art business on the internet has ever been quite as laissez-faire capitalist as it currently is. Paywalls are everywhere, commissions are expensive, and many artists already engage in advertising tactics almost reminiscent of what video game publishers do to tease people with poor impulse decision making problems to buy their stuff. There's even an analogy for "whales" in art subscription situations because some artists set absurdly high commission prices or monthly prices for patreon access and happily sit on having just a few fans willing to pay high fees for access to their content. And that's not even getting into the debate about AI produced stuff. A lot of these AI generated images are coming from free software you can just download off github and use for whatever you want. To artists that's a threat to their business but to some random person without much disposable income its a profile picture or a pinup they couldn't afford to buy outright. Automation replacing labor isn't good to be sure but people are depressed and poor and we're in a recession. A lot of angst about NFTs can probably be traced back to just angst about money and capitalism in general. I don't think I know enough about ethics to give a definitive stance on whats good and bad with all this art stuff but I do think the perspective on it has been a bit narrow. We want artists to succeed, we want them to be valued for their work and we want hard workers to be compensated for what they do. But like, money sucks you know? It's hard not to be bitter about it.
Everyone should be able to afford some art but the artists should make enough too. Everyone needs a thriving wage. If a retail worker makes more, the average artist would also make more. And surely there are good artists out there selling their work for way less than the 10+ hours of effort a full render can take, years of training because art is a learned skill, and potentially the price of supplies even if it's not a traditional medium (there are free programs as well as subscription art programs) but they're not able to sell commissions even if this ends up being super cheap because they're mostly unknown or less desirable than a big name who's art is similar or it just seems too good to be true, so even some artists when dropping prices might struggle. Art is also the kind of work that's equally harder to do while d*pressed, poor, and unmotivated by a recession, especially if they don't already have a strong following. I definitely agree a lot of the angst about NFTs goes back to money and capitalism (and there is no perfect system out there.)
Everyone is being devalued by increasing f*scism and corporate ideologies, where profit is king, and that does mean kicking everyone else down so the ultra-wealthy make more. And they don't need to do anything if all the affected groups turn on one another, which is their aim. He rightly pointed out the abuse isn't okay (and hypocritical) but people online are quick to jump the gun and the people in power (on either side) don't care because it serves them... sadly Democrats really aren't doing enough even when they supposedly have a foothold. Maybe it's time to gut the system entirely. It solves being poor all around if the replacement is good; I just don't know if any truly large system can be as immune to corruption as it needs to be to serve its people. F*scism is on the rise globally it seems and no one wants that as the replacement but one could argue it's already potentially in place...
I can understand ppl don’t wanna pay insane amounts of money for an artwork but u have to see that 95% of these commission artist make less than minimum wage. Sorry but if u put days of work into an artwork u can’t expect it to be cheap. I also spoken a lot with ppl that did commissions full time before and what a hell it was since you basically need to produce at least 1 -3 artworks a day to stay profitable. That’s just not healthy for an artist. It’s creatively exhausting. (Not even talking about how much work just goes into marketing and dealing with commissioners)
But also to that point of nfts seem super expensive… That’s why there are editions in the nft space. Where artist can put up an work for a limited amount of ppl to own and buy so they can basically share the price and the artwork between them. I bought Edition works in the range from just a few dollars to like 50€ and 200€. And the artwork is still amazing. U can join in at your own pricepoint. :)
I was doing commission before I started nft. And I would say my stuff was prob on the higher end of comms but it still just was never profitable to do it. Since nft I have creative freedom and tbh a much closer connection to the ppl buying and valuing my works. And even after the crypto crash I’m still making multiples more than I would with comms.
I totally understand your point, however I got one gripe with your stance. Art commissions are a luxury item, that is not nessesary for most people to survive. I might be an artist and I want to earn a lot of money, I always tell potential clients that they shouldn't rip their wallets if they can't afford it. Though I always end up earning just enough to be able to afford my phone bill and utility bills.
There are a lot of artists that are just starting off and they usually sell their stuff for dirt cheap. Or, in your case, you could benefit from finding international clients that charge relatively cheap to your currency. Again, art commissioms are a luxury item you don't need to survive.
@@alittleofsomething I agree actually, I hope I didn't come across as making it out to be some great civil injustice when art is expensive. I was more trying to point out where I thought the negative opinion on NFTs and artists selling them was coming from. Art commissions are a luxury item for sure, but that could even add to the angst people feel over NFTs as an additional luxury they can't afford. I think it was bound to happen in a way. The same way wealthy art buyers purchasing abstract paintings rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Automation replacing labor should be a good thing, since it means more free time and less work being put into things humans no longer have to do. For instance, the advent of farm equipment has meant orders of magnitude less people are required to run a farm, which actually got protests back in the day. Automation replaced the human labor required to run farms, and as a result the majority of our society can focus on other things they would rather do.
That being said, automation replacing labor becomes a bad thing in a capitalist system, especially when there is no social safety net to speak of, because now those out of work are unable to survive anymore and may require retraining (if that's possible for them). Regarding artists specifically in this case, I don't think AI art actually replaces human artists as much as people think. I see them more as tools, since they're fundamentally incapable of having any coherent vision. Saying AI art replaces artists is as absurd as saying photographs replace paintings, or CGI replaces traditional animation (I mean, it sort of has but only because corporations cheaped out on us).
I still don't like nfts, I think they are wayyyy too easy to exploit to do bad. I think the "don't bully artists" part of the video is like mostly right, I would never insult an artist because they use nfts to ensure a good pay for themselves, there are way too many artists that earn barely enough to pay their rent. However I think most of the criticisms in this video are of the Internet in general, and don't have anything to do with nft art in particular. I appreciate the bit at the beginning about the energy cost, but I am not sure what the fact that crypto is even comparable with industries like metalworking says about its sustainability.
The part about politics I really didn't like. While political bias is definitely a thing, it isn't necessarily bad. In fact I think some biases are good, like for example the bias for a UBI or unionization, and I don't see how you could think that is bad. Overall the "theory for why this happend" part is really bad, I think
agreed. the political part was pretty unhinged and used some REALLY bad examples. covid is dangerous to everyone who happens to be a human, get your fucking vaccine because more than just yourself is at risk if you become infected. and trump... isn't worth going into details...
I feel like the 8 hour video should have been made exclusively to address the harassment and abuse suffered by artists, and this video could have been made exclusively in the defence of NFTs.
I think it would have promoted a more focused discussion on each topic, because I don't think any decent person who has an opinion againt NFTs would have also promoted the harassment.
I think the fact that artists can make a living off of NFTs *was* the main argument in defense of NFTs in this video. Note he didn't really talk much on any of the main criticisms brought up in other popular videos (i.e. the scamming, the unsustainability of a market that only goes up, etc.) He did mention the climate aspect, but that was more pointing out a major error in the anti-crypto climate argument, it doesn't disprove the assertion that crypto is bad for the environment.
@@zyansheep he does all that in the video check the time stamps also the market doesnt only just go up thats false
@@zyansheep Except the NFT market is a pyramid scheme, which means artists have to first pay the people on top before they're even allowed to sell an NFT. Just because a few people got lucky, that doesn't make this market any less of a scam. You shouldn't pay your bosses in order to be allowed to sell a product, they should pay you. Plain and simple. There are also people who work for Avon that are successful but that doesn't mean most of Avon's employees aren't actually losing money instead of making them.
@@dork7546 It's NOT a pyramid scheme, I'll tell you why: Avon is a scurry to the top. If you recommend someone to Avon, you have gone up in the pyramid and have inherently made more money than them. However, if an artist recommends an NFT site to someone, they are not profiting directly off of that recommendation. Getting mad at someone for profiting off NFTs is like telling someone not to sell their shit to a billionaire because they fucked the environment : their survival is more important than some weird high horse.
@@no-qe9tb but nfts being a restricted in buyer and scam ridden marked means it's not even good for survival so many people hate nfts whole cloth because of the very real scams and those same scams diminish the purchasing power of the already small market, like someone theoretically could make non scam nft art to survive what's stopping them from surviving or better with commissions or selling physical art, like if someone comes to you asking for a piece to be an nft at a good price sure but to just make them expecting anything is death over the long term
I still cant bring myself to support nfts. Claiming that it contains value by showing pride/flex culture is to me a derived way of supporting flex culture. By showing corporate interests in nfts you are demonstrating public interest in them but corporate greed for whaling. By countering electricity consumption stats you're missing the point that those are superfluous energy costs in the first place. Citing a single bitcoin warehouse burning a flare stack is an example and not a trend - most bitcoin facilities dont obey green approaches.
The only thing i can see as positive is an artist's ability to increase its income through artificial demand.
I didn't think you were gonna be able make this video shorter then like 4 hours but you've gone and done it. Thank you god
video aged like milk
There's still a valid point that artists found a way to make money out of it (while only tangentially interacting with the whole blockchain/web3 part.)
Twitter of course responded with death threats. Even if blockchain was literally burning down rainforest, let's try to untangle this using an analogy. Let's say I really hate McDonalds for serving processed meat and target that hate on some random artist who happened to make one of their ad posters. Am I actually doing something beneficial, or just harassing/shaming someone for trying to make a living through art?
@@Xazamas its more that the NFT market collapsed.
I don't condone using twitter, let alone harassing people through it.
@@nehriim3748the NFT space has probably entered its first bear market. In a market like this, NFTs are just starting to implement actual use cases for buying one beyond just a collectable.
It didn't.
You all just take an article's title as gospel so long as it includes "NFTs bad."
@@RedCornix so the NFT market didn't implode then?
White people calling Clarence Thomas racial slurs is cringe and racist. It doesn’t diminish him, it elevates and normalizes the slurs.
Black people comparing him to Stephan from Django is just accurate. I don’t care what his theoretical political position was in the past, right now he is materially making everyone's lives worse, especially black women in red states.
Clarence Thomas is EXACTLY the kind of person Malcolm X was referring to when he describes the field slave VS the house slave. The idea that one should elevate and equivocate between the perspectives all members of a minority, as if we were a monolith, is itself asinine and at least racism adjacent.
If I encountered a white person coming to the defense of this man, and all the damage his institution does to my community, I wouldn't be grateful that they were "elevating a black voice," I'd be angry and disappointed they were speaking up for a demonstrably shitty person. The mere fact that he is black does not make him exempt from accurate (not racist, but ACCURATE) dunking.
Aaaaand now all NFTs are worthless
"I didn't have a good argument to use when the video came out, but I saw a random headline so I I'm back to dismiss this video now."
Please stop reading headlines that affirm your beliefs and immediately internalising them cause you WANT them to be true.
twitter.com/Uniqueosaurus/status/1708355802812334375
This is like the 5th time in 2 years we've seen this exact same headline plus all the tests I showed you to find profitable artists in the video have continued to work this whole time.
@@Uniquenameosaurus it's okay to admit to be wrong, man. Its not such a big deal.
This video actually made me unsubscribe when i first saw it and this response doesn't make me want to come back (ik you dont care about 1 sub). Its pretty obvious that NFTs are not gonna last, especially with the recent developments.
@@listentokyu3475 you unsubscribed (from a channel that isn't even related to the topic at hand) a year ago (because you didn't like a video 🙁), and then came back (to a channel you aren't subscribed to) out of the blue to add a comment. Once you saw that the OP still didn't agree with you, you reaffirmed a decision to not resub (to a channel that only made two videos on the subject btw). Why does it matter? Why unsub? Why come back at all? Why does it bother you so much??
