Elon Musk posts an image of an NFT and shows off the fragility of it all

Elon Musk posts an image of an NFT and shows off the fragility of it all
HIGHLIGHTS

Elon Musk has caused more controversy after his buyout of Twitter

He recently posted an image of an NFT as his profile picture

He wanted to prove how silly the concept of NFTs were

Well, it looks like Elon Musk is at it again. The billionaire shocked the world a week ago when he outright purchased Twitter. This basically led to the formation of anti-Musk and pro-Musk factions who then went to war with each other. You can read all bout that here. It’s been about a week since the purchase and Elon isn’t slowing down at all. Just recently, in a bid to point out the illogical existence of NFTs, he copied and pasted a supposed NFT to this profile picture on Twitter. Again, this brought out the worst of the two factions as defenders rushed to explain why this wasn’t a big deal while the anti-Musk faction decided that Elon was the anti-christ and was the greatest abuser of copyright the world has ever seen. Hyperbolic, sure, but this is the kind of vitriol and adoration he commands.

Elon Musk vs NFTs

Before we go any further, let’s just briefly recap what exactly an NFT is. In layman’s terms, an NFT is a non-fungible token, which means that it cannot be ‘replicated’ without breaking copyright. On a personal note, I think that NFTs are another scam in a long line of people trying to monetize free information. What stops someone from the Fiji islands from posting an NFT from America? Nothing. The entire debate has become this convoluted mess of blockchains and security that is just not going to interest the regular person. The fact that anyone has to use blockchain for an image is insanity. You can literally just save the image and repost it!

So, when Elon posted the NFT in question, it caused a whirlwind of the hottest takes on the internet. You can always rely on good old Twitter to hit you with some of the wildest opinions you’ll ever hear. Freedom of speech, and all. The artist who ‘designed’ the NFT even tweeted at Elon asking him for credit for the image. Musk has not responded yet. Sure, credit where credit is due but is that image really worth the pixels it’s printed on? We’re not too sure.

Look, the internet is a wild place and nothing stays hidden for too long. You can't stop piracy. It’s a fool’s errand. Pirates will always be one step ahead of the law. Take a look at how torrents have stayed alive all this time. Again, we neither condone nor promote piracy, but even we cannot deny that it’s impossible to stop the wave. The minute a show is out on a streaming platform, you can be sure to find it on a torrent site. It’s inevitable. In a way, piracy does protect older content from fading away but the fact of the matter is that it is incredibly easy to pirate any kind of content, and that included images and NFTs. No amount of block chaining is going to stop a person from just taking a screenshot of said image and reposting it. As mentioned above, are you going to chase down a fella all the way in the middle of nowhere to get him to pay for your NFT?

As usual, Twitter had a lot to say about the incident and we’ve picked out some of the choicest tweets for you!

Andrew Lu

Andrew Lu

A geek and nerd at heart, I love comic books, horror movies and professional fighting. Yes, I know how insane that sounds. View Full Profile

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