NFTs are a great test to see how ridiculously stupid of an idea can become popular and suck up money through sheer volume of disingenuous promotion.

Network effects just weren’t factored into the resilience of our social/financial/political structures and things like this are stress testing and breaking things.

I never thought people would pay $2 for a plastic bottle of water.

They've been paying that (inflation adjusted) for quite some time, although the water also had a bunch of sugar and a bit of flavoring and color in it. The bottled water thing started off mostly as a counter to sugary colas. Colas are a thing for people that don't like tap water (which varies in taste all over the country).

It's not a big deal compared to the past when pandemics could kill 80% of the human population. We'll survive it.

Just in case in any hasn't seen the thread "Lets finally talk about how NFTs are a giant scam": https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795667826208770

The biggest problem with the NFT scam is the energy requirements to keep it running. We're killing the planet to turn fossil fuels into entries in the block-chain.

Not worth it.

philosophically it's the opposite of everything that interests me in computing. ongoing moore's law, the expansion of computing, getting cheaper faster. more bandwidth, more connectivity. more possibilities, better augmentation, further frontiers, more freedom. free copying, remix, plenty.

to turn around & decide we are going to make a zero sum, limited system. that'd we'd artifically reproduce the scarcity of the real world... it goes against everything that dogital technology enables, is better for. there's nothing digital here at all, it's all 100% make believe, a creation of voluntary social ordering to impose heirarchy, to create haves and have nots. computing was already overly mechanizing, a tool too often used for- as Ursala Franklin would say- prescriptive control, instead of it's more noble holistic use. this hard overdrive into tight, constrained, limited & transactional computing- it's dropping a large tungsten cube on the scales of how computing is used, & it's, to me, vulgarly against what computers are good for and good at, & strongly into a forced socialization & societalization that restrains & limits all our better possibilities. do not want.

Could someone add subtitles for me ? I didn't understand all words.

interviewer: [...] buy these NFTs for $50, um, and so like when you think about the concept of digital scarcity and things that are, and, you know, that can't be copied...

Keanu: that are easily reproduced? [laugh]

interviewer: well, but they're not the same

It's basically the same as the "I'm rich" app that costs a lot and does nothing other than display that text.

Well to be fair the NFT lets you sell it to the next sucker if they don't mind the 2nd-hand 'original'.