John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT • Hacker News Board

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#21

Post by blueline » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #7

Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really care who pretends to own it? I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights. As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy…

at least a louis vuitton bag can actually hold things in it, and you can't get an identical free one by right clicking an existing one and clicking "Save image"

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#22

Post by seibelj » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #7

Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really care who pretends to own it? I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights. As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy…

> Is it just me

Given every post on crypto / blockchain / NFT on HN is full of these exact same comments showing utter disbelief and bewilderment, for the past 10 years, the answer is “No, everyone here thinks like you.”

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#23

Post by lukifer » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

chartpath wrote: post #11

eloff wrote: post #7

Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really care who pretends to own it? I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights. As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy…

Wasn't there an app on iOS way back at the start that was just an image of a ruby/gem of some kind that cost $999? Some people actually bought it before Apple took it off the App Store.

This story is also a good parable of why Veblen goods [0] distort GDP as a measure of value creation. If Apple had decided to lean in to that market, raising the maximum app price to $1M, and those same 8 purchasers who bought the original I Am Rich purchased I Am Rich 2.0: would anyone really believe that that $8M of real-world value was created?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#24

Post by quesera » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #7

Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really care who pretends to own it? I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights. As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy…

It is not just you.

But, NFT's are selling "participation". You are not John Cleese, and you're not even all that funny. But you're an enormous fan, and happen to control an adequately-large amount of cash.

In the same way that you can hire Elton John to pretend to be your friend for a few hours, and play at your wedding, etc, you can also "buy in" to a very public partcipation in some art, or joke, or both ... at no meaningful cost to you.

Surely the market is limited. But people have paid a lot of money for a piece of toast, too.

In this case, it's no weirder than Cleese selling his socks for charity. Or profit! Who cares? Eat the rich, it's all good.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#25

Post by toss1 » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

Next up will be a set of data on the wing-flapping rate of African swallow and the instructions for the Holy Hand Grenade.

All the comments about supposedly "owning" a copy of an item that is trivial to make perfect digital copies... exactly.

If, somehow, the NFTs could be made actually non-fungible, and backed by the legal system, the one killer feature would be repeating revenue for the artist with every subsequent sale. That could truly change the economics for the perpetually starving artists in the world. If that came to pass, it might be worth all the electricity and carbon footprint.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#26

Post by dylan604 » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #18

Please consider changing the OP link to Cleese's actual post on Twitter, which embeds a video of him describing this "work of art": https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1372944852325789704 It's brilliant parody, as usual, from Cleese. Regardless of what you think of NFTs, you will get a good laugh.

No need, I just bought it now.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#27

Post by wrs » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

Given there’s a $50k bid for this, I can’t decide if the joke backfired, or succeeded brilliantly. It’s a no-lose proposition for Cleese, I guess!

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#28

Post by dylan604 » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #14

chartpath wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there an app on iOS way back at the start that was just an image of a ruby/gem of some kind that cost $999? Some people actually bought it before Apple took it off the App Store.

$999.99 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich )

I always thought the natural follow up/copy cat app name should have been "More dollars than sense"

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#29

Post by benjohnson » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

simplecto wrote: post #20

The internet is just a fad. Only nerds want a smartphone Bitcoin is a scam NFTs are just stupid Just because I don’t like the aesthetic qualities of NFTs does not mean the whole space is bunk.

Sometimes the doubters are correct.

AOL keywords, WAP phones, pets.com stock, self driving cars are two years away, X.25, VR, Hydrogen Cars.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#30

Post by pfortuny » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #7

Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really care who pretends to own it? I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights. As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy…

In “the bonfire of the vanities” by Tom Wolfe, this is ridiculed with the auction for an absurd statue which will become priceless because the author has suggested is going to commit suicide (or has alreay, I forget). The auction is hilarious.