@@listentokyu3475 "It's okay to admit to be wrong, man" has got to be the the most ironic, self-unaware comment I've read all year.
Unique showed you, with a direct, easy to click link, why you're wrong, and you can't even be bothered to check it or engaged with him with an unbiased response.
Literally just admit you don't know about NFT's and move it, it's not that hard.
@@walaraubo because i liked him, then he made this video, wich made me dislike him. Then i came back to give him another chance (pretty sarcastically tbh) and he failed. Not really necessary of me, but i wanted to do it.
To simplify, NFTs are buying a square in a spreadsheet. That square cannot be replaced or copied, and so is theoretically unique... But not much more so than the patterns you can find in a toilet after someone has used it. It doesn't even have the scarcity of trading cards or coin collections as an excuse; anyone with enough knowledge can create infinite NFTs. So they are fundamentally a scam, not because everyone who buys/sells them thinks of them that way, but because NFTs are (inherently) selling something with 0 value for more than 0 value. Just because the scam can be taken advantage of to have positive benefits doesn't mean it's not a scam.
Also, collectors cannot "display" their pieces because NFTs are not images. It's basically impossible to display a square on a spreadsheet that you have no access to. Instead, the collectors are displaying artwork that has been turned into a receipt for an NFT (which, if not purchased by the NFT's creator or in the public domain, _is_ "stealing" by the logic of the copyright system; just because others steal more blatantly does not make it any less thievery).
Why doesn't collectors buy reprints of cards or coins then?
Looking at all this intense debate in the comments, it will be interesting to grow old and see who ends up on the "right side of history."
Personally I don't like them in their current form, but I hope the technology becomes more useful and it can get rid of its bad rep, for the sake of the artists at least.
I will definitely tell my kids about it.
Same
I doubt there will be a right side. I assume they will turn into trading cards where you have a few that are seen as worth thousands that last
I'm still scrolling through the comments but I have yet to see a single discussion. Everyone seems to be on the exact same page about how they feel about the video
There is very little the tech can do long term that isn't practically done better before hand, the practically there is very important as there is very niche super extreme need shit that is improved by nfts but it's several degrees of separation from anything the average person knows about much less cares about and is only applicable to those hyperspecific purposes that have next to zero chance of meaningfully interacting with mass adopted technology
Addressing NFTs as a an artist thing is like a fifth at best of the issues with it. If not less. It's just... Not worth consideration.
EDIT for clarification : Because every aspect of it that helps artists is outweighed by the various harms, and could be done just as easily if the person bought, say, a poster. NFT bros inflated this market and the worth of these because of the tech and edge aspect of it. The artists benefitting is great. Sadly, not worth it.
Sincerely, an author, which I'm told is art.
Did you watch the video? Yes or no
Even without the whole crypto bro stuff, the entire concept of NFT art is stupid. You don't actually own anything when you buy it.
could you elaborate on what makes it not worth it? you haven't given a reason
And I think that you should still support artists even if you don't agree with them.
Can you clarify what you mean by the 'various harms'? Not being sarcastic, I want to hear both sides of the argument.
Having gotten through the back half of the video, I'd actually really reccomend F.D. Siginifier. A lot of his videos analize the divide between POC communities and leftest movements. He comes at this as a black leftist and is good about acknowleging the hypocracies and double-standards in leftist discourse as well as the prominence of POC in other political groups. He stays firm in his beliefs but does a lot to articulate why these divides exist. He has a great video on Chappelle and one of his manosphere videos touches on Abbot and Preach.
For the video as a whole... I'll be up front about my experiences and biases. I'm white and masc presenting, AMAB. I'm a leftist and a fan of some of the creators you brought up during the video (mainly Dan Olsen and JoCat). A large portion of my media diet is video essays from left-leaning creators. My actual experience with the NFT space is next to none, I first heard about them in passing and from that point learned what they were from content creators like D'angelo Wallace once the first wave of videos came out about them. By the time Line Goes Up came out, my dislike of them had formed due to what I had heard about them and the video just gave me some talking points to better articulate my feelings. I follow a lot of artists on twitter and they tend to lean left in the way you described (its not something I scan for, just the fact that most of the people I follow are left so any artist I find through them tend to be as well). To the best of my knowlege, I have not scene an attack on an NFT artist in my feed. I subscribed to this channel for years ago and have been watching uploads on-and-off.
Off the bat, you have done a lot to soften my views on NFTs, at least in the art sector (a crypto-integrated financial sector still frightens me but thats not what we're discussing here). The stories of rampant theft were what soured me on NFTs initially, but even at a glance the evidence you've raised does a lot to debunk that. Regarding the 'leftist backstab', I'm willing to give people like JoCat (the people just making joke posts and earnestly advising artist to get out of NFTs) the benefit of the doubt. To my knowledge--JoCat isn't a monolyth and I don't want to pretend I speak for everyone--their experience and understanding of NFTs begins and ends at a similar place as mine: learning about them second-hand, hearing about the grifts and envronmental impact, and acting on that information in good faith. These people could have taken the time to look into the facts for themselves, but I genuniely believe they didn't mean any harm through their actions.
For the hard-line anti-NFT leftists... I don't feel confident discussing it. I don't have enough experience with the affected side of artist twitter to really weigh in. I'm sorry if that comes off as hypocritical or disengenuous, I'm still sorting out my feelings as I write this. For Olsen specifically, I have a lot of respect for him. A lot of his best work comes from a sense of empathy, and even with sections of Line Goes Up having been debunked, I am still glad it exists because many of the concerns raised in it still held true (mainly Metamask and the detremental impact the largest proponents of Web3 are causing). I don't belive he intended to indirectly contribute to a wave of hate and self-righteousness on unsuspecting artists, but he does deserve some blame for negligence given his platform.
I have only a shallow exposure to Olsen, but I've seen some pretty bad-faith behavior from him in the past and that put me off wanting to engage with his content. He seems eager to find excuses to demonize people on the "wrong side" on an internet politics proxy war.
@@Boredman567 Yeah, in my experience his "empathic aproach" is only skin deep, if that.
It’s pretty simple. NFTs are allowing artists from all over the world get paid for their work.
A talented artist in Malaysia thanking you for buying her 1/1 on Solana. The environmental cost is zero and the happiness produced is 10/10. If you hate this there’s something wrong with you - you have brain rot.
@@Boredman567 as a long time fan of his work, what other bad-faith behavior from Dan Olsen have you seen? I'm not looking for an argument or anything I just can't think of what you're talking about.
@@dojimakojima912 It's a whole other can of worms, but he acted like a total douche regarding the gamergape controversy. Tweeting snotty things about people, then when they responded he'd react with abuse and bile.
I agree that the smaller artists probably aren't money laundering fronts, but your argument falls apart when defending the multi-millionares. They could easily be a money laundering front.
True, but I don't really think that's the point and even then it's not worth taking down the entire system for it considering the amount of other ways to do so
@@dorcasmutton6335 NFTS are unsustainable and provide no value to society that other forms of art already do.
@@dorcasmutton6335 yeah, its mostly a nitpick, I cant let an emotional appeal to struggling artists get in the way of my immediate and indiscriminate suspicion of anyone with money.
Also when you consider the fact small artists not only will likely not make any money off NFTs but also lose money in the process. Because NFTs work just like a pyramid scheme where you have to pay the people on top before they let you sell the product itself.
Its hard to launder money in crypto - given the transparency of the ledger and the intense scrutiny on mixers. Money laundering through trad banks is way more prevalent and the way larger piece of the laundering pie.
As somebody who did watch the 8 hour vid upon release (and will probably check this one out eventually too), I gotta say I find the comments this time around much more pleasant to read. I'm sure it's because a lot of the fat was trimmed, but it's good to see people actually commenting on the content.
Massive props for both the self-reflection, yet also not blind adherence to the video (which was definitely a process for me as well)
Originally, my opposition to NFTs was because it didn't seem like it actually did what it said it was trying to do. As a CS grad, if someone told me to make a system to associate a piece of art with a particular transaction in a block, so that anyone could go and check "yup that sure is that art that guy bought", I wouldn't have it link to a 3rd party website that could crash or get hacked or whatever, I would have just had the buyer's digital signature of the piece in the transaction verified by the piece's owner. It felt like someone had made a more complicated system for no real reason, which made me think that the real reason was some way of separating people from their money.
I have since come to the leftist conclusion you outlined in your video, that crypto in general is bad for society because it would theoretically reduce the ability of an actually well run government to enact beneficial social policies. Maybe. Actually thinking about it, it only really makes collecting certain kinds of taxes harder, and I'm kinda on a Georgist kick right now and it wouldn't effect a land tax, so I'm not sure it actually does that.
Either way, neither of those concerns are particularly relevant to the plight of struggling artists who need to put food on the table for the immediate future, and maybe they can't eat crypto but even with the crashes, it doesn't seem like they won't be able to find a buyer for crypto at a price good enough to feed themselves. And from a realist perspective, NFTs seem like a spontaneous, bottom up system where by money is funneled from people who have a bunch of it to people who are doing good things they are passionate about and providing them the resources they need to continue doing that, Which is really very socialist if you don't actually think about the various power dynamics involved. Heck, the goal of winning at market socialism is basically just using your excess riches to buy nice stuff to brag about.
In any case, I'd rather rich people spend their money pimping out a digital vanity project than on buying politicians, and I'd rather artists not starve than starve. I won't begrudge anyone selling NFTs (though honestly I'll probably still begrudge the people buying them).
It'd be really nice if the left wasn't constantly eating itself tho.
Thanks for the thought provoking content.
"it only really makes collecting certain kinds of taxes harder" - It also isn't backed by anything. It isn't like fiat currency. It's constantly in flux. While it certainly helps hide away assets, it's inherent value is whatever someone says it is. Unlike Fiat currency, which is backed by the credibility of your economic system and government, cryptocurrency is backed purely by faith. Which is why it crashed and burned earlier in the year and sees so many fluctuations. The value of a bitcoin depends on what others can convince you it is, while the value of a dollar is what the global economy *agrees* what it is.
totally fair comment
@@sethketa This would be more valid point for specifically privacy coins that are more analogous to private favours but interchangeable. Nothing incredible new but more accessible. Barter but services and products are separated to the point enforcing taxation becomes harder.
Very congruent with the crypto anarchist ethos. The invention of message cryptography has made many "beneficial" surveillance tactics harder. One side calls it a nuisance other a right.
This is an inevitable disagreement with individuals with different values Uniquenameosaur will have with those who value stability and equality over freedom.
@@JohnSmith-ox3gy Yeah, but I think most people agree you want a balance between freedom and regulation. Right now in crypto it’s about at the level of stock, but with stock where people can decide to elevate or tank something by the price. One person can decide they hate bitcoin so they’ll sell it for a dollar while another decides they love it so they’ll buy it for 1 million. This makes it not feasible as a currency so most places won’t accept crypto for services. Inflation happens, but it’s pretty rare a country’s currency fluctuates dramatically. There’s a healthy middle ground between government currency and free market that needs to be found so that investing isn’t inherently risky
@@sethketa I'm already assuming a socialist utopia where money doesn't really matter, I don't particularly care if people gamble with it (though I do kinda wish the gambling had more of a socially useful purpose than stupid pump and dump schemes. There might be something to betting markets?) And like you said, the actual economy is backed by government enforcement, so the crypto market crashing isn't going to break it.
