Many fans are upset over NatGeo’s NFT primer, which includes the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
National Geographic has published a full exposition of the technology on social media and debuted its first NFTs on Polygon, causing outrage from hundreds of the magazine’s 135-year-old devotees.
On Monday, a photo of a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT with a caption discussing the emergence of NFTs—individual blockchain tokens that represent ownership—was shared on NatGeo’s Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.
The social media posts were made to get Polygon’s own NFT drop, which debuted on Tuesday and featured work from 16 different photographers,
including Justin Aversano, Reuben Wu, Cath Simard, and John Knopf, in front of the magazine’s general readership.
The Reaction
The overwhelming majority of comments on NatGeo’s social media pages were critical of NFTs, calling them a “bubble” that had “already busted,” “bullshit,” “an extinct species,” and even “another way to launder.”
Numerous people begged NatGeo to “remove this.”
Others claimed that NFTs were outright “scams,” essentially discrediting the entire field of technology, even though it is people, not technology, who invent phishing scams and “rug pulls” involving NFTs.
Even the manager of renowned photographer Ansel Adams’ Instagram account joined the discussion by simply writing, “Nope,” to NatGeo’s article regarding NFTs.
Ethereum NFTs – David Bowie’s estate Twitter Criticism
Many Bowie fans are displeased with the David Bowie estate’s plans to launch NFTs with OpenSea the next week. As part of the “Bowie on” project, nine different visual artists have produced NFTs that are inspired by Bowie.
Without subtlety, this type of NFT response is hardly new. When it offered free NFTs as part of its marketing for the most recent season of “Stranger Things,” Netflix experienced backlash. Additionally, the video game business has experienced ongoing, constant criticism from online gaming communities and players that dislike the technology.
The general public’s opinion of NFTs doesn’t appear to have changed. Even while the Ethereum Merge, which was implemented in September 2022, decreased ETH’s energy consumption by 99.998%, according to data from the Ethereum Foundation, it didn’t do much to assuage those who believed that NFTs were terrible for the environment.
With 256 million Instagram followers, 49 million Facebook fans, and well over 28.6 million Twitter followers, NatGeo has a sizable fan base. Although it received a lot of criticism, its Instagram post about NFTs nevertheless received over 100,000 likes.
Despite the uproar, it is noteworthy that NatGeo opted to introduce NFTs at a time when the amount of NFT trading is a tiny fraction of what it once was. A Dune Analytics dashboard shows that Polygon’s total NFT volume traded on OpenSea this month was approximately $15.39 million, a sharp 80.5% decline from its all-time high of roughly $79.45 million a year earlier.
Creators’ Perspectives on NFT
While the bulk of the almost 200 Facebook comments and more than 3,000 Instagram comments were critical, some NFT artists responded to claim that the majority of critics just had sufficient knowledge of NFTs.
Ryan Hawthorne, an artist who has released Ethereum NFTs with prominent auction company Sotheby’s, commented, “Welcome to the comment area, here you’ll watch a sea of individuals bashing on what they don’t comprehend in their natural environment.”
The anonymous cofounder of the Ethereum NFT project Deadfellaz remarked, “It’s a shame that most people commenting negatively here won’t have taken the time to learn about the important applications and problems the innovation is solving/has the ability to solve.
It’s time to separate digital art from NFTs.
I just had a revelation while perusing the Musée Matisse in Nice, France, where I went to view a passing David Hockney exhibition. If you’re not aware, Hockney is thought to be…
Not every NFT creator and artist who replied defended NatGeo. Chuck Anderson, an NFT artist who goes by the moniker nopattern, blasted the publication for utilizing a picture of a BAYC NFT.
Anderson noted that BAYC is by far the most bland and corniest example of all the amazing initiatives, artists, and concepts in the NFT ecosystem. It’s unfortunate that those who haven’t joined are still receiving this.
Snowcrash Challenges
Technical issues have also been raised by those who are interested in minting NatGeo NFTs. The Snowcrash-designed NFT platform mint looks to be having persistent technical problems.
This irritated potential holders, who reacted negatively to Snowcrash’s claim that it is a “top NFT trading platform” and criticized the business’s outreach initiatives. Twitter users from over 13 different accounts complained about the mint website. Even 30 minutes after the mint was supposed to go live, Decrypt discovered that it was unable to connect a wallet to the mint website.
After roughly an hour, it seemed that the mint problems had been fixed.
Update: National Geographic has since taken down all of its social media content about the BAYC NFT from its Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
Posting an NFT primer on social media for National Geographic
Decrypt has asked National Geographic and Snowcrash for comments, but neither has yet delivered one.