One interestingly ironic thing about a lot of the NFT art that has been released recently is its near memetic, semantic, and semiotic vacuity. It’s not completely devoid of meaning, but close enough. Well - it's hard for anything to be completely devoid of meaning if it exists within an evolved cosmological environment. Probably. But some NFTs are pushing the envelope. It depends on what one means by meaning (There's an argument you don't want to have with any philosopher.)
Half of NFT artists probably think that nihilism is evil and bad. But there they are doing it all day in NFTs.
Silly sausages.
What are colourful apes or unicorns with and without sunglasses supposed to be saying? I think in most cases they’re saying “I did a graphic design online short course, and I know what marketing is”. I guess we could call on Iser’s reception theory (Google it. I cannot do everything for you.)
STFU, right?
(Also – apes and unicorns with sunglasses and umbrellas probably have totes massive semiotic coolness if one is 9 years old and does not know what semiotics are.)
As a Camusian absurdist (on Wednesdays and Sunday afternoons) that appreciates a bit of nihilism occasionally, I don't mind having a giggle at some near-meaningless nonsense in the crypto-NFT ‘space’ (‘Space’. There’s a semantically overloaded term if ever one there was. It is so overloaded that it still makes sense in the sentence with the single quotes on it.) For example, I like to giggle at megacults (Religions), which purport to mean a lot, but which usually just mean that most people are vulnerable to misinformational memetic narratives. And out of their minds. I guess that is some meaning right there.
I guess one can say that the existence of megacults does signify quite a bit. Moreover, their various intertextualities and religio-cultural texts are stacked with memes and rhemes (Google Charles Sanders Peirce), and signals and indicators, and signs and wonder-y things, of various kinds. It’s just that all that semiotic stuff doesn’t objectively signify what delusional megacultists think it does most of the time.
This is not hard to explain. Megacultists are unhinged, and mentally ill. We’re talking about adults with imaginary friends here. Don’t shoot the messenger! (No really. Don’t shoot me. It’s only a bullshit religion and none of it is real, you lunatic.)
The mental health pandemic has been there with us all for ages, along with a lot of other pandemics. Heart disease, cancer, viruses, and crazy people are really common. Honestly – just chuck a rock anywhere. Choose a church or a mosque to increase your hit rate substantially. (No – you fool – I don’t really want people to throw rocks in megacult hangouts. Those loonies have – and cause - enough problems already. A rock to the head is not going to improve their mental health, probably. That said – it probably would not make a lot of difference. However – no throwing of rocks at people’s heads! That’s for fanatical Islamic megacult crazy people to do with their daughters and sisters!)
So it’s certainly a fact reliably signified by membership in a megacult that the participant is – well – as mad as a hat full of frogs.
Getting back to NFTs: here’s another example of near cultural semantic and semiotic vacuity in the NFT ‘space’. Everyone knows the tale of the NFT rocks that sold for many hundreds of thousands of dollars. An irony about this is that the buyers were probably hardened liberal or conservative capitalists (it’s oddly difficult to tell the difference) who would normally not go near nihilism or anarchism or any of that stuff - as far as they know - for any amount of money! (Probably. Maybe. Okay - I don’t know and couldn’t be arsed looking it up – even with Google.)
Oops.
As in “oops” - people who probably profess to hate nihilism keep doing nihilism NFT-wise. (In fact megacultists are the most astonishingly good example of this kind of nihilist. As Nietzsche implied, and even nearly almost exactly said: megacult clerics clearly don’t care about the objective truth of anything at all).
All of this NFT vacuous nihilism. It’s absurd! (But only on Wednesdays and Sunday afternoons.) Moreover - probably mostly meaningless. Unless one thinks money matters a lot (I do!) in which case, in the NFT rocks case, it's about 200K of meaning.
Ouch.
That being said, if one is a token instance of type stupidly rich person like a Musk or Branson, 200K is probably not very meaningful. But let's not kid ourselves - Musk and Bezos type people don't waste cash on such idiocy. Dogecoin adventurism notwithstanding - probably.
By the way - for anyone interested in my opinion on the matter - Doge is the right kind of crypto, but the wrong token (instance of that type of) crypto. No – I didn’t just make a mistake about coins versus tokens, haters (Suck it!). I am using philosophical discourse there just to confuse you and show off. In analytic philosophy a token of a kind is a specific actual instance of some type or category of thing.
(Actual individual crypto tokens, for example, are a token of the type crypto token. If you're a software developer familiar with instantiated typed variables you might make the connection. Instantiated typed variables in computer science are a nice, specific token example of the type-token type of ontic and semantic relationship. You could also look up Seligman, Etchemendy, and Devlin’s situation theory. That should keep you busy for about a month.)
Dogecoin is the right type of crypto in terms of its functions and properties, but Elon seems to have neglected to notice that it’s old tech in crypto terms! ENJ and SOL are probably your most probable possible good options, baby! Maybe. Dogecoin – I fear – will go the way of the dinosaur, along with Litecoin and Ethereum Classic. Probably.
That being said – the online game with crypto ‘space’ is the next Hollywood already, so one needs to keep one’s eye on that fact too. There might be room for Doge yet. (Nick Bostrom has posited a theory that we’re all living in a simulation. Well – duh. Just visit an online gaming shop!)
Actually Dogecoin is developing some fairly serious cultural-capital type semiotic grist, but I don’t think that will help the actual coin. It seems destined to become an NFT staple. So - the cute Japanese dog with the stupid temperament wins in the end, really.