My issue about taxing crypto is because relationships, including economic relationships, including crypto relationships, wouldn't be able to happen without the social stability and infrastructure which society produces as a public good. So I think it's reasonable that the government, insofar as it acts as a representative of the social collective, is entitled to some share of all excess profit as a solution to the free rider problem.
Crypto stops a wealth tax or a sales tax (or any other transfer tax) from working unless it's built into the system. (Edited here. Building this into crypto wouldn't make it digital fiat. Fiat has the capacity to mint new currency to fund public projects. So there would still be an important distinction)
Actually thinking about it, I don't think a land tax would work because all you need for crypto is a closet with electricity and wifi. Which is way less space than you need for a human, so why build housing when you could build server farms. Why take care of the environment when you could turn every square inch of unused land into computronium. I guess George wasn't thinking that far ahead.
So probably need some kind of (exponential?) excess tax on Internet usage, probably tied to actual identity rather than land usage.
But yeah, not too worried about crashes in a market for things that don't really exist. (You know, in the long term. In the short term, it sucks how many people were convinced it was the next big thing and bet their savings and lost it all while making rich people with connections even more rich.) In the end it seems like a Bitcoin or an Eth is worth somewhere north of a beanie baby, so it's probably worth it for artist to make NFTs? If I was doing it, I would immediately be converting this sales back into dollars, and I really wish we had a better system for ensuring artist don't starve, but you work with the system you have, right?
Glad you condensed that 8 hour monstrosity into something actually watchable, I tried with that vid but just couldn’t with how long and dry it was, especially since even though it did lighten my opinion on NFTs themselves, I saw that it absolutely wasn’t going to change my opinion on the system they’re a part of. The issue with NFTs isn’t whether or not they work for artists, the advantages or harms they might have towards the environment, or if people actually want them or not, the issue is their direct ties to the crypto market. If I could just use a regular US dollar to buy an NFT, then I would have a much better opinion of them. The link to the volatile, scummy, and scam filled world of crypto in essence ruins NFTs for me. The fact that at I have to buy into an ecosystem of low consumer protection to participate in NFTs is horrific, added on to by the fact that the marketplaces that NFTs inhabit have few to little ways to keep yourself safe. You can say the quantity of malware and bad faith actors are a small part of the NFT-space, but the issue is that I have no protective measures I could take against them. If a malware NFT gets in my wallet, I can’t do anything with it. It’s a ticking time bomb. Likewise, if there’s some horrible NFT event, I can’t counter that. NFTs as a technology are something I don’t like but am mostly fine with, but the ways NFTs are often utilized is a massive and active deterrent in my eyes.
That and I’m not fond of digital ownership regardless, I only buy physical games and art wherever possible. Just a side thing to note on my take
Yeah, especially after the SBF situation I really don’t want to touch crypto. If my money’s in a bank and they fail, then my money’s protected by the government. If I have my money in crypto, it’s the same as the stock market. Maybe it increases in value or maybe it crashes but I don’t have the extra funds to risk that
Agreed you said it so well!
@@alliew31
small pedantic clarification:
FTX fiasco was pure fraud (not directly caused by the nature of crypto), if your money was in an FDIC-insured institution like a bank and it went down, there would be no issue. If your crypto was stored in a wallet and not FTX, there would also be no issue (at least in terms of not loosing money to fraud)
You are correct to compare non-stablecoin cryptos to stocks though, they are inherently volatile because they don't have a big institution (government) behind them to keep their value stable.
Beautiful comment. NFTs might have their advantages and mass hate and harassment is absolutely fucking deranged, but the system they're part of (crypto) is fundamentally broken. Every single major crypto push is nothing but a "get rich quick" scheme, or the new cool way of earning money (that has no real value since it's not backed up by any government and, unlike regular economies, incentivizes you to hold rather than to spend). Capitalism is still at fault of starving artists needing to partake in this broken ass system for being able to eat, but if there's something I gotta give Unique it's people universally don't treat artists using NFTs with the nuance it deserves. As left leaning as I am, I always found it strange and ridiculous to put all artists using NFTs under the same umbrella, as if they're all purposefully being malicious.
I think you're making an incredible stretch, making a connection between the scams or whatever and interacting with the crypto environment in any way.
The actions are just as separated as you buying a collectible for USD despite it being used for drug trade or something
16:24 holy shit that whole right click save schism was bait? That's flippin hilarious, and honestly makes a whole lot more sense xD
and the perfect bait at that, because everyone knows you pretty much can't prevent the public from copying what they can access, especially in the digital age. the core of why many saw NFTs as completely stupid well before the outright culture war that's since been waged against crypto in general.
I appreciate you for your efforts at condensing your previous eight-hour video.
So I checked about the NFTs and none of what you said seem to fit reality. Some of my favorite artists, even popular ones, went for NFTs and out of those who did, not a single one sold anything. I checked.
Even the popular ones?
Okay, i'll bite, link em.
EDIT: the following two replies were auto deleted for links but I'll summarize:
OP gave me links to 3 different youtubers who they happened to see get into NFTs, not normal artists on twitter found by any consistent methodology.
When I searched for sales records, two of the youtubers no longer had public links to NFT pages, which COULD mean it was unprofitable, but could also mean they deleted after a backlash, something very common with artists, even if they got a sale.
But one of the links was to a RUclipsr called blender Guru who according to OP only made $100. This was straight up false.
When I checked his foundation page, he'd made over 10k. If you want, search "blender guru on foundation" and see for yourself.
When I replied with this I gloated at op and took shots at their intentions, NOT for getting something wrong, but because they had previously been replying to positive comments on this video saying I "was cherry picking and didn't do any research".
Since now that I was vilified, I started taking shots at their intentions as they had previously done for me. Argument escalated from there, as you can see.
@@Uniquenameosaurus I'm not stupid, any links will get auto flagged as spam. I can give you names, but I don't know if that won't work either. I did a quick search right now tho, and people I follow seem to removed any videos about NFTs and their NFTs too. The only one that sold anything that I found now has almost 3mil subscribers and earned about 100$ on all his NFTs XD
Anyways, I'll try and reply with names and links.
Post edit PS: Jesus man nobody vilified you... Stop making such drama already.
www.youtube.com/@Markom3D
www.youtube.com/@BoroCG
www.youtube.com/@blenderguru
The last guy is the one thats $100 richer.
Now here's question, how much did you earned on NFTs if its so lucrative?
@@Uniquenameosaurus Excuse me? Why are you even so rude towards me? If you feel so hurt by mere disagreement, go ahead and remove these comments yourself.
@@WwZa7 Nah. Not here, i'm talking about you replying to people with:
"It is cherrypicking tho. He didn't do any research, just checked his immideate environment in few minutes, which he said its how he did it"
If you're not going to give me any benefit of the doubt, then i'm not gunna give it to you either.
You. Were. Wrong. I proved it in SECONDS of research. You clearly knew how lazy your research was but you wanted to hide behind bold claims cause they make you feel good about what you already wanted to believe and cause you thought I wasn't confident enough in my own points to want to see the evidence for myself.
The fact that you wanna rebrand it as "just a disagreement" and have zero shame for talking with such rudeness and arrogance for something you were so wrong about, just further proves to me you're the exact kinda person I talk about in the video.
Everything you say you care about is a lie. You care about yourself and pushing your own agenda because it helps YOU. And you don't care how many artists you have to throw under the bus to get it.
Value gone down the le drain
Assuming you read this comment, Mista U, has your stance changed a bit, a lot, somewhat or not?
Doubt that, people like him rather would die tham admit they are wrong, I mean he literally made an 8 hour video and than another 1 hour video on the same topic to defend this scam.
I don't think it's relevant for their point though. It was a good thing for artists when he released it, if it's not as good now it doesn't really affect the message.
@@asfalto8154 Interesting point
Aheam, screen shot. Thats my ted talk
I'm saving the 8-hr for a rainy day, but this has really helped shine a new perspective on the topic. Not too big a fan of how rhetorical some remarks and counterarguments were-it leaves space to wonder how much was biased by emotion-but the qualifications provided was a breath of fresh air. I can't say I like hypebeasts, but this has really helped show how much the NFT bash was conjured in the echo chamber.
I have three problems on the enviromental argument. (I also checked the original so that I didn't miss anything)
First of all this is an example of causation doesn't imply correlation, sure, there isn't a clear correlation between number of transactions and energy used... But we are ignoring that transactions ARE the cause for this energy usage, if there were no transactions then this energy wouldn't be spent. Processing the transactions is still the reason we burn this energy. And increased adoption is the reason why it is considered so valuable and the reason that we burnt so much of it. Like... one usually tries to build a correlation to justify a causation, but here we don't even need that. We know the cause.
Secondly... 16 MT is still a lot... it is not even an order of magnitud lower from the previous estimate. It is like saying: One coal power plant is not that bad, four power plants would be much worst! Like... it is still bad, the fact that the previous approximation was much worse doesn't mean this isn't terrible.
And finally, I completely disagree with the comparisson between crypto and essential industries like... heating your house, mining materials for electronics, making cement. We need those as a society. It feels almost like poor shaming telling someone, if you care so much about the environment, then turn off your heating and freeze, why should we stop the money transactions that are only used by an extreme minority of the population. It is just not a fair comparisson at all comparing essential needs for everyone with a commodity of an extreme minority. If anything, the fact that this industry used by so few is even comparable to these huge industries used by everyone should be more of a red flag than a reassurance.
Regarding the rest... I don't think it is at all controversial to say that people don't have a problem with artists getting money from nfts. People were actually enthusiastic about that at the beginning. What people absolutely hated is huge corporations producing nfts in mass to make a quick buck, and in general all the actors abusing fomo of the consumers to try to sell an artificially scarce digital product as expensive as possible, in the crypto space that is already proned to scams. That is what people hated.
Responding to your pollitical theory for why people hated nfts... you should also have in mind that correlation doesn't imply causation. The fact that in your own research people that hated nfts are also people that tended to be left leaning, doesn't mean that their politics are the reason they hate it, or that they have a plan to destroy them because it hurts their politics. It might just mean that the type of person that tends to go left, also tends to hate nfts, like the city they live in might have an impact, their socio economic status, their education. But for the record, I don't think this is true at all, I don't think a handful of youtubers and influencers could tell us much about what the majority of people in the pollitical spectrum thinks about nfts. I pesonally think that they are hated across the spectrum for different reasons. Like right leaning people might hate the fact that the collectibles are digital, they do like their old school painting, the hard manual labor, producing something tangible. Or they might hate people overseas selling art internationally, taking jobs out of local artists. Or they might just hate big tech... Like you can paint a conspiracy either way. I don't think this has to be pollitical at all. People just dislike them for a huge variety of reasons. And I mean they mostly dislike the corporate use of them.
Well said
He didn't go into it much in the video, but the climate argument is incredibly bad faith for NFTs. He mentioned it quickly, but Ethereum moved to proof of stake a while ago which means you CAN'T EVEN MINE IT ANYMORE. Sure you can still mine bitcoin, but bitcoin doesn't have NFTs. 99% of the NFT market is on Ethereum.
Ethereum energy use went down over 99.9%. It barely uses any energy now. NFTs/Ethereum have zero impact on the environment now. This should be talked about more when people keep regurgitating the climate argument since it is completely fucking false.
@@Masterfiend I think it is probably so recent that there are not many studies published on how much Ethereum uses now. I mean it is not about them saying it, that is a huge conflict of interest, is about a third party researching and publishing their results.
