The Furry Fandom, artist culture, and the dangers of Non-Fungible Tokens
Imaginary internet money...
Cryptocurrency isn't a new thing to a lot of people, and most safely assume that it's a common matter to discuss by now. From one trend and explosion to another, it seems like the bombard of over-publicised success stories, scam emails, and ads that badger you to download this or that app to invest never stop coming.
For most of us, even though furries are notoriously well versed in technology, it's just background noise. Spam, buisness con tactics, and maybe hearsay from the friend of a friend who invested and became rich almost instantaneously... sounding almost good enough to break through the skepticism, but most often just not quite.
However, early in 2021, everything suddenly changed. A digital work from Mike Winkelmann, entitled 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days', sold for $69.3 million USD in an act entirely unexpected for the majority of the online community. Though the concept had been born back in 2014, and many other high-profile exchanges had been made earlier that year and the last, this sale was a massive tidal wave over into a new landscape for cryptocurrency altogheter. NFTs - a piece of content, be it an image, sound, or any other digital file, that had attatched to it a certificate labelling it as the 'one and only true original'. Each individual certificate of absolute ownership was collectable, tradeable, and beyond all exclusive - a factor that seemed to draw in many, and become a currency of its own. Once merely for the investors and stock players, trading and busting had now broken out into the world of independent content creators - where predictably there is no more quirky and unique a breed than furries and their infinite array of creativity and oddball ingenuity - so oversaturatedly stylized and enigmatised through NFTs. Soon, by the later months of the year, artists and creators both within the fandom and without were bombarded by requests, demands, and processes relating to NFT marketplace proccesses whether they understood or not, and communities across the internet were pivoting all too slowly to adapt.
'Everydays: The First 5000 Days' by Mike Winkelmann. (Source: Google Images)
While the hype was insurmountable - drawing target groups who had never been interested in cryptocurrency to suddenly invest thousands worldwide - there was so much more to what was occuring than could be seen in the surface trend craze and annoyance. Something that no-one had seen at first. Something insidiously unhealthy, that has grown worse and worse in the months that have come to pass since.
We think NFTs are dangerous to the Furry Fandom, and here's why.
To fully understand why many people have been seeing NFTs as a risk to both the enviroment and creative culture, we have to explore exactly what impacts they are reportedly having. In conducting research into the most common issues those both identifying as members of the fandom and those outside of it, we have both passively and actively observed the community as a whole - gathering the general consensis of those affected, and the patterns in what information we noted. And, to begin, most commonly noted among the complaints of those affected by the NFT trend would be without a doubt theft. Cases of artists finding their works for sale on NFT marketplaces without a scrap of their knowledge or consent are more than common, with the sites responsible notoriously less than vigilant against or helpful in removing discovered thefts.
To fully understand why many people have been seeing NFTs as a risk to both the enviroment and creative culture, we have to explore exactly what impacts they are reportedly having. In conducting research into the most common issues those both identifying as members of the fandom and those outside of it, we have both passively and actively observed the community as a whole - gathering the general consensis of those affected, and the patterns in what information we noted. And, to begin, most commonly noted among the complaints of those affected by the NFT trend would be without a doubt theft. Cases of artists finding their works for sale on NFT marketplaces without a scrap of their knowledge or consent are more than common, with the sites responsible notoriously less than vigilant against or helpful in removing discovered thefts.
Certainly, art theft and copyright infringement has been a massive problem since the internet first came around, and even long before then. An amazing array of traced 'artworks', bootleg albums, and bad rip-offs of your favorite children's show are made every day without fail. Yet, in the furry fandom, the motivation for someone to actively steal another person's art is at least somewhat small-minded and limited, though widely practiced. You mostly have to want to be known as an artist to have a motivation to steal someone else's art and claim it was your own. However, with the advent of NFTs, there is a new player in the field. Big, big money. For many people, this changes everything. Sure, some art thieves in the past have altered the artworks of others and sold them as 'commissions' to those none the wiser, but never before had such a clean and relatively risk-free avenue of fraud presented itself to those criminally willing. For, in truth, the odds are that the average artist would never know if one of their pieces had been quietly made into an NFT and sold, and that is exactly the point.
Next, the theft continues - not to artists, but rather to the earth itself. Enviromental issues related to cryptocurrencies as a whole have long been held under question, with Wikipedia even going so far as to compare the carbon energy footprint of purchasing a single NFT alone to an additional passanger upon a commercial flight, and the New York Times stating that a single Bitcoin transaction absorbs the energy that an average American household does in six weeks. It may come as a shock, but in September this year it was estimated that 0.5% of all energy used worldwide to date is used for Bitcoin alone - more than a very large amount of entire countries, and almost more than half of all other data processes globally, as stated by DigiEconomist founder Alex de Vries. Cryptocurrency's fragile status is troubling by itself, especially given this great cost, both enviromentally and financially by its investors. As an economic straw man, crypto functions purely upon the ebb and flow of exchange and stock value - that is to say that if there was no supply, there would be no demand, unlike in classic economics, where the demand is met and balanced with supply foremost as a means of profit.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly among that which sees a battering from the surge of NFT popularity, we have culture. The furry fandom is a unique space, built up culturally over decades and decades, and being a fandom formed about a concept rather than an existing set of work, the stories, lives, creations, and artistic energy of our members is in fact the sole and only thing that defines us as a community at all. Independant and freelance creators seek their living from the exchange of art and content, and that buisness is a shaky one at most for the best of them. Thus, it seems reasonable that introuducing such a depersonalized and commercially biased factor into a forum that previously had survived purely upon personalization - such as wanting to see your characters come alive, purely because of your emotional investment in them rather than monetary investment - has left many creators and influencers feeling bitter, both with how it may be affecting their incomes, and how it might damage the community around them.
The outcry upon social media has not been a quiet one, however, with many artists taking to their channels and fans to call out the surge of harassment from those who simply seek to saturate the marketplaces of the community with artistically worthless items that they see as little more than tokens, rather than those sharing their stories, characters, and creativity in a healthy and unique way.
It could seem disheartening indeed, that something which has touched so many so genuinely might be turned to dollars and cents instead of the unequalled joy that a commission brings to both its recipient and creator.
Many others rally in support of the NFT marketplace, stating that its opportunites in trading and stock are unsurmountable, yet it seems to many as though the entire system is based upon quick personal wealth or collecting the tokens for hope of future personal wealth, rather than a living and breathing community. That leaves us to ask if the entire scheme just another cryptocurrency trend that holds the fandom's already precarious respect for its artists, their income, and buisness deals, or if it is something more that could potentially aid in its growth? The answer to that question, which perhaps is just another aspect of the age-old pull between a balance of wealth or happiness, is, as always, up to you, but for many furries it is no. And, in good concience for the space and creative, amazing people we love, us over at Doppelfoxx are definitely among them.
21st December, Gabriel Foxx