NFT and Me: A Struggle and Attempt to Cross the Road of Understanding

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The arrival of NFTs to me felt like a tropical storm. At first, there were only slight signs: the breeze shook palms enough to make their fronds rattle a little louder, just enough to grab your attention. Soon the storm was upon us, and it came down with a torrential downpour, making us run for cover, hoping the tropical depression won’t last too long. The ceiling tiles of your little cardboard house begin to lift and break away, your only protection from the water above. The walls are moist from the humidity and your windows all fogged, making it difficult to watch the wind strike down and snap branches and electrical wires in their aggression. 

The first time I heard the mention of NFTs was only a few weeks ago. I was crunched up, scratching pencil on paper. My stuffy dorm lit up with the afternoon sun and a dust coated fan kept the temperature manageable as I toiled away in my lonesome craft. I was listening to Philip De Franco, a news channel on YouTube, spoke on how Kings of Leon, a popular early 2000’s rock band, would be one of the first people to ever release an entire album as an NFT. My ears perked, I laid down my poorly sharpened pencil and I directed my attention to the screen. I enjoyed listening to their music on the radio when I was younger, belting out the lyrics to “Sex on Fire” being way too young to understand the lyrics. I was blown away to see these huge celebrities and influencers making millions of dollars on whatever NFTs were. After purposely hyping up and confusing his audience even further, he finally references a Verge article that takes a shot at explaining the concept. “NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are essentially blockchain-based certificates validating that someone owns a piece of digital art.” 

I sat there for a moment, blinked, and tried to process what this statement meant. The entire concept and sentence felt as if it shambled into one ear and came out the other side as a butterfly and fluttered away before I could hastily catch it and try to comprehend what in the world this was. He went on to say that NFTs provide the opportunity to purchase and own unique and one of a kind digital objects such

as art, music, and videos. The only caveat to

this is that most likely people can see the art,

listen to the music, and watch the video you

now own, without owning it themselves.

Verge then explains “Anyone can buy a

Monet print; only one can own the original.” I was dumbfounded by the ridiculous premise, and brushed the concept off as a ridiculous fad. Why would anyone spend millions of dollars on a collector’s item that you can’t even touch, hold, or display in your house? DeFranco then began rambling on about all the fantastic possibilities and potential NFTs could have and I quickly lost interest, returning to my work without a second thought.

Fast forward to a week later and I am unsurprisingly once again carving out a new image at my desk. In a twist of fate, I’m home, as I had to return for a few days for an important eye appointment. Wrapped up in a soft cotton shawl I cling to the warm fabric as the chilling air conditioner has a direct path to my desk, where I spent most of my afternoon working up the new assignment for the next day’s critique. In a way to combat the silent solitude, my mom joined me, snuggled in my bed, wrapped in my soft blanket, and rested her arms on the plush pillows. She was playing her nintendo switch to pass the time, a gift my brother and I gave her last christmas. She would occasionally chime in with a comment about her game, or whatever she happened to hear from the video I was playing. Then, the speak of NFTs returned.

With my brain fresh off the pan, I was a bit fried, and decided to take a breather and cool off, reaching for my phone to slide through the ever-temporary images of Instagram Stories. After seeing some charming pictures of old dogs and a work in progress for a new illustration I came across something that caught my eye. Canadian illustrator Audra Auclair, one of my earliest inspirations and artists I look most highly of expressed her distaste and frustration for NFTs. Roughly she stated that after doing research she discovered that although NFTs are problematic (she never explains why,)  to begin with, the worst part about them is their huge impact on the environment. She references James Jean, a more well known illustrator with over one million followers on instagram, sold his 2015 piece ‘Slingshot’ for around 258 thousand dollars. She then posted an image found within an article which showed the auction used so much energy that it could fuel a UK home for almost 200 years, causing tons of pollution. Later on while doing my own research, I had discovered the article plugged in wrong numbers to an energy estimator to get this amount. It’s supposedly “not as much, but still bad.” At this moment though, I had nothing to go by except what was in front of me now. 

I was once once again at a loss for words and was dumbfounded by the concept that something online could cause so much environmental damage. I angrily exclaimed my frustration and opened my google application, tapping out the words “what is an NFT.” Lo and behold, the first result was the Verge article DeFranco had mentioned the previous week. Hastily I darted my eyes across the screen, searching for the exposed ore that would lead me to the vein of knowledge I sought out in this journey of frustration. Once again I read the classic line “NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are essentially blockchain-based certificates validating that someone owns a piece of digital art” and once more I sat in frustration- the concept had escaped me once again. 

At this point my mom looked over at me curiously, as I had abandoned my work station and now had rotated my seat to face her. I had decided to share the burden of this confusion with my mother, who was my loyal confidant of even the most absurd conversations. Plus she had a masters in global sustainability, so I figured that she would be intrigued by the environmental impact of this mystery. After she had her go at reading the strange tome of knowledge, she returned as clueless as I. Between the two of us, all we could decipher is the idea of purchasing a digital object that has a special “something to do with the word block chain.” At this point, I gave up and rotated my chair, returned to my position and continued to tentatively press the pencil onto the sheet.

The next day DeFranco spoke about how Taco Bell was selling NFTS, and that some were being resold for up to 30 thousand dollars. At this point my back is slouched, my hands supporting my heavy head as I stare at the video in numb defeat. All that I could think in the back of my mind was the huge environmental impact that must have cost. I slowly dropped my head onto the desk as DeFranco expressed his interest in having his own line of NFT products. I looked temptaciously at my keyboard thinking of all the ways I could say it’s a bad idea in the comments section, or the thought of emailing him briefly passed my mind, but I did nothing, as I still didn’t know what NFTs were.

The following week online I saw people share

informational posts with no sources about how

NFTs are pyramid schemes, and artists were getting

their art stolen and sold without consent. People

were blocking and unfollowing fellow artists and

peers who showed any interest in the crypto art. It even made its way to the classroom, with my professor calling Beeple an “asshole” for having sold a collage featuring five thousand images of artworks he made over the years for over 69 million dollars. At this point, I was burnt out by the mere mention of the concept, ranting about it to my poor room mate as I attempted to research what the word “blockchain” meant. 

And here we are. Three weeks into this storm and the whole house has flooded, and I’m hopelessly floating on an air mattress, surrounded by debris, lost and confused. The sky has brightened and the drops have already started to slowly drift away as the internet moves onto the next big thing, leaving behind dazed and confused individuals like me who still don’t know what NFTs exactly are.