So I guess that is why he is just going on old data, because that is the data that exists. And from the data presented on this video and the previous one, to me it seems like still terrible. If there is better data out there made by independent researchers well he should've used it and then it is possible that I wouldn't have a problem with the results mentioned.
But yeah, at the very least, he did kind of a bad job defending crypto environmentally. At least in my opinion.
Yeah, his screed against Leftists is total horseshit.
@@Hifuutorian Yeah... It felt like a giant strawman tbh. "You don't hate nfts for the reason you said, in reality you have other more evil political reasons" Not very different from religious people saying that atheists are atheists because they hate god and want to sin.
glad you made a shorter version but this doesn't change my stance on the matter
Why not?
I couldn't finish the 8 hour video initially, but I might have to go back to it and go through it piecemeal to see if there was something I missed here that was brought up there. Otherwise here are my comments.
1. NFT's are good for artists - The gambling industry could be really good for artists to make money, but I would not say that I think it would be a viable future for art nor a great idea to support it for the future of art. You could say that that's my political opinion not my 100% rational take here but yeah, that's the point. As someone that pays for art on occasion, I see no reason why crypto has to be the way forward for this. I've been paying for art in large sums for nearly a decade now and the current system seems fine to me and I've not heard the artists tell me that they'd like for me to pay on the blockchain. The people who got rich even after the crypto market crash did so because people were still willing to pay a lot for it not because the existence of NFT's made that possible. So yeah, a lot of artists made money from NFT art because more people wanted to pay for it and they had a disposable currency to do that with, not because NFT's inherently made that system any better. I'm glad people are paying artists more. Arguments about being good for artists in developing countries who have international clients are valid though especially if regulations make it hard for them to make a living. However I will say that there are many ways around this, crypto not even being in the top 5 ways around them especially now since Crypto trading is being heavily regulated if not banned in those countries anyway because they violate regulations around international fund transfer.
2. This maybe petty but you did make a "not real artists" statement about people who put up "shitty photos" or rip-offs from paint being part of the data that the study of OpenSea (3:40).
So is your thesis statement in that segment that "good" artists get paid more? I would have thought that was self-evident with or without NFT's. But yes that study had some methodological flaws especially about the time period the data was taken from. I do agree that a stratification by quality is needed for the results of that study but even I can't think of a reasonable way to do that given the sheer volume of information you'd need to comb through. Besides, I'm not sure who gets to decide what is "real" art and who is a real artist. Certainly not me - I don't consider myself a real artist and I've actually sold art I've made for a time decades ago. I would prefer that artists get to live comfortably regardless of the kind of art they produce - that would really make things better rather than having to focus on particular styles or pander to specific financial systems just to stay afloat. Making art for a living is a scam everywhere.
3. The art theft accusation segment I almost completely agree with. NFT's don't encourage more art theft, they just add to a problem that existed well before Web 3.0. I will say however they're not necessarily helping the issue or are any better equipped to stop art theft. It's just a different marketplace for art theft to happen. Besides - most art is based theft of other art - it's just some of it involves more work than others and not everyone gets paid the same.
4. The environmental concerns have been very exaggerated I agree. If you don't consider the blockchain a worthwhile endeavor, everything looks like wasted energy. Where you stand on this really depends on how important the blockchain is to you. Personally I would prefer that people put less effort into inventing new currencies and economies and just work on improving the systems and regulations we already have.
5. While there are legit use cases for NFT's, the sheer volume of scams and the number of people that have been conned out of incredible amounts of money make it a very unappealing market to do anything on. Mostly because most people don't understand the technology and are at the mercy of people who do. I don't know about the circles you travel in, but from what I've experienced of the culture myself, it works very similar to how people in MLM's and pyramid schemes operate. Getting rid of NFT's won't stop scamming from occurring - it'll just most likely shift to the next big platform. It's not a point against it, but perhaps it'll settle down once more regulations come in. But once that happens, I doubt artists are going to get paid any better than they are now, in fact I'm pretty sure they'll just get screwed out of earnings again. Besides the increased valuation from Crypto comes specifically from the fact that they are pumped so hard - I doubt that will be the case for long if it crashes and everyone cashes out and the bubble collapses - Dan Olsen made this point in his video. The houses in California don't cost more because they're actually worth more.
6. The betrayal bit is entirely valid but maybe harped on a bit too much here. I don't know if you've spent a lot of time of Twitter, but the entire site is awash in hypocrisy, envy and clout chasing on both sides of the American political divide. I would say that most left-leaning Americans are somewhat aware of the hypocrisy of the state of discourse online; In fact two the people you used as an example in your montage - Innuendo studios and Contrapoints - actually have videos on the subject of how hypocritical people can be when discussing issues that don't personally involve them versus when they have skin in the game. The vast majority of people online don't care about the opinions they espouse (mostly because they don't have to deal with them on a daily basis), they care more about optics and community and they will do some pretty inhumane things to other people especially if simple disagreement is banal. Engaging in harassment against anyone is never justified though so I'm glad you pointed out the hypocrisy.
So in summary a reasonable rebuttal of some of the misinformation going around but I still don't see how NFT's were essential to having a thriving art/art-collector community. I'm glad some artists made more money from it but I don't think it justifies the need for it to exist especially when it's debatable if it's actually adding anything of value besides being in the cultural zeitgeist.
I disagree with parts of this but I'll keep it to issues I take with points 1 and your summary.
1- I'm sick of people treating the "artists make money" as having an implicit "so nothing they do that earns them money could be bad." This argument specifically addresses the counter-argument that artists do not actually benefit from NFTs. It's wonderful that you have the disposable income to buy art and that the current system works for you. That's not sarcastic, good for you. That tells me nothing about how good the system is for the artists themselves. It doesn't appear to be because many of them have endured a lot of hate breaking into NFTs as a new source of income.
You keep claiming that the NFT method is "unnecessary" because other avenues exist. "Vans are a waste of money because cars exist." Easy to claim but the obvious problem is that vans have utility that cars don't despite the bulk of a van's utility are reiterative. So too here. It is very nice that you don't need NFTs to get along, but some artists disagree and you have a massive hurtle to clear if you want to claim their concerns mean less than yours.
Summary- I play MTG and do not get the appeal of Pokemon cards. The difference between the 2 is that MTG has what I consider to be a playable game. I will put money into prettier versions of the cards with special arts that have no impact on how well my deck functions in a game. If I wanted to, i could print off fake versions of those cards and play in my weekly games. I do this already to an extent and nobody cares because I only do this with cards I actually own but don't have multiple copies of but I could probably still enjoy the hobby and never buy another card. So here are my questions given that context:
-Do the pokemon collectors need to justify the resources burned to make their cards to me?
-Do I have to justify my pretty card purchases to you?
I think the answer to both is "no." I bet there is a hobby you enjoy that see no point in. Resources are put into it, and people are paid to produce it. The second I demanded you provide me a justification for it's existence, and especially if I just denied any of the reasons you gave you would immediately know why it would be silly that i did so. NFTs do not need to be justified to anyone outside of the people who buy them. There is a sufficient market for them, they should get to exist. You would have to make a case for why they are so detrimental that they shouldn't. And since there is nothing requiring you to get into them, that's going to be a hard sell.
@@RedCornix Didn't get a notification for this so I'm glad I checked back. I'm glad you clarified about not being sarcastic because a lot of this reads as very defensive. No shade - I was actually worried I had said something personally egregious.
Not sure what your point was in the first paragraph. Are you saying that NFT's are bad for artists because they got attacked? Well sure but that tells me nothing about NFT's being good for artists either. Honestly I think it's bad because NFT's are overvalued and they encourage large spending as a result since the avenues for cashing out on crypto get smaller and smaller with each day. Artists may be making money in a bubble economy now but that doesn't mean bubble economies are good or sustainable for art futures. Please let me know if I've misunderstood.
The Van/Car argument is specious - they are product not currency/NFT's. I may have different tastes in art or different needs from a vehicle, but I generally pay for them in the same legal tender - on something that has a valuation that can be assured. I don't change currencies on a dime and when I need to or I don't "get" other currencies, I change currencies to pay as intended for that country that the recipient can use for goods and services there. In fact doing what you describe very much circumvents existing checks and balances to keep other countries currencies stable so what you do isn't really happening in a vacuum - it affects everyone. There's a CNBC report that shows that China lost $50 billion from crypto being siphoned out of their country paid with their money. Say what you will about China and situations that don't personally affect you, I don't wanna wake up the next day and find my countries tender is worthless because people don't want to pay tariffs or declare their earnings. NFT's are just unique receipts for crypto that were built specifically for the purpose to encourage you to spend crypto; they're not revolutionary in anyway. The actual art that an NFT points to can be copied and shared like any other media. This isn't a different model of van - it's just a ledger entry for the van declaring you to be the owner - a ledger entry that isn't invulnerable to theft or deletion by a single mouse click.
-Do the pokemon collectors need to justify the resources burned to make their cards to me? Bad question; it's unlikely that anyone can put the onus on individuals for purchase agreements that are freely available, but we can ban the card manufacturers and that's what will likely happen with crypto and NFT's. And if "Pokemon" or "MTG" cards start littering every corner or the street and landfill making a nuisance for others and governments, we will be justified in banning them. Our country did that with plastic bags and I heard arguments that were similar to yours. But once it was done, the world continued - we had other ways to carry groceries. Entire subsections of our economy didn't collapse because they were given fair warning and they had time to diversify. This works for your second question too. None of this is really about your personal choice, it's about systems that will affect all of us - participants or not. A better analogy would be fast fashion - it maybe amazing for you to get clothes so cheaply that are disposable every year and it's your right to wear whatever clothes you like, whenever you like; but the system it's based on is ethically dubious and affects more than just one person and the environment as a whole - it's not sustainable. We can argue about how sustainable it is or if the figures produced are wrong, but you can't say that it affects no one else but the participants. This whole argument is a false equivalence.
So yeah, artists are making money in a bubble and one that's likely to burst and leave anyone not already cashed out likely to have lost their earnings. Good if you cashed out early; don't see this being sustainable for artists in the long run. And we can and will have a debate about if any of this is actually necessary for art to flourish.
@@xethified
Yeah, youtube doesn't like internet slap fights. Super unfortunate. Thank you for the response.
My read of your first point's opening sentences was that you were likening NFTs to the seediness that gambling establishments get up to. Having gone back, I see you could have simply meant "Artists could make money by doing no art and gambling instead." If so, then that was my error. The simple response to that point is that gambling probably has better odds than trying to live off a successful art career but NFTs are additive in how one could succeed in the latter. If you already allow that people can take their odds with art, the gambling point is moot. Regardless, the next paragraph explains what I was getting at originally.
(The point of my first paragraph is that people tend to take the "NFTs are profitable for artists" argument from the pro-NFT side and add on a "therefore NFTs are good because the only thing that matters is that artists are making money." My opening paragraph was pointing out that people are either intentionally or unintentionally missing the point of this argument. The pro-NFT side is not saying that "because NFTs make money, they are therefore fine no matter what." They are responding to the anti-NFT argument that "NFTs are not actually profitable." ) You didn't argue this but thought I'd include the context.
What is "over valued" is subjective. Again, take MTG. There are prettier version of cards with a higher price tag. The only joy I get is in looking at them. Hell, I could make a more visually pleasing product by printing fakes (which I could use legally because most shops allow proxies for play.) You say the art is costing too much, I say it's finally selling for what it's worth.
