it’s not illegal for anyone else to share or save this image. anyone can copy it as many times as they want. hell, you could even go sell it yourself if you found someone dumb enough to buy it. but that rich idiot libertarian now gets to say that he “owns” the “original” version of it, and the platform he bought it on generated a big string of code proving he owns it — and the energy required to generate that intricate code “proof” is comparable to how much energy an average person uses in several months. there are rooms full of complex computer servers running 24/7 just to code all this bullshit, and they all take a huge amount of energy, just to prove that this rich libertarian owns this jpg we can all also see
it’s been compared to real art: anyone can print out a copy of the mona lisa, but only one person can own the real thing. except you may be thinking: pictures online are identical. you can’t tell which one’s the “original,” because they’re all just computer files. but that doesn’t matter to a rich libertarian! they are literally paying huge amounts of money (one sold for $65 MILLION) to own something theoretical/digital, that everybody else can also see, and it hurt the environment and used all this energy along the way
“NFT” = a “non-fungible token”
“non-fungible token” = a “token” (any digital file) that isn’t real (aka it’s digital and doesn’t exist in real life, aka it’s non-real) and is theoretically unique. any digital file (a song, gif, image, video, article, even a tweet) can be an NFT if it’s put up for sale on a silly libertarian money laundering site
a blockchain = the unique computer code that “proves” an NFT belongs to someone; these files take a huge amount of energy to compute. ethereum, one server that creates blockchains for NFTs, uses the same amount of energy as the entire country of ireland in a whole year. it’s literally impossible for a normal computer to even compute a blockchain; it has to be these powerful servers/rooms full of computers that use up so much energy
bitcoin = one kind of “de-centralized” cryptocurrency
cryptocurrency = silly libertarian monopoly money, aka money that is not controlled by any bank or government. so if the libertarian gets scammed or hacked, no government or bank will help them, but that’s part of the fun ;)
essentially:
imagine an evil medieval king. he says he wants to own the word “motherfucker.” people are still allowed to use the word, but the king technically owns it. nobody is sure what it means for him to “own” this word, but he makes a hundred peasants do hours and hours of manual labor to create a huge carved stone that says “the king owns the word ‘motherfucker’ and nobody else owns it. you guys can still use it i guess, but the king is the one who owns it” and he wasted a shit ton of gold on buying a word that anyone can still use
except instead of a medieval king, it’s a modern millionaire who worships elon musk on twitter
two more fun facts:
all links on the internet eventually break. ten years from now, someone’s link to the NFT they bought is going to go to a “page not found” error screen instead
one millionaire bought the very first tweet ever tweeted. you can still go like and interact with this tweet; the tweet is still on the account of the person who tweeted it. the millionaire just gets to say he “owns” it and nobody knows what that means and it’s not recognized by twitter itself
