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.

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.

@elonmusk as much I admire your work I’d like you to remove your pfp that I created for our Sotheby’s sale. Or you credit me . Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval  pic.twitter.com/e83ZyxWGH5

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!

I think the point of him using it was to demonstrate how pointless nft's really are in the real world. pic.twitter.com/mvaam4ediy

Henlo, jpeg police? Yes he’s using not one, but many - yes I know it’s his platform, but he doesn’t have the ownership on the blockchain! pic.twitter.com/gX5XBkXY0o

He is trolling you! - right click > save > upload

This is why NFTs are a joke “please sir, remove this pfp as I own it, the blockchain says so here check this long string of numbers 87366hjsi77893”