There isn't a shortage of places to cash out crypto. This is a bold claim and you are welcome to show reduction to the point of lost ability.
NFTs are a product. All arguments that follow off the counter-assertion are moot. It is weird that you group NFTs to currency. Again, MTG cards are not currency, they are a re-sellable product and they mirror NFTs in this function. All MTG cards can be proxied. I could get the exact art and format. I actually have done this a few times before deciding paper in front of a throw away card was more efficient. That 'ledger" is a product. It is not a physical piece of art, but it remains a product. You can think it's a dumb product. You can think the buyers are being fooled despite both videos showing that not being the case, but it isn't much of an argument. For my sake please tell me, what is the functional difference in trading cards and NFTs aside from one existing in a digital space? Keep in mind I have had my cards stolen, ruined by water (which means that like NFTs they can have their value taken by accident or malicious intent), everyone has access to the media that makes them up and can replicate my collection for comparatively cheap, and that I personally know someone who has traded a stack of them for a vehicle. I know collectors and people who trade these cards like stock. I know people who re-sell when their bank account gets low. What is the difference and if there isn't one, do you make all these complaints against trading card games?
Your currency is not guaranteed. First, it relies on the government backing it. It is unlikely the government will stop but we are arguing degrees of certainty here. Old crypto is not likely to become worthless unless the government decides to make it so. Kind of BS but such is the way of legal monopolies. That aside, I might look at historical examples of governments turning their own money into kindling and decide "this is going to fail at some point" and you'd have a hard time proving this concern unwarranted. Crypto will boom and bust if left unchecked, but your dollars are not immune to this.
Second, the value of your currency certainly isn't guaranteed. Governments inflated the currency over the last few years by a ridiculous amount. You have the same access to the bills (USD, I'm not sure of other countries enough to comment) you've managed to keep the government from bleeding from your taxes but the value of it has decreased due to large decisions made by the government. You have accepted the simplified version of how transactions work under a stable currency but when we dig into the details, the only advantage you have left is convenient use. Hell, everyone knows our senators are dirty and actively funnel money into their own pockets. That dwarfs any crypto scams. It's your personal choice, but your preference isn't universal. The larger video has a section pointing out that when artists in a country had trouble receiving payments from the US in exchange for commissions, crypto circumvented that issue. In at least one instance crypto made earning money easier for a number of artists who might have otherwise relied on the unreliable American Dollar.
You don't want individuals using crypto to undermine governments and syphon money away from where you believe it should go. I care about that far less because I see governments as bloated money laundering operations that manage to as inefficiently as possible keep the lights on. The government wastes far more of my money than any crypto scheme ever has. You are allowed to be more concerned about the former, do you agree that I am justified in weighing the latter as far worse? If you can, why are you saying "crypto shouldn't be a thing" rather than "I have no interest but this thing is fine to exist?"
-From here I am referencing your last two sections which I was not a fan of and do not hide.
I doubt highly that you've researched how much waste MTG product makes, so I'm not going to treat this dodge with any amount of seriousness. You can declare the waste to be an issue, but you are literally the first person to bring it up to me. Nobody cares about this issue. It is just cover for your point which makes it funny that you've paired it to the consequentialist argument. Specifically that "whatever we think, the government is likely to step in." If that is what you want to argue about, I think the government will ban crypto purely out of bad intentions anyway. Hard to run your scam with competition after all. I don't care about that issue. I care about the reasons why people hold crypto and NFTs to standards they don't elsewhere because this lack of consideration is why people sell their freedom to the government to begin with. And you actually have the balls to argue that the government that lied us into a war in the middle east, and banned bags right after green lighting and encouraging the production of just as pollutable masks (that have dubious returns if any) is somehow a reliable guardian to the currency they keep inflating. Crypto is filled with issues but damn, you are really haven't considered just how tenuous the "reliable dollar" actually is in practice. You show a serious lack of consideration to this point and it pretty much buries your credibility on evaluating crypto.
How tf do you write that last paragraph under a video you've watched that shows artists making thousands in profit from collectors at the bottom of the crash? Some of them started in the crash. Where do these people lose out other than on the crash that hits the regular currencies too? They're probably doing better than my mother's retirement right now. You know, that thing that is entirely government backed that has had most of it's value stolen because of an economic downturn?
Well, I think I better understand your position now. I'll probably read your next response if youtube decides to be less crap about it but I doubt I'll follow up. I engaged with your comment because I appreciated the effort you put into making it and thinking over the issues, but that last section was rough. Crypto's only competition is government backed currency and maybe things like gold or other precious metals. the latter is it's own mess, crypto doesn't have to be good because government backed currency and it's management are a horror show. It only has to meet that standard to be justified. It does because it's a lower standard than you are accounting for. And I cannot believe that someone will sit here in earnest and argue that "The competition has the power to nuke crypto from the face of the planet, so really that's all there is to it." This should be the type of thing that bothers people but no, they really are fine with tyranny so long as it's familiar.
Crypto is great and NFTs are too. It is a shame where this is headed, but I'm glad several artists have managed to make a profit off of it from people who genuinely value their art despite people ignoring their existence, even after being exposed to it.
@@RedCornix Thanks for your response and all I'll say is fair enough. That last paragraph was especially exhausting to read since I though I made it clear I'm not an American and I really don't have your perspective on this. I feel like we're talking in tangents to each other. But given what you're used to, this probably looks like the obvious solution. All I'll say is that people will always lie to you for their own gains, I don't see a system where more people can lie to you from anywhere and any country for any purpose as being inherently better. If you have a problem with your countries economy, work to fix it - the laws that will govern the stability of cryptocurrency are applicable to dollars as well; that goes for corruption at the top too. No amount of alternate currency is going to sort that out - it'll only compound the issue. Also just because something is profitable, doesn't mean it's inherently good. Hopefully this will be enough of a scare that it'll force that to happen, pessimistically it'll just get banned and nobody will try to learn anything from it. I suppose I'll wait and see if any of this actually bears any fruit in the end.
NFTs are stupid.
Glad to see a more concise version. I did watch the entirerty of the original and it did change my mind. But there was a lot of redundant information and examples in it that could have been cut out. Its sheer length made sharing or referencing a difficult prospect.
exactly my sentiment
Ooo look at this nice and to the point and with helpful tags to jump around. Love you for this... Even if I already watched the 8 hour video
oh one more thing, I really wish you cut out the prozd example even though you barely mentioned it in this version, it's just wrong.
I am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt. but when it comes to something like vaccines, being on a set is selfish. could he have been a little nicer when saying it? sure
but the point is, it doesn't matter if their reasoning is justified or not. you should not be allowed in public and full of people places without it. it's fine to be skeptical due to a history, but you have to make certain sacrifices.
the other random people in public have nothing to do with this. they shouldn't be punished for it.
the claim: replace her, is more than justified.
The much needed shortened version
ı love that you give blair white for people who get hated for what they believe but dont say that blair white belives non binary people arent a thing and only valid trans people are the ones who medically transitions.
Well, he did go into a rant about radical leftists in his 8 hour video....
@@LadyAsteria58 i can guess by last third of this video doing the same thing
I don't think she believes "valid trans people are the ones who medically transitions"
but Trans people that actively attempt or portray themselves as their preferred gender.
Basically , No burly 280 pounds of pure muscle, with a beard to outshine the sun, person using she/her pronouns.
But if you're a born male, that shaves, voice-trains, ect. even if you have a chiseled chin, as long as you make an effort, then that effort should be respected.
I think that was her position.
Blair has some pretty shitty takes and there are good reasons to dislike her, or even think she's harmful to trans acceptance. For example, she falsely claimed a transgender powerlifter had competed against cis women, when in fact she has only competed in men's competitions.
But I think that portion of the video serves a point, in that it highlights that a lot of the erasure of NFT artists has a hidden political agenda behind it.
@@Grigori7 she literally calls someone transtrender in this video she is obv a transmedicalist ruclips.net/video/bBnJ2z40_84/видео.html
She literally apologises to someone here because she was publicly calling them not trans because she didnt know she was medically transitioning
I was wondering when this would drop. I'll watch this in the morning because it's very late for me, but I'm definitely hyped.
Managed to open this video almost right as released and having just finished it and looked at the comments, it's gonna be interesting to see if they're any different when I hit that refresh lmao. Gotta love it when people comment rebuttals before even knowing what your arguments will be.
Ok, I'm still very uninformed, but I'll still try to throw my two cents and anyone is more than welcome to clarify things for me, as I didn't watch the 8-hour video:
-I still don't understand the inherent point of this, why buy an NFT if it's not all about profit? If it's about the art, you can still download/save the art and donate those hundreds of dollars to the artist you want to support, or did you simply want proof of you charitable you were in the form of an NFT? If it's about making a gallery and/or promoting artists, you can do that without NFTs, just make sure to always provide credit, the way I see it, just like video said, those collections are just another form of hypebeast culture.
All those owners saying they miss their NFTs after they sold them? What are they missing exactly? The URL? The art is still accessible to them, and the people regretting not selling when they got the chance prove my point, they bought it to sell it for more, that's all there is to it.
It was never about the artist, so let's not pretend it was, where were all those people spending untold amounts of money on NFTs when all these artists where struggling?
-No one can deny NFTs were profitable for many artists, but really, how many of them actually benefitted from that market, percentage wise? Yes, certain artists became millionaires, but remember, the art market has always been and will always saturated, if you move the whole market somewhere else and reshuffle it a bit, it's still gonna be saturated, for every artist that made a good profit from NFTs, there are millions of other artists with untouched collections, so really, how much of a difference did it make?
My opposition for NFTs is mainly from an existential point of view, we're giving immense value to things that have no value, whether it's randomly generated images that don't qualify as art, or art that is can be easily copied/replicated, because on the internet, nothing is fungible.
You want to support artists? Donate to the ones you care about (and even the ones you don't) to encourage them to make more art without having to worry about profit or demand, art for art's sake, THAT is what matters.
(I'd frankly be practicing what I'm preaching if I had access to dispensable income and a PayPal account.)
Sorry for a bit of a necro but you asked for replies.
The thing is, a lot of people like collecting stuff related to sth they love, and NFT is pretty much a digital signed copy. It is a proof that you own something limited and endorsed by the artist and for some people that's important and is certainly not a new thing and no one is attacking artists selling signed copies. At the same time I think it answers why people might miss them. You can easily replace an original signed print with a photocopy of it, but having a "fake one" just wouldn't be fun.
I don't see your point with the argument that many artists didn't profit from NFT. You are certainly correct, but many artists also didn't profit from selling prints or any other type of merchandise and that's not a reason to hate those, NFT just give another possibility for artist. Also general attitudes toward NFT probably didn't help with profits. Also nobody claims everyone is buying it for the artists, and there is absolutely zero reason to condemn sth for not being used for purely altruistic reasons.
About the value of NFT there is clear value as a collector item, with added benefits of easily checking if something is real. Also trying to assign value to stuff other than that what people value it as seems foolish, because it hinges on what a single person likes. What is the value of family to someone whose family was always cruel to, what's the value of money to someone living outside of society, what's the value of art to someone who thinks it looks hideous. And yet those things still have value, so I don't think anyone can just decide that nfts are worthless. The world is full of stuff that we have to assign value to make it worth sth
And yes donating to an artist is usually best, but people often want to have something in return, a keepsake if you will and there is no reason to shame them for that.
