My jpegs are at zero risk of being stolen

A Big Load Of Crypto Updates

Jeez, I’ve only been gone like a week and a half and there’s already so much crypto stuff happening that it’s actually hard to fit it all in here. Side note: I’ve had some emails from folks about doing some kind of separate crypto-only Garbage Day email list or something. Depending on how this scene evolves over the next couple months, maybe that’s a good idea, but I’m not sure yet. Alright, here’s what’s going on.

First, the NFT community is getting a little grim. Last week, Todd Kramer, the owner of the Ross+Kramer Gallery, tweeted what is now an iconic collection of words:

According to Deccrypt, Kramer fell for a phishing scam, which is becoming a more and more common way to target NFT collectors. Kramer was able to get OpenSea, the largest NFT trading platform, to freeze the trading of his apes, which totaled around $1.9 million worth. Obviously, this is all very funny and a terrific example of how NFTs and the current Web3 landscape isn’t decentralized at all. Also, “all my apes are gone” became a very popular meme over the last week, but I’d argue this response from Twitter user @exitliquidity1 is actually even funnier. “my jpegs are at zero risk of being stolen because I'm careful as fuck and have taken the right steps to make sure I'm not vulnerable to an attack.”

If you’d like to get a better insight into the, frankly, very bad discourse around Web3 decentralization you should go check out this thread from r/Ethereum, where a user suggested that every website should use the Metamask crypto wallet for authentication. Oh, also, Bored Ape Yacht Club collectors are customizing their Rolexes now. Yes, they look as ugly as you’d imagine. Also, Eminem bought a Bored Ape NFT of himself. There’s BAYC graffiti popping up, as well.

So while all of that stuff is real, what isn’t real is the “Sarah Oxford-Laughdugry Memorial NFT,” which maybe you’ve seen this week.

The “Sarah Oxford-Laughdugry Memorial NFT” is actually part of a years-long British ARG called the Trevor Bastard Extended Universe. I did a podcast episode explaining it a few years ago. Here’s a good Outline explainer on the TBEU, as well. So while that’s definitely not real, I am, unfortunately, not sure whether this absolutely mortifying AITA Reddit post about an extremely problematic NFT Christmas gift is real or not.

Alright, moving away from apes, the president of Square Enix is looking seriously at how to implement NFTs. But, even more troubling, it turns out that Norton Antivirus software might be installing crypto mining software on people’s computers? Seems not good!

And lastly, here is the most deranged thing I’ve seen in a very long time.

I thought this was satire (there’s a musical number like seven minutes into it), but after reading up on it, it seems to be genuine. If you don’t feel like exposing yourself to the psychic torment that comes with watching the video, the TL;DR is that a bunch of blockchain evangelists are trying to build an island development in Fiji. Here’s a decent Cointelegraph article on it.

I’ve seen so many attempts at doing this sort of thing. The crypto community has a lot of digital nomads with way too much disposable income and hardcore libertarian beliefs. But, here’s the thing. Most of the projects will fizzle. But a few will go all the way to a point where people actually show up. Those will probably turn into logistical disasters that make Fyre Festival look like Club Med.

But the minute one of these attempts at building a crypto nation state works, things will never really be the same again. Which sort of gives the video above a very eerie feeling. Because as dumb as it all is, there are a lot of people out there right now with a lot of money who want exactly what this video is pitching.

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The Great TikTok Egg Peel

It’s the hot new trend! Peeling an egg on a live TikTok video. Here’s a second link to the moment where he pops the peeled egg. The egg popper can be found at the @adam2000g account. He was live when I was writing this, so I clicked in and, wouldn’t you know it, he was peeling another egg!

Also, in case you were wondering, at one point @adam2000g carved a triangle into the egg, which then made a bunch of users think he was doing some kind of illuminati-related spell and now there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theories about the peeled egg. TikTok is a very normal website full of very well-adjusted users.

The Tumblr Tag Ban

There’s been a lot of drama on Tumblr over the last few weeks. It all started when the Tumblr iOS app added a bunch of banned phrases to the app’s tag search. The initial list of banned tags included your standard NSFW terms, but it also included a bunch of totally random phrases like “girl” and “reblog” lol.

Unlike the infamous porn ban of 2018, Tumblr, the company, did a much better job of messaging why this was happening this time around, I thought. In a blog post announcing the change to the iOS app, they wrote, “In order for us to remain in Apple’s App Store and for our Tumblr iOS app to be available, we needed to make changes that would help us be more compliant with their policies around sensitive content.”

So at least this time Tumblr users know that it’s Apple that wants them to stop posting nipples. Though, users did immediately figure out how to get around the ban. With some creative punctuation you can access banned tags pretty easily. I thought this big post about the banned tags from user sreegs was a pretty good write-up of the whole situation.

Another Stan Account Goes To Jail

Twitter user @feeltimemoving is a Twitter account that, up until September, was posting hourly updates of Billie Eilish’s green hair. No, I will not explain why that’s a thing, it makes perfect sense to me.

Anyways, on September 28, 2021, the account went dormant until a tweet appeared this week.

There aren’t much more details about what kind of pyramid scheme the Billie Eilish green hair account was involved with, but the entire interaction is extremely similar to what happened to a Taylor Swift stan in 2019. Only that account went to jail for refusing to join the Israel Defense Forces.

You can read a good VICE interview with @LegitTayUpdates here if you’re curious how that story went.

As Twitter user @thinkimlyin2ya replied this week to @feeltimemoving, “it’s always the hourly accounts.” Once again, I will not explain what that means.

Horse Plinko Takes Over Tumblr

The banned tags haven’t slowed the Tumblr community down! We’re only five days into the new year and they’ve already created a completely inscrutable new meme. Introducing, horse plinko. What is horse plinko? It’s an animated GIF of a horse inside of a plinko board, duh. Per a Know Your Meme page for the meme, the actual GIF comes from a 2017 3D simulation of real-time collisions.

Interestingly enough though, the meme started on Discord and then made its way over to Tumblr. It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened, but it’s definitely the most viral example and I wonder if this kind of content pipeline will become more common this year.

A New Year, A New Air Fryer Disaster

Twitter user @KLobstar put a Big Mac in an air fryer for 120 minutes this week. Last year, he did the same thing but with a hot dog. Funny enough, I asked @KLobstar last year if he had ever tried frying anything else for a really long time and he told me no because he didn’t want to become the “the air fryer guy”. You either deactivate a hero or live long enough to see youself become the annual air fryer guy, I guess.

Click through on the tweet above to go through his horrible Big Mac journey.

Some Stray Links

• “How Anime Porn Became a Weapon for Rival Terror Groups on Facebook”

• “Playable English Localizations of Slovak Digital Games From the Late 80s Period”

P.S. here’s a really good Golden Girls clip.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***