It doesn't have to be like this!
Right-Clicker Mentality
NFTs might not seem so bizarre as you think.
Cory Doctorow (journalist and Boing Boing coowner) says that the greed behind non-fungible tokens, or NFTs for short, is not surprising given our capitalist hellscape.
Doctorow wrote in a scathing thread about the digital art form, "In this age stock markets that boom to respond to mass unemployment supply-chain collapse and runaway climate emergencies, non-financial transactions (NFTs) aren't really *that* strange."
Doctorow focused on the concept of the "right clicker mentality," which NFT nerds use for criticizing people who disregard the value and save digital art without paying.
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He said, "The term comes from the world NFTs," adding, "which have exploded into a massive fraud-ridden speculative boom that is blazing through entire rain-forests' worths of carbon and [transferring] billions from suckers.
So much of our contemporary economy is captured by that delicious term!https://t.co/UMvhk92vRd Recently, I happened on another coinage that is marvellously apt for our current moment: #RightClickerMentality.https://t.co/i5XhFiwdkN 4/ -- Cory Doctorow RIGHT-CLICKER MENTALITY (@doctorow) November 8, 2021
The Same as It Was Ever
Doctorow observed that it wasn't always meant this way.
Doctorow stated that NFTs were created as a way to show the relationship between creators and their audience. You recorded that you made a donation to an artist inspired by a particular work when you paid for an NFT. This fact was permanently recorded in a public ledger (the blockchain) so that everyone could see it.
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The Canadian Boing Boing-er pointed out that it didn't take too long for the blockchain bros in to make their way in.
Doctorow tweeted, "Instantly the idea of supporting artist with NFTs became a financial bubble." "The purpose of an NFT was not to support an artist, it was to purchase a tradeable asset that would increase in value because the buyer thought he could unload it for more."
He said that it was "not surprising" that speculators place more value on the NFTs than the artists who created them, or the art they create.
He can't be blamed for critiquing such an open racket.
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