In general even if you were correct that nfts where not worth it, then so what? Not everything needs to be for you and if it's not harmful there is no reason to oppose it
@@cmentarnikPL
-Just get a physical signed copy, it doesn't have the illusion of artificial scarcity and is probably easier to setup than an NFT collection.
(The only exception to this is animated NFTs, since you can't put an animation on a poster...yet)
-OP literally said this is for altruistic reasons, at least partially, and I was just refuting that argument.
-Yeah I know it gets a bit hazy when it comes to the intrinsic value of things, especially currency, but the thing is, we already have currency, why are we using currency, to buy currency (Crypto, which where supposed to be decentralized and anonymous and that's not even the case anymore) to buy ANOTHER currency (NFTs)? It's ridiculous.
-Yeah so it was never about supporting artists, so let's not pretend that was ever the case, once again, I'm just refuting OP's argument.
-It clearly was harmful, from an environmental point of view, and from an societal and even existential point of views, and I am so glad this phenomena is dead and buried.
Thank you for replying, I'm always up for discussion and I really tried to keep an open mind for this, but none of the arguments people throwing around managed to convince me, because in the end it was all just people jumping on a bandwagon to make a quick buck, and the only way for them to do that, was to convince other people that their silly little monkey pictures had _some_ kind of value.
They failed.
There's a section on this in the big video, but to paraphrase:
A blockchain is easiest to think of as a decentralised database. It manages records, only people can make their own records with their own rules and send them to other people.
This makes it great for digital collectibles, especially independent creators like artists who can't just make a database (Let alone a trusted one), but the main appeal is for collectors, the decentralisation. This is because with CS:GO skins, TF2 Hats, your Genshin Acount, ect, you have to rely on a company to manage the record of your collectible, where as with a blockchain, the company that made it doesn't have full control, YOU do.
Here's an actual collector explaining exactly this: twitter.com/MagusDevon/status/1691708968278581533
"they want to support an artist and own a cryptographically signed proof of their support in their account. Nobody can forge the signature and anyone can validate it.
it's like how anyone can right click save the jpegs from a gacha game and yet people still enjoy collecting the actual gacha jpegs themselves in their own accounrs legitimately. There's no way to cheat the servers or fake your collection. But in this case you're giving money directly to the artist instead of middlemen, and you can trade them with other people."
Second point: "The people regretting not selling when they got the chance prove my point, they bought it to sell it for more, that's all there is to it"
As said in the video, these people exist, I call them investors as opposed to collectors, but even beyond that, everyone has a price. If someone is a big fan of a small artist and they hit it big, presumably there's price where they'd part with it. If someone sold their van gough, you wouldn't say they're not a collector, you'd just say the joy that it gave them was outweighed by the offer they received. This doesn't really prove anything. And besides all this, most of my examples were people choosing NOT to sell despite being offered big profits.
Third point: Yeah I can't give you percentages, I don't have the faintest clue on how to compile something like that. But I can make an assumption here and say that the percentage would probably be low. But then, as I say in the video, "Its a creative medium, there's no barrier to entry, most creatives fail in general" What you REALLY need is percentages to both NFT artists and commission artists so that you can compare them. But I don't think its really possible to grab data for.
Further more, the main argument against NFTs was that its COMPLETELY unhelpful to artists to due to it being a scam, if i find ANY amount of small artists 2 years after the market crash its already a complete contradiction to the narrative around NFTs, which is the main point.
@@Uniquenameosaurus
1- The thing about the block chain is that we never needed a system like that, if Team Fortress 2 can run an entire market dedicated to buying, selling and trading virtual hats using traditional means, do we really need a new system that's less environmentally friendly?
(There another example too, things like online certificates existed for a long time, probably the best potential use for the blockchain, but they also don't need that kid system)
As for centralization, I'd argue there are cons and pros to both, with a centralized system, sure the central authority has control, but a corporation trying to keep it's user base and maintain it's reputation, would never directly interfere with the market, afaik Valve doesn't mess around with people's hats.
Plus a centralized authority will be able to better secure it's system, and do things like backing up the data, in a blockchain, if a host goes down for one reason or another, the records stored in are lost forever, as far as I know.
Folding ideas did a much better job highlighting the risks of a decentralized system, but that's one example that comes to mind.
2- From an outside perspective, the entire culture really did seem to be all about "diamond hands", "paper hands" and "going to the moon", can you really blame for generalizing?
Your point about traditional art collectors if fair, but it does bring me to my main argument against NFTs: Digital scarcity simply should not be a thing.
Limiting something that can be infinitely replicated and trying to give it value based on that scarcity is something we should have never even considered, I'm not exaggerating when I say this idea represented an existential threat to humanity from my perspective, and why I breathed a sigh of relief when the market crashed.
Going back to the art point, the thing is, with a system like this, even with people being sincere, the space will always inevitably get invaded with people trying to make a quick buck and flooded with low effort, procedurally-generated trash, stolen art, or AI images if the market continued to operate.
3- Again, I know _some people_ benefitted from this whole thing, but regardless of why, if it's just a small minority, is it even worth it?
Like you said, we don't know for sure if there's an increase in successful artists benefiting from this system, so we can't ever know for sure if it ever WAS worth it.
I love your videos, and I agree with many other cases you made, like IP abolition and support for piracy, but on this point, we disagree.
@@THExRISER Dude we already have digital scarcity in the form of IP, the difference is that unlike IP, NFTs don't need to be externally enforced, so they actually end up being a lot more effective and even cheaper in the long run because the only work involved is actually mining the crypto for it (and once it's mined it's virtually free to make transactions and etc).
"we already have currency" - This is probably the largest issue in your whole argument. You are allowed to keep using the ever more inflated dollar or the even worse currencies from other countries, but don't you EVER limit what other people do with their money. Every attempt at that was part of an authoritarian move to force people to comply to a central planning system, in the best case leading to a horrible society, at worst a flat out genocidal one built with the stolen money. Crypto showed up to solve the issue that is inflation and it doesn't take 5 minutes to search and see that a 15 year old digital coin has outpriced the centuries old dollar by a factor of dozens of thousands.
The environment argument is just an excuse, nothing else. No one goes around screaming that you should stop using social media because of the energy cost, even though you could certainly stop if you wanted, or that you should eat 50% of what you currently eat and give the other 50% for the hungry, which you most likely could without becoming malnourished. Altruism is NOT an obligation, it is a bonus, something you do if you WANT out of the kindness of your heart. Crypto and NFTs are just another thing that uses power, what on Earth doesn't use power nowadays? Again, if you want, don't use it, but don't go telling around what people should do with their own money.
You can choose not to use crypto, nft, or whatever. But this: "I'm not exaggerating when I say this idea represented an existential threat to humanity from my perspective, and why I breathed a sigh of relief when the market crashed." - It is not only exageration but a clear cut lie, designed as an attempt to take down things that work outside of the state control bubble. And I won't let you trample me.
I've watched the long version, and I've been reminded why I'm barely active on twitter and steer away from 99% of the art community. The community is straight disgusting, no matter how good an artist is. Even the influencers aren't to be looked up too.
What happened to pirate anime?
it's not the only one, either... "public domain comic again sets sail" is also gone... maybe "you hate all these companies for the same reason" and "artists shouldn't own their art" needs to be backed-up, as well...
Extremely interesting how politics is involved. As a communist, uh, yeah twitter leftists are a bit braindead. I agree that crypto stuff is not good enough for artists long term and it's better for all of us, artists especially, if we move left. However, obviously not all of us can just do commissions until we're in socialism, considering most of us won't live to see it. Engaging in the system, as broken as it is, is the only way to survive. If NFTs make money, then harassing these people is unfair. I have noticed that twitter leftists have a huge problem accepting short term solutions, which is how we should be looking at NFTs. I can understand the fear of them leading us in the wrong direction, towards libertarian capitalist stuff, but the normal response to that fear is not to bully people just trying to look out for themselves. That's extremely disturbing. Crypto is pretty weird, but hating on the people who need it is a lot weirder.
The fact that they treat harmless artists who agree with them the same way as rightists is insanity. Bigotry and climate change denial/dismissal are not debates that everybody gets to have their own fluffy special valid opinions on, they're attacks on our rights and our futures. Death threats to people who excuse and endorse right wing garbage, I can understand. But against dudes just trying to eat? That isn't leftist in any capacity.
Right wingers and the centrists who try to compromise with them tend to be very stupid and not worth listening to like 98% of the time, so it makes sense that leftist communities get a bit echo chamber-y. But broken clocks, y'know?
I feel like this betrayal of artists has less to do with politics (though I won't deny that it's a factor in many cases) and more to do with culturally ingrained elitism. It speaks volumes that so many people see phrases like "not real art" as acceptable, unproblematic things to say. Clearly, most people don't actually care about art, they just care about their romanticized fantasies of what they think art "should be." It's kind of like what you said about hypebeasts, they buy into this elitism because it's superficially associated with things they want to be associated with-celebrities, revered historical figures, the rich and powerful, and so on. The moment an artist defies the masses' elitist expectations, the artist is immediately discredited.
on principal the concept of digital scarcity is dumb, however speaking for myself i havent and wont harass artists for following get rich quick schemes. your whole triade about leftwing politics at the end felt unwarranted but the in-fighting is a very real problem.
L video
Massive relief that crypto shit is actively dying off and becoming less and less relevant with each day. Giving it another half a decade for it to completely go away
Why do you think the video’s bad? What do you disagree with?
@@wigiot1273 NFT's being worth defending, having any sort of utility that can't be achieved better without the tech already, being a benefit to artists, not being a scam (whether directly or indirectly), and so on.
Super glad shit is dying off and the fad is going away.
@@ONIMOT100 the market crashed as of today
@@Tatodragon 🙏🙏🙏
Video aged like milk
@@ONIMOT100you can tell how worthless the anti-NFT side is when they say "this could be achieved better with other tech." It hasn't and your fantasy isn't feeding anyone.
But you're also the kind of dope who'll argue it "doesn't help artists" under a video with examples to the contrary.
Probably why you're celebrating the dozenth death of NFTs. You're so dim you can be told the same lie over and over and you'll still nod your head like a good little mark.
I still don't get NFT's, what is their purpose other than a sort of stock investment, what am I getting when I buy a piece of art associated with an NFT? Is there some sort of legal or digital protection for it that prevents it being screenshotted and reused? Is it's purpose for reuse in branding and merchandising?
The whole idea of it being a collectable just doesn't make sense to me, like, you make it sound like that the creative process is totally subsumed by someone who just buys it. I get having a connection to a piece of art you didn't make, such as commissioning a piece of art of your player character in a game, there's an established sentimentality about that, but why buy an NFT just to own and look at when you can just screenshot it?
In essence, if I like a picture associated with and NFT, why should I buy it?
Why do people put in so much effort to identify original baseball cards rather than fakes or later reprints? Because its about the collectability of it.
@@operationomniverse351 but that's a physical object that is tangible and has a time-worn value while nfts are just data that people seem to only place monetary value on. It seems like it's just people in echo chambers arbitrarily putting value on arbitrary things. I still see no difference between a screenshot and the original file...
@@stevy9lives The difference is the original file associated with a unique digital token that marks it as the authentic original. And different people place value in different things. If something being virtual was an issue people wouldn't care so much about collectibles in MMOs. Yet MMOs and collectables basically go hand in hand. And if they can people often do actually sell them. Even if it's typically against the rules. Heck people in Venezuela often make and sell Runescape gold for a living because Runescape's virtual ingame currency is worth more than their physical overinflated currency.
