And now they get to mint it and authenticate it. “They've been on this roller coaster ride for all these years, watching the photo go everywhere. ![]() “When we wrote a month ago or so about this NFT idea, I think it was a really attractive idea to him and all of the families that we are doing this with, because in some ways the NFT gives those people an opportunity to reclaim that photo,” said Bender. The sale was one of a few auctions centered around NFT-tied images from Awkward Family Photos Bender told Decrypt he and Chernack will split the profits down the middle with the families responsible for the photos. I didn't even know what a meme was back then, so I had to do my research.” “She's like, Oh my god, I ruined your life! I had no idea what was going on. ![]() “My mom, who took the picture, saw once we went on the computer and looked it up, and she started crying,” he told Decrypt. When the picture first blew up, Boston and his family were less than thrilled. From there, it found its way out into the broader internet as “Scumbag Steve”-the archetypal inconsiderate bro. The meme took shape in 2006, when a 16-year-old Blake uploaded to MySpace a photo of himself in an oversized snapback and massive fur coat. A s part of the site's "Meme Economy" auction (promoted alongside Bad Luck Brian, Grumpy Cat, and others) it sold for 30 ETH, or $54,000 at the time, to someone with the handle reference to the early meme site “You’re the Man Now, Dog.” Torres helped him get onto the NFT marketplace Foundation, and put Scumbag Steve on the blockchain. One of the first people to reach out to Torres was Blake Boston, the 31-year-old behind the “Scumbag Steve” meme. Really honored to have been part of this journey □□ Huge congrats to You've just opened up a whole new world of opportunity for digital artists and meme creators. Not really in it for the money, just in for the art and in it for keeping things cool.” “Ever since entering the NFT space, I've just had that mindset. “I’m just really in it to help,” he said. Torres clarified that he’s not taking a cut of their sales. Torres and his longtime business partner, Ben Lashes, have helped memes like Success Kid, Grumpy Cat, and more find their way into the NFT market. ![]() So that's what I did, I basically walked every meme creator through the process of entering the NFT space.” “I was like, you know what, let me get you guys all set up. “I had so many main creators lining up to ask for help,” he said. Torres said he was more than happy to help other creators get on board. Less than two weeks later, Nyan Cat sold for 300 ETH, and a door was opened for the rest of the vintage meme community. Torres told Decrypt that within minutes of tweeting about a potential foray into crypto art, a representative for the burgeoning invite-only NFT marketplace Foundation reached out about partnering up. ✨4/19✨ □4:20 PST□ Powered by Edition: 1/1 /kaaFk43Z38įor creators dissociated from their memes, it’s proved an attractive proposition. Someone could try to sell another Nyan Cat NFT, but only the original links to Torres’ address on the Ethereum blockchain. (Snoop Dogg even partnered with Torres for a twist on Nyan Cat called "Nyan Dogg" it sold for $33,000.)īy contrast, NFTs are more like connective tissue between artists and their artworks. The magic of memes is in their transience and reproducibility-it’s strange to think that Nyan Cat was created by an individual, since it’s passed through so many hands. “It kind of became a trend, not just for me, but for many meme artists that created anything since then. Torres said that back in the early 2010s, companies would use Nyan Cat as a viral marketing tool without bothering to credit him. Here’s a quick rundown on the most famous Web 2.0 artifacts that found new life on Web 3.0. The memes were among the first pieces of genuinely viral internet content-image macros that trickled down from sites like 4Chan and I Can Has Cheezburger and filtered into our collective subconscious the deconstructionist memes of the post-covid era are closely tied to these lingering cultural memories. With sales in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the auctions are creating ridiculous valuations for GIFs and JPGs-particularly ones that do not confer any legal ownership over the NFTs themselves.īut for at least a few bidders, the prospect of owning the Nyan Cat, Scumbag Steve or Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT is worth the money. The sale started a trend NFTs of memes from the late 2000s and early 2010s have continued to sell for absurd amounts of money, thanks in part to Torres and the community of creators he’s helped foster over the past decade.
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