I’m talking about gifts, not campaign contributions.
Oh that should be fine then.
3 Likes
Just for anyone who hasn’t seen this. My family having Thanksgiving dinner with Billy Corgan.
9 Likes
Lol wat? why?
Wat
The cringe goes to 11.
https://twitter.com/fallontonight/status/1485844333412687879?s=21
https://twitter.com/etienneshrdlu/status/1485956332989693953?s=21
https://twitter.com/gwynethpaltrow/status/1486482496883625984?s=21
2 Likes
She’s like a billionaire off that goop scam now right rofl
As always, Defector is right.
This is such a dystopian clip. It’s so fucking bleak. I mean, look at their eyes. Both of their eyes, throughout this entire segment, are dead. You can see the matte black of their pupils, the muted smiles. The jokes are scripted. The laughs are scripted. They can’t even fake it! And these are professional entertainers! They don’t need to go on television and talk about the things they have invested money in. They have chosen to, and yet it is absolutely clear as day that they don’t want to. They aren’t talking about these apes because they like them, or think they’re cute, or genuinely want to talk about this. Their whole job is to fake it and make even more money in the process! The entire role we have now created of “influencer” is to convince people to buy things. What’s hard about that job is that people have to believe that you use the product or at the very least endorse it.
Both Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton are rich enough that they don’t even need to do that! Talking about these Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, neither of them can even feign interest. We’ve spent a minimum of $224,000 to own these weird monkeys because someone told us they would add more money to our pile of money, their body language says, please applaud us for our investments.
It’s almost like they are only flaunting this expensive, stupid monkey—that none of us could ever afford—in front of a live studio audience to get applause and remind themselves that they are richer than us, and therefore better than us, and that one moment will give them a tiny hit of dopamine and fulfill the purpose of people like us: to make them happier.
But it’s even stupider than that. Investments do not actually pay off until you have managed to sell it to someone else. Rich people investing in art have made it a much more stable world to turn a profit than it probably should be, but this is by no means foolproof, or morally defensible. The reason people collect art instead of stocks or jewels or gold bars is because it is beautiful. Because art whispers something special in your ear that transforms you and the ways you see this world. Art moves people so much they call it priceless, not because they haven’t had it properly appraised, but because of immeasurable personal value. At the very least you are supposed to buy art you actually fucking like! What’s so embarrassing to me about this clip is that they don’t even seem to care about their apes at all. They have no interest in them. They barely even see their apes, probably because all they own is an expensive screenshot of their ape and the promise that it—and the people who own these apeshots—are unique and breathtaking.
The whole time this little fragment was going on, I kept imagining a real piece of art in Fallon’s hand. Imagine if they had both invested in some artist’s work because they really liked the way that it looked and found it interesting. Imagine if they’d both bought a piece they found because they simply wanted something beautiful and now, on The Tonight Show of all places, they could introduce this artist to the world. They would still be doing the same thing: increasing the value of their investment by artificially inflating the demand. But at least there might be a glimmer of passion there, a sense that they are investing in the arts because they love this piece and not just because their accountant told them to move money around.
11 Likes
Are you implying that generating 10000 pics through an algorithm isn’t the same as a hand made painting that took a year to make surviving Nazi Germany and hundreds of years of history and weather?
1 Like
Jay Leno can’t stop talking about his cars and his garage costs as much as a hospital. I dare you to try to stop John Mayer from talking about his Patek Phillippe collection. I really don’t think these are money making scam ventures for these people, I think people in general enjoy collecting weird shit. But I’m not a paranoid nutcase who thinks everything around me is an attack
2 Likes
I think in today’s post-trump world, feelings of paranoia and victimhood are even more popular than the desire to collect items of cultural significance. So I’m not surprised to see this reaction but it’s a bummer to see people continue to look for reasons to be angry at practically anything
1 Like
Dude, they are definitely being paid to mention moon pie concierge.
Is that really what’s driving the apes market though? Or is it wanting to flip jpgs and walk away with more dollars? Jay Leno has a crazy hangar full of cars, but it’s clear he gets joy out of having them and it’s not part of a money-making venture for him.
Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to flip apes for cash, just to be clear.
His manager lives across the street from my uncle’s wife’s sister in Chicago. Somehow he became friends with their family, gave the kids guitar lessons.
When he was about to go on tour with Zwan, the uncle’s wife’s sister talked him into going to see the uncle’s wife in Kansas City for a 3-day Lomi Lomi massage course to relax. My aunt and uncle barely knew who he was. They took him out to sushi and Buca di Bepo, which cracks me up.
Apparently he really liked my aunt and uncle and wanted to come to Kansas City to see a real midwestern Thanksgiving or something (his family is super dysfunctional).
It was very weird. I got the feeling he just wanted to be a fly on the wall, which of course 6’3 bald Billy Corgan at your family Thanksgiving is not going to be. He seemed to like talking to the older people who didn’t know who he was. So I left him alone. The only thing I talked to him about was how bad I felt that he had to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame right after essentially the Marlins had sealed the playoff game to go to the WS and the fans were crushed (this was the Bartman year).
9 Likes
People buy things to realize their aspirations.
2 Likes
It’s all of the above. This guy has owned and sold multiple Honus Wagner Cards and he’s clearly shilling his own business in this vid, and he also clearly loves collecting baseball cards. NFT’s and crypto world make a lot more sense when people stop trying to understand them as only one thing.
2 Likes
What an insane story lol. Thanks for sharing.
3 Likes
Yeah collecting is one of those things I don’t get at all. But obviously tons of people like to do it and have for a long time.
The obvious difference though is everyone in the world can’t easily obtain a perfect replica of a Honus Wagner card, and one person only has bragging rights to say they own it.
Do we have any examples of this kind of “bragging rights” ownership of anything digital or otherwise easily copied that has been shown to have staying power?
I guess the closest example I can think of is someone who owns a painting that hangs in a museum. But it would almost have to be something like an agreement that says you own this painting, but you or any future owners can never take it out of the museum. I wonder if those kinds of arrangements exist, and if so what it does to the resale value of the painting.
Paris Hilton is an actual nft OG who has been in the game longer than anyone in this thread. And as the author mentions she’s rich beyond belief. But she secretly hates it and is just in it for the dough? Doesn’t add up.
People routinely spend millions of dollars just to have their name on a college building.