@@operationomniverse351 big difference with MMO's, they're in contained environments that people invest a non monetary appreciation for. Party hats in Runescape did not become valuable because people decided them to be arbitrarily, they became valuable through pure coincidence and legend within the game community. Nowadays they are treated like NFT's and people hoard them to manipulate the prices which completely cheapens them as a status.
And the whole venezuelans farming runescape gold is just an economic disaster, not a good reason for NFT's to exist. I can't see an entire nations wealth being predicated on a fake game currency being at all good for it in the long term, who's making the food, building the houses etc.
@@stevy9lives Oh no Venezuela is mostly an example of how autarchy doesn't work. But it does show how people can and will put a price on virtual goods and others will accept buying it. And I have no real issue with that honestly.
Also once again with the artificial scarcity element we just circle back to collectables. Cards, sneakers and so on. You responded by saying they're physical so it's different but is it really? The physical ones are often put on displace on shelves or in cases where they're meant to be viewed not used. Same with NFTs which are often put in virtual galleries. But the biggest reason of all for why NFTs should exist is easy. They don't hurt people in and of themselves and people want them. They can of course be a tool to hurt people but so can regular art and I'd argue regular art is used far more often to hurt people.
In retrospect… and upon reading some of the comments from this and the previous video… I think another once-over was needed with this script. I mentioned on the other video that the reason for all of this was probably due to unexamined bias rather than from conscious malice, and this seems to be echoed consistently- a lot of people are outright disregarding your theory as an “unhinged rant.”
I think you knew this on some level in the extended version. I recall you bringing up the possibility in passing only to quickly forget it, and you didn’t seem to account for that in this second go. You let anger cloud your judgement. That anger is understandable when it seems like this aspect of Twitter was genuinely unknown to you- and I have an incredible amount of respect for the breadth of evidence and thoroughness of argument paired with that obvious passion- but it clouded your judgement all the same. It seems like you may have also been in a rush to put a cleaner version together. Regardless, that conclusion put forth with such confidence hurts the credibility of the video, and I know you know this video needs all the credibility it can get.
I’m still going to try and spread this around, but I feel the video needs to be paired with a lot of clarifications going in, regarding both what it addresses and what it doesn’t. Failure to do that properly has already damaged a close friendship. Hopefully the video improves the conversation even with many of the problems being pointed out; the fact that there are people trying to critique it and engage with it earnestly is still promising.
I think "artists benefit from NFTs" and "NFTs shouldn't exist" can both be true.
People are buying NFTs of art for more than commissions because that art is being turned into a speculative object, not valued for its artistic merit. I'd argue that's an ethical loss for the artist. And in the long-term, unless rich people can continuously convince each other that their NFTs will be valuable to another rich person, then investors will see no return on artists' NFTs and stop buying them. So the current material benefits to artists is likely short-lived.
And while it's fair to say that increased transactions only marginally increase energy usage by NFT chains, increased participation in a chain legitimizes and perpetuates it. Even if the NFT energy usage is ultimately from its crypto backbone, we'd save a huge amount if that backbone was abandoned and artists who participate in those chains help ensure they exist longer and their heavy energy use persists.
Forgot to address the NFT collectors doing so for artistic merrit: I'd love some relative numbers on that (say NFTs purchased and not put back up for sale after X time, maybe compared to autographs and traditional speculative objects). From my understanding NFTs were created as speculative objects and their appreciation as parasocial like an original art piece or autograph would be rather unique to the art sphere.
@@Devedrus it originated as a way to collect digital art but low interest rate environment encouraged speculation in everything (see luxury watch prices, baseball cards, west coast apartments, stocks, etc).
Just because a large number of people buy fancy expensive shoes just for investment and/or collecting, that doesn't mean that shoes are bad. So many other people wear shoes because they protect their feet.
Just because a large number of people buy ugly expensive NFTS just for investment and/or collecting, that doesn't mean that NFTS are bad. So many other people buy NFTS because of the artistic merit.
NFTs do so much for artists that it's ridiculous to be against them solely for the energy cost when the A/C in your house had a much larger impact- along with the fact that etherium just cut down their carbon emissions by 99.95%.
Great video. I was sorta on the fence about the topic, but I never really cared about NFTs and continued to follow (support?) artist who decided to give NFT's a try. Will definitely watch the 8 hour version
This video, has for the first time in my 10 years of on youtube, made me use the share button! Great work Saurus!
nice, the kai version
So people were complaining about how long the orgininal video was, I didn't mind, maybe I would have later. Thank You for taking the time to make this abridged other video. I'm interested and want to know more about you so I'll check out your other Social Media and see how I can contact you.
Thank you for condensing this down, the topic is really depressing to think about and i could not get more than a half hour into the first one.
Aaaand I need to talk about the trans community and detrans folk apparently because this video just GOES places.
As an actual member of that community, detrans folk are generally accepted and treated compassionately, EXCEPT when they turn around and start pushing rhetoric which literally harms trans people. It's ok that being trans didn't work for them, that's fine. It's not ok to try and make our lives worse based on that fact. This isn't justifying harrassment of those people, but that is always a minority compared to criticism. (Even if on the internet it can seem to all blend together.)
Really impressive that you managed to make the video so concise.
As an artist who's not on twitter, I must say that this sounds pretty scary.
To people who dislike NFTs:
On the spectrum of positions ranging from "I don't care if NFTs are a thing" to "NFTs are bad and should be opposed." what put you on the latter? The reason I was hesitant to jump on the anti-NFT train even though I still think it's a waste of time and money, is that there are numerous things that fall into this category for me. I think Supreme is garbage, but I don't get morally outraged at the company or buyers for example. I don't see the point to baseball cards, but I play Magic. I assume most people have things in this category, so what is it for you that moved you to the latter position?
In response to the last bit:
Theres a lot I could say and show how you aren’t being completely accurate towards left-leaning creators/political youtubers. As well as not all left-leaning politics believe in a central power (Such as Anarchists), and a number of other things. But I feel that would get in the way of the main point/valid criticism you’re leveling towards the Left Community, which I as someone deep inside it
Completely agree with.
I think the issue that really comes/developed is this genuine lack of awareness of Reactionaries existing on the Left/with Left-politics.
Reactionaries are mainly associated with the right due to how reactionary politics work and function, as well as how the Right utilizes it for it’s advantage more often then not, but the issue then becomes the fact of ignoring left-leaning reactionaries
Who’s politics are just as much based on gut reactions and opinions rather then thought out and researched beliefs, and can be just as unhelpful and harmful in the grand scheme of things.
Point is, this was a really well done summary video and the 8 hours might be something I’ll look into, and thank you for helping me have a more nuanced understanding of NFTs.
I agree, reactionaries on the left isn't something I see talked about enough, and while this video doesn't frame that point specifically I think you accurately are describing what is being talked about. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Couldn't I still just screen shot their art without buying it though.
I am sitll going with "Scamming may help but it is still immoral if not illegal yet"
Yes, NFT is a scam, if artists want payment for their stuff there is something...what is it called... it is on the tongue, starts with a C, sounds perverted at first but then don't? Oh yeah COMMISSION!
Rather than scamming people on NFTs that offers no ownership, no choice, nothing.
Commissions don't offer ownership. And NFTs aren't really a scam if you know exactly what you are buying.
@@operationomniverse351 do nfts really grant useful ownership?
I'm seruous
@@isauldron4337 They don't.
It's like paying money to be mentioned in the "special thanks" of a video.
What that's worth to you is entirely subjective.
@@isauldron4337 With the exception coins and tokens on a block chain digital goods can't really be truly scarce. This goes for images especially. Copyright tries to make them scarce but it does through punishment. So it isn't really artificial scarcity it's actually censorship. NFTs don't really do this either though. A PNG can't be protected from counterfeiting.
So what are you paying for? An NFT is a certificate of authenticity. So it basically says you have the original. Not a copycat. Is that useful ownership? Well to a non-collector not really. A baseball card is a baseball card regardless of whether it's an original, reprint or counterfeit. But to a collector it matters a lot.
The way I like to think of it is that you're basically paying to be a part of the art piece's story.
@@sapheiron paying for a special thanks wouldn't be scam either.
someone can pay 1 million dollars for a rock, if they know its a normal, average rock and willingly pay that much for it despite that, it is not a scam.
you can call them an idiot for it, but it's not a scam.
Going to assume you haven't changed the video since last time, so just gonna say, people getting bullied is bad, but NFTs are bad to me on a fundamental level. We should be trying to decommercialize the internet, not commercialize it more, and just because people can screenshot now doesn't mean the NFT runners won't try to find ways to close or illegalize that in the future for the profit incentive.
people making money from selling stuff online is not "commercializing the internet"
@@thesatelliteslickers907 It is when the only reason that sells is because you are artificially fabricating scarcity of something that isnt scarce by default. It is conceptually very close to scalping on that sense.
@@lawrencebetini7289 in which way are you fabricating scarcity?
@@thesatelliteslickers907 what does the word 'non-fungible' mean?
@@thesatelliteslickers907 do you actually know what NFTs are dude? Not being ironic, if its a genuine question im all for answering it genuinely
i agree with alot, but why do you keep using bayc as a positive example with all the notsee stuff floating around about them?
I get it, but NFTs are still socially a bad trend. We shouldn't move toward digital ownership.
What do you think of digital art commissions?
It's basically the same thing
@@Twocat5side Absolutely not, not even similar
Also, while I agree with everything you’ve said on the back half I think your folly is painting out these people as “agenda pushing centralists”, when I think the truth of the matter is just echo chambers. When someone bullies an artist or they’re not thinking “I have to push my agenda” they’re thinking “my friends around me say this is bad so I will as well” people aren’t ants and they don’t tend to act as a monolith.
Maybe we’re wasps and a friend says this one annoyed me so we all kill them?
I mean, it's group mentality, less high level political scheming and more wanting to fit in a group. I definitely think some of that falls on these creators though, particularly the inflammatory ones like Dan (which I do like his videos btw). It reeeeeally feels like someone it's gonna, very publicly, end up doing something stupid because of all of this inflammatory talk and this entire community will start point fingers at each other for blame. Remember that people face-to-face are more reasonable to each other than in the internet.
It is just herd mentality. A group is only half as intelligent as its least intelligent member. Especially with the current culture being one where you're expected to tow the same line as everyone else in your faction or be branded part of the problem.
Now with the rise of AI art what I imagine will happen is oversaturation. What do you think about it?
AI art won't affect the crypto art scene for the same reason that the whole right click save thing didn't kill it, because the people who buy this stuff care a lot about getting the genuine art that was made a person and has scarcity
I think it could get really get bad for artists with AI art, once it stops pumping out body horrors beyond man's understanding. Although if your into that, they must be having the best of days right now. I give it a couple years before it gets too bad though. Seems like AI art is still developing out alot.
AI art is almost certainly going to accelerate the adoption and normalization of NFTs, for the simple reason that it is going to utterly decimate the commissions market. It won't destroy it, but it's going to wreak some mass havoc on it for sure. I've said as much on Twitter myself, but, as an artist, I have seen firsthand how many artists have people, people who are admittedly often entitled and rude, turned away by pricing or from asking for free art. I would even wager that these people, given how many of them are likely just adolescents with internet access and little money to spend, are more common than those who actually go through with and commission artists. It's quite literally the most common meme in the artist community, people who think they can "pay with exposure."