Probably. Don’t worry. I am often wrong. However, I digress somewhat. Not that there was a very serious point to this post to begin with. Something about meaning, and the aesthetic and memetic content of NFT art - yes?
We philosophers of information (I am, in point of fact, one of these - with an actual real PhD and everything!) know that pretty much anything at all is an actual or potential carrier of a signal and signifier of some kind. Similarly, most everything has signifying, or semiotic, content. Sometimes it is artefactual and sometimes natural, and sometimes a mix.
The buying of NFT rocks for 200K – very probably - causally signifies (sends or emits a signal indicating) the existence of dumb, rich, excited people. If one knows the social and cultural background information and codes to help one decode the signal, then one can know this information subjectively upon receiving the signal. Moreover it is objectively the case that the NFT rocks signal signifies what I just said that it signifies. If you do not understand the distinction between objective and subjective, you’re part of an enormous and not very exclusive club (I am not in that club. Poor me). They probably inherited their money or something - the rich, dumb, NFT rock buyers. Although – isn’t intelligence meant to be genetically inherited? Only 50%? Not enough?
Inasmuch as signals are different to signifiers and significations are different to symbolic representation and semiotic content (let’s just not go there) – the semiotic content of the NFT rocks is, well, a whole bunch of things. Rocks, for one. (Like geologists I think that there is lots of interesting stuff going on with rocks in scientific terms, but I have significant doubts that the buyers of the rock NFTs were wealthy geologists. Again – I am not googling that. Go ahead – knock yourself out).
However, the real problem is that the semiotic content of NFT rocks is not really a comparatively very big, or very interesting, bunch of things. The rock NFTs are signifying – not much of any real interest, really. Nor are the things they are signifying very clever. Except for indicating and signifying clever grifterism. Much like megacults also do!
Put another way: compared to the semiotic content of most good art in history – there’s not a lot going on with most NFTs and NFT rocks. Put another way – the NFT rocks are cheap and nasty. Again – just like megacults and their nihilistic memetic narratives, but probably without the same critical mass of semiotic and memetic bullshit. Megacults beat rock NFTs for sheer volume of semiotic nihilist stupidity.
I mean – there’s probably whatever is signified by the existence of NFT rock representations. However, inasmuch as one can include or exclude the context and encapsulating setting of the NFT rocks (the NFT space, blockchains, crypto tech, and so on) – the NFT rocks don’t say a huge amount. Warhol’s soup cans and the Piss Christ probably said a lot more both by inference and by way of transmission channel conditions (Mostly cultural texts, social psychology, history, and various intertextualities.) Pollock’s stuff even beats them, because of its art-history context, and because Pollock was weird. By comparison Banksy’s stuff kills it, I’d say.
So you can see that a lot of NFT art is not very semiotically interesting or sophisticated.
David Hume’s expert appraisal theory of objectively great art would probably earn rock NFTs a fail, but then Hume’s aesthetics are a fail if you ask Immanuel Kant (Not that anyone sensible is asking that transcendentalist nitwit.)
But!
However!
But, I say again.
Look at what you get with the Order of the Cockscomb and our NFTs. There’s the rich tapioca pastry of meaning available in the ridicule of megacult delusions and megacults. That’s a largely untapped huge source of semioticy, contenty – stuff. Then there’s the inferential, tongue in cheek, parodic semiotic stuff (Largely untapped because of the risk of rocks to the head, and getting shot by crazy people). Then there’s the possible worlds and analogical semiotic stuff. Then there’s the intertextual references to religiousy stuff and new atheisty discursive stuff. Then there’s the philosophy of science and religions semiotic stuff. Then there’s…
STFU, right?
There’s just SO much cultural-capitally semiotic stuff stuffed into the NFTs of The Order of the Cockscomb! Not to mention the associative-indicative stuff associated with the weirdness and wonder of the being that produced the NFTs: the person I am in the habit of referring to using the vertical elongated personal pronoun (That’s me, silly.)
Talk about a cultural-capital high-value proposition. And now there’s this completely hilarious post for you to consider as part of the intertextual oeuvre.
Gosh – that’s a lot.
I am sure I will only become more (in)famous. So - what are you waiting for?
We (the Royal ‘we’ referred to by the use of the perpendicular pronoun) do cheat a bit by adding the text bubbles to the NFTs, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it only serves to add even more aesthetic and semiotic type-heterogeneity to the representations and signals. Graphic novels earned their stripes a long time ago. Ironically enough – religious art has been adding text in and around images for a long time. The more megacult-flaming memetic content and intertextual pastiche-y bits (and I mean bits in the information age and information theoretic sense of the term), the better.
Moreover – the Order of the Cockscomb doesn’t yet have any places of congregation (I am sure it is only a matter of time!) or longstanding megacult texts that lots of people are familiar with, and so we reserve the right to add text bubbles for additional value (That, and our limited artistic skills call for it too). Besides – that’s the value add comedic content. You know – jokes? The semiotic content of comedy makes that of megacults look like children’s crayon drawings. (On the other hand, megacults are as hilarious as they are insane. Hard to say with comedy and megacults where one ends and t’other begins, to be honest.)
Join The Order of the Cockscomb by making and offer to buy an NFT on the Polygon-Ethereum blockchain (One can do haggling on the polygon gas free market, apparently). You know you want to.
Since you lasted to the end of this post, here's the very boring Morphifuss the anthropomorphic whateverthefuck budget NFT:
