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Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

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Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#141

Post by basch »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #139
basch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> indistinguishable I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to art being duplicated, or a digital signature? You can verify that its a forgery, or from a different account than the first author. The digital signature isnt something you can replicate. You can print another one, but you cant duplicate the property of "first" itself.

I can't replicate the exact numbers, but I don't see how one random string looks more authentic than the other. Whereas a handmade autograph with all its human inconsistencies looks more authentic than one made with a mechanical device. I'm just as good as the most accomplished artist at reading numbers from /dev/random, that's why I don't see why one random-looking string would be more valuable than the other.

Because it's timestamped earlier, or its proven to have been generated by a person who exclusively had a certain private key.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#142

Post by idoh »

benlivengood wrote: post #76
ALittleLight wrote: post #17

I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrati…

It's righteous anger at a waste of resources and critical lack of understanding. NFTs aren't commodities or assets, they're just conspicuous consumption. Dramatically showing off how much money a person can waste on an illusion is cringe-worthy. It makes me annoyed in the same way pay-to-play games annoy me.

Agreed, and it's a very weird type of conspicuous consumption. You can't really hang the NFT on your wall, or drive up to a fancy dinner in an NFT. I guess you can brag about it?

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#143

Post by merpnderp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #121
benlivengood wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's righteous anger at a waste of resources and critical lack of understanding. NFTs aren't commodities or assets, they're just conspicuous consumption. Dramatically showing off how much money a person can waste on an illusion is cringe-worthy. It makes me annoyed in the same way pay-to-play games annoy me.

Yup. Especially since a lot of people have made gazillions in crypto for doing no labor so spending this sort of “funny money” as a lark is a frustratingly common occurrence.

Why must they do labor to earn money? If I mow lawns for a summer, then invest in a lawn mower which I then lease out to someone else to mow lawns, am I not entitled to the lease money because I'm not doing the labor?

Investing the fruits of one's labor is widely considered a human right, and is even explicitly listed in the Declaration of Human Rights. And hedging ones investments with gold, silver, bonds or crypto is not an unreasonable thing to do.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#144

Post by donatj »

benlivengood wrote: post #76
ALittleLight wrote: post #17

I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrati…

It's righteous anger at a waste of resources and critical lack of understanding. NFTs aren't commodities or assets, they're just conspicuous consumption. Dramatically showing off how much money a person can waste on an illusion is cringe-worthy. It makes me annoyed in the same way pay-to-play games annoy me.

> they're just conspicuous consumption

I mean aren't they arguably also wealth redistribution from the stupid-enough-to-buy-an-nft to the insanely-lucky?

This is going to put Charlie through college no doubt.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#145

Post by iamben »

bloak wrote: post #59
ALittleLight wrote: post #17

I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrati…

I remember some of the people who worked hard designing the hardware and software that went into feature phones being outraged, perhaps in a similar way, by the stupid amounts of money people were spending on ringtones at that time (about 20 years ago).

And yet now I don't know anyone with a 'novelty' ringtone. Even though it's ludicrously simple to choose a song or whatever else - literally everyone I know, or strangers whose phone rings - it's a vibrate or a ring.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#146

Post by dorkwood »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #28

The only explanation for NFTs that made sense to me is that people with an interest in the network (e.g. early investors) are bidding up some choice NFTs to make news and drive interest in their network. There is no actual market for NFTs at these prices, but that doesn't stop groups with deep pockets from pretending like there is by purchasing well known memes for eye popping amounts. If internet "celebrities" are a…

> If internet "celebrities" are able to cash in on this nonsense, I see no harm in it. It's sort of like living off of VC subsidized products.

If you only look at it from the perspective of the influencer, it doesn't seem like there's any harm. They managed to extract some wealth from crypto whales. -- where's the harm in that? But at the end of the day, they're selling a lie. The NFT-proponents want people to believe that NFTs are inherently valuable so that they can extract all of their money back, and then some. It's propaganda, and I can't get behind it, even if it means some artists are cashing out.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#148

Post by daniellarusso »

ALittleLight wrote: post #17

I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrati…

Look at sneakers on stockx.com.

https://stockx.com/nike-dunk-sb-low-paris

That is an $80k shoe currently.

If you can get somebody to buy it, that is what it is worth.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#149

Post by Opt_Out_Fed_IRS »

floren wrote: post #45
whack wrote: post #36

> Sunday's spending spree means the mysterious anonymous bidder will become the owner of the Charlie Bit My Finger clip. > its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses. Genuinely curious. What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? What's stopping the…

> What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? Nothing. > What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against you in future? Nothing. > From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even enforce their ownership against anyone else? They can't.

But the important thing is that clueless buyers didn't put together the above reasoning

Or think somehow blockchain and AI can be used the amazing technoutopian future™ to combat piracy (including piracy of the image or video of the NFT they bought it)

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#150

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

basch wrote: post #141
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't replicate the exact numbers, but I don't see how one random string looks more authentic than the other. Whereas a handmade autograph with all its human inconsistencies looks more authentic than one made with a mechanical device. I'm just as good as the most accomplished artist at reading numbers from /dev/random, that's why I don't see why one random-looking string would be more valuable than the other.

Because it's timestamped earlier, or its proven to have been generated by a person who exclusively had a certain private key.

> Because it's timestamped earlier

That depends on who thought of making the NFT first. Which isn't necessarily the artist.

> or its proven to have been generated by a person who exclusively had a certain private key

That has the same problem, it's generated by arbitrary pseudo-random numbers, rather than a real, living human hand. Look, I'm not disputing the underlying cryptographic principles. I'm happy they exist, because they are immensely useful for many purposes, like securing communication and financial transactions. I just struggle to see the artistic merit in someone having pulled some numbers out of /dev/random and having done some math on them.

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