What AI art has done is empower these people, however unfortunate that is, to not only escape that cycle but also allow the bitter ones to hit back, and spit in the faces of artists. The insinuation that these people would not utilize the dozens of AI tools available already to render the services offered by artists obsolete, but that there isn't a massive number of them willing to go out of their way making AI art the norm by both telling their peers, using it in their own projects, or even just flooding the ecosystem with as much AI art as they can prompt, is asinine. And when you take the adoption by any corporation, hell even indie musicians, authors or game developers, that don't feel the need to obtain the ethical boost of supporting human artists for their product, it paints a very unsettling picture for artists caught unaware.
This is my take, and while I may very well be off the mark or overlooking a major factor, I do want to add that I'm both and artist and a developer, and thus someone familiar with the underlying technology to a degree.
@@satelliteprime what's stopping ai art from also makeing nfts, the power users that care and pay good money will already go out of their way to find someone real so don't need nfts and those who just look at a glance before buying would be fooled by ai nfts
You're not getting your money out, sorry.
I don't think I could type up my full thoughts currently, but I still want to comment that your videos have always been insightful and meticulous, and I doubt this one will be any different.
Thank you for doing what you do.
alright thanks for the short version man
To be honest, I agree with most of this video. The abuse towards artists from communities to claim to care about them is disgusting and is likely politically motivated. You are probably going to get a lot of shit for the second half of the video, but it's pretty accurate description of what's happening. Support was only ever given to artists because it was politically convenient, as soon as it became inconvenient, that support was ripped away.
Of course, just because NFTs objectively do help artists, and just because *most* of the problems with them is misinformation, doesn't mean that they are harmless. I talked about this in the comments of the last video, but it's worth repeating here. The problem with NFTs is generally something that barely anyone is talking about at all: their potential to gain legal power and massively strengthen copyright law enforcement. The perfect piracy killer.
That's the biggest issue with NFTs. Their potential for uncompromising, eternal, unavoidable enforcement of copyright law. Large media corporations are *constantly* trying to get laws passed that limit piracy and strengthen copyright protections. NFTs have the potential to act as the as the ultimate tool for copyright enforcement if they become standardized. This is why so many media corporations and pretty much all of big tech jumped on board with NFTs even when there was so much public outcry.
While on paper, NFTs would be fairly harmless in a world where copyright law has been long since absolished, the potential for abuse is *massive* so long as copyright law still exists.
You forgot to elaborate on the how.
@@GamerTowerDX I too would love an elaboration because this is a take I haven't seen before. Refreshing really, in stark contrast to all the rebuttal attempts that haven't actually bothered watching the damn video.
@@satelliteprime Yeah, specially bc Unique is an already infamous pirate and copyright abolitionist.
How could NFTs enforce copyright law in any way that matters?
@@FunkyJeff22 Yeah, aren't NFTs "decentralized"?
Ooooh boy now this is a thought provoking video. Let me preface this with the fact that I am clearly uninformed. Most of my info on NFT's comes from youtubers who only cover the scams. And while I think they are genuine, this is a side of NFT's that's completely new to me. My stance on them will remain the same: It is a highly volatile market that is dangerous for me to touch as uninformed as I am. However at least I can see now that it's not without merit.
When the video got political, I noticed a few possibly fallable comparisons between black support and antivax hate. The short video didn't touch on why you compared the two, so I will not comment further until I've watched the long version.
What really got me thinking is the clear diversity in political opinions that were represented in this video, but also the misattribution to maliciousness of the leftists' attitude towards NFT's. Despite the portrayed diversity on the right in this video, it portrays the left as a singular backstabbing entity. Clearly that's also not the case.
A lot of lying and malicious acts can be attributed to ignorance. If you are introduced to something and it is introduced as a joke, something ridiculous that you should not take seriously, and that portrayal fits your views, people are discouraged to do more research. These people are not actively lying, they just never bothered to look into it and spread misinformation because it aligns with the public opinion. They have no reason to question it. I am willing to attribute a lot of what you described as herd mentality and products of ignorance, admittedly because you highlighted a few people that I really like.
The harrassment behaviour similarly is attributed to the masses as if they are a singular entity. In reality, individuals can be informed and stop this behaviour, only to be replaced by new uninformed individuals who get highlighted in their stead. By making this video, you have done the world a great service by spreading information. Perhaps I will glean more from the long version.
The only thing that's absolutely clear to me after this video is that I will never touch twitter with a 10 foot pole, if it even survives long enough for me to be tempted to create an account.
"If you are introduced to something and it is introduced as a joke, something ridiculous that you should not take seriously, and that portrayal fits your views, people are discouraged to do more research. These people are not actively lying, they just never bothered to look into it and spread misinformation because it aligns with the public opinion."
Yes, this, exactly! Unique isn't crazy; there's certainly a correlation here between nft bashing (and tbh, bashing of people from groups they claim to support but don't fit their narrative) and the left. But it's also not nearly as machiavellian as he makes it out to be. We just don't look into things if we don't expect to learn anything worthwhile from doing so, and even when the evidence is pushed right in front of our faces, confirmation bias makes it easy to dismiss as 'a fluke' and therefore not worth signal boosting.
Well done. I'm only 10 minutes in and this is phenomenally well written. Concise in all the right ways and still clear to understand. And having the 8-hour video behind it really does back it up. Good job. I really hope this gets out there and gets discussed.
On the first half : i basically only disagree with the notion of not using AC , it can save lives when it gets hot , and yes , i agree on it being abused in some places ...
On the second half : i'll openly describe myself as pretty far left , not american and convinced that electoralism isn't the main course of action ...
I recently came to the conclusion that being an artist is fundamentally a buisness in nature , since it works upon there being either fame or intellectual propriety that can be walled off ,
and while small buisness howners are potentially allies in left leaning struggle , they are still capitalists ,
and the potential for them to employ pepole and enter in the same production cycles of other industries exists ...
It's not a moral argument ,taking marxism as a moral and not a social functional stance it's a source of brain rot that is present on twitter ,
What marxism is is a science : and what it describes is that class is the main deciding factor of one alegiance , wheter you are a worker who doesn't hown the means of production or a capitalist big or small who does , and from where the lion share of your money comes from is the determining factor for what decisions most pepole will make , this is the notion wich is up for debate ,
And yes , some pepole go against the grain , but we live in a world of billion in wich those outliers are to be ignored ,
Also i'd remind again : politics and etics are completely separated and weter they should be reunited or if it is even possible to unite them is a big question ,
Anyhow , all of this to say : sadly artists aren't necessarly allies of the working class , wich is sad to say ...
And this doesn't prevent friendship between pepole whose intrests are separated , it just means one should be wary of the political intrest of the other ...
Needless to say also : internet politics is fucking dumb and pepole shouldn't participate in it if your sanity is concerned ...
We are also living in complicated times , in wich all the low hanging fruits have been harvested already in terms of decisions ...
Thinking about the world as static is somenthing that gets ingraned in our brain very soon and it's somenthing we should unlearn ...
With this out of the way : just stay safe out there , whomever is reading , the world is rigged in a way to have everyone compete against each other and ethics is secondary in competition ...
As an extreme leftist i'd like for things to not be like this , but i alone don't have the means to do so ...
i did the thing : i participated in online politics ...
art twitter is basically "support artists unless they are doing some tech shenanigans i dont understand and that some other viral tweet thread said it was bad"
Im not into NFTs, is not a way i would like to get money for my art, but the amount of harrasment towards artists who do is very sickening and very sad, it makes me think that one is not safe on this comunity, if something you do suddenly is seen as bad they can harass you until you quit, just like happened to Seiro.
For real, if you just dont like what an artist is doing with their work just unfollow, even block them if you want, but sending so much hate towards them for something like this is not ok
Great video, glad you made a shorter one. Hope to see you around more. Public Domain advocates are rare!
This video has helped me make these points to friends a lot and I got a few of them to change their opionens on NFTs through that!
Thank you so much!
Cool! Watched the entire previous one and it annoyed me how no one in the comments had actually watched it - which made discussion worthless. Happy there’s a shorter version now.
Yeah because people are afraid of having their opinions challenged. Why think for yourself when you can just religiously believe the first thing you hear from a source you trust? And people wonder why stupid conspiracy theories are so prevelent. The only difference between the people who come to this video only to comment about how stupid it is without watching it and anti-vaxxers is their environment. If these people first heard that vaccines are bad that'd be the opinion they would defend against all evidence.
holy shit
you're one of the few people that can keep me entertained in a youtube video for more than 20 minutes; that was interesting as hell and I might actually go start the 8 hour video lol (no promises to finishing though)
This much more digestible, thank you. However strangely enough if I don't search for your channel I'm not getting you in recommends despite the subscription and the "bell rung". Suspicious to say the least, but I commend you good sir.
Like a few others in the comments have said, I am very opposed to digital ownership as a general concept. It isn't even really to do with value or scarcity; it's simply that there's no guarantee that it will exist in some meaningful form in the future. NFTs are tied to the blockchain, but people mainly use cushy platforms to interface with those underlying technologies. If any of those platforms cease to exist at some point down the line, the utility of the initial purchase is seemingly lost. Even if you could see your NFT in some raw, directly-on-the-blockchain form, I fail to see how what essentially boils down to a certificate of authenticity is fun or desirable. I'm sure some people see value and collectability here, and there are also artists willing to serve them. My philosophy of business is that you should desire your own product; if you can't convince yourself that something is worth purchasing, chances are it'll be hard to convince others. As I wouldn't say I like digital ownership primarily because it is uncertain and intangible, I've concluded that NFTs (both as an artist and as a collector) are a waste of my time.
As an aside, my personal artwork is something I've worked very hard to keep open-source and licensed into the public domain. I've had to restrict my source material to use imagery and methods that are either my own work, explicitly freely licensed (CC0), or implicitly public domain (like A.I. techniques). I didn't know I needed to discriminate so heavily on source material when I started out, so I've opted to take down something like twelve of my pieces due to my strict principles on licensing. Even handing out public domain PNGs/PSDs to the remaining twenty-two pieces of vaporware art (which have all done well overall), I know of perhaps no more than ten people who have shown exceptional interest. I helped someone who wanted some of my work in poster form to find the best price for third-party printing, and even then, that might've accounted for $20 at most if I was the one directly selling the prints. I think my art is pretty decent, and I consistently get 150+ upvotes on most of my work. Several have done significantly better, including my top original piece at 4k+ upvotes. I don't have a following to speak of, although you don't really need one for people to see your work on Reddit. In any case, my work is both fairly popular and is completely free to download and use, and I still struggle to find fanatics. Unless NFT platforms have any sort of generous content discovery system, I'm probably not "big enough" to make the cut for any meaningful NFT revenue. I also don't really care, because making art for art's sake is fun as hell.
I respect you by principle of making your work free to use btw, that is always cool.
@@GamerTowerDX I had a very short argument with my sibling that really cemented my anti-copyright viewpoint. Of course, a fantastic video on this channel, people like Nina Paley, and the concept of people being unable to have fun with things they enjoy pushed me over the edge. Unlike a few accusations I've received, this isn't some elaborate rationalization for piracy. I simply do not see any practical purpose for a system that so clearly upholds the rule of law for groups who already hold a massive advantage. Even though I've effectively censored myself in a way that I deeply dislike, it's really in service of people not having to become lawyers to enjoy my art in any sensible capacity.