If Bored Ape Yacht Club was the commercially groundbreaking Madonna of NFTs, Milady Maker was the technology's G.G. Allin or Seth Putnam – offending pieties, confounding critics and testing artistic boundaries. (Google those names at your risk.)
Briefly ubiquitous on Twitter in the spring, the Milady avatars, resembling bobblehead anime characters, looked cute and innocent at first glance – though their dilated pupils and raised eyebrows hinted at something off-kilter.
If you only look at the stats, Miladys, minted by a mysterious art collective called the Remilia Corporation, don’t seem all that influential. The floor price, or lowest price in the collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFT), peaked in mid-April at 1.69 ether (ETH), worth about $5,000 at the time, according to data site NFT Price Floor. At their height later that month, the cheapest Bored Apes traded for about 137 ETH, then roughly $380,000.
But that’s looking at the phenomenon through a pinhole.
Miladys mattered not for any money the collectors made trading them but for what they represented: A counterculture to cancel culture, a sigil for the Extremely Online, an elaborate in-joke among outsiders. They invite conversations about whether the sins of the creator should be laid upon the creation, and whether words posted online can really be as harmful as sticks and stones.
Read more: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About ‘Miladys’ but Were Afraid to Ask
As the uncanny childlike profile pics swarmed social media, Twitter detectives and mainstream journalists homed in on Miladys’ association with edgy, esoteric internet subcultures and right-leaning New York hipsters, particularly the collection’s creator, known variously as Charlotte Fang, Charlie Fang, or Charlemagne. In May, Remilia’s self-proclaimed CEO outed himself as the provocateur behind Miya, a Twitter account whose posts ranged from offensive to inscrutable. In the same post, Fang apologized for “poisoning the vibe” with his “toxic baggage” and said he would leave the project.
While Fang has stated the slurs and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories he posted were just trolly performance art and that he did not hold such views, there were more disturbing, if never conclusively proven, allegations that he sent messages to teenagers encouraging them to kill themselves.
Unlike the wealthy NFT collectors who flexed their pricey Bored Apes or CryptoPunks on their Twitter profiles during the boom, Milady owners did not appear to be motivated by status. Fang even encouraged people to use the art without buying the tokens. “if you cant afford it just right click save one who cares,” he tweeted.
Rather, for the largely pseudonymous accounts that display them, a Milady PFP is a license for online mischief and unfettered expression. “You can make statements that don’t represent yourself. You can like every post. You can post two hundred times a day, as many of the members of the Milady community did at the project’s peak,” wrote Ginerva Davis in a critical profile of Fang in Palladium Magazine.
So while the controversy over Fang’s antics tanked the floor price, Miladys live on, subversively posting in dark corners of the internet, beyond the comprehension of social media’s hall monitors.
Related Quotes
The Edinburgh-based artist use a combination of technologies and brick-and-mortar traditional values to draw Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs for this year’s Most Influential list.
The Rocket Man will lift off at the Pyramid Stage on the final night of Glastonbury 2023.
Canada’s trucker protest organizers unwittingly taught us that a private citizen in that country can successfully petition a judge to freeze someone else’s crypto. That's why Tamara Lich is one of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2022.
The model is designed to add accountability by introducing performance measures, rewards and penalties.
When 20-year-old streetwear brand The Hundreds jumped into Web3 last year, its loyal fans spent upwards of $100 million on its NFTs. This year it canceled its OpenSea drop in a principled stand for creators’ financial interests. That’s why Bobby “The Hundreds” Kim is one of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2022.
Two more crypto exchanges, Bybit and Swyftx, join the long list of companies to announce headcount reductions as crypto winter bites harder.
For the fourth year, CoinDesk has partnered with 14 artists to immortalize on-chain some of the Most Influential 2022, whose NFT portraits will be made available in an exclusive auction being held on Coinbase NFT.
The arrest of a web developer for the now-sanctioned currency mixer Tornado Cash has raised questions about whom states can hold responsible when bad actors use software to commit crimes. That's why Alexey Pertsev is one of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2022.
Netflix thinks it has a pricing problem. The problem is that a standard Netflix subscription costs $14.99 a month. In theory, Netflix should be able to deliver that much value per person in your household each week.
Musk offers thanks, but no elaboration.
Emma Heming Willis shares daughters Evelyn, 8, and Mabel, 10, with Bruce Willis
The 31-year-old CEO of FTX shocked the world when his $40 billion crypto empire collapsed last month, with billions in customer assets still unaccounted. For putting the hyphens in crypto-savior-turned-corporate-fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried is one of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2022.
Nike said the company is no longer working with Kyrie Irving. The statement Monday comes a month after the sneaker giant first suspended its endorsement of Mr. Irving as the company moved to distance itself from the basketball star. In November, Nike said it would no longer launch the Kyrie 8, a sneaker that was slated to be released that month.
The perfect mix of naughty and nice.
Some of the biggest names in entertainment and politics were out on Sunday for the 45th Annual Kennedy Center Honors. 2022's honorees included George Clooney, Amy Grant, Gladys Knight, composer Tania León and Irish rock band U-2.
Disney has been working through the past couple of years to reimagine Disney's iconic Splash Mountain ride. The slow-moving log ride at both Disneyland Park in Anaheim, Calif., and Disney World in Orlando, Fla., will be replaced as the parks need to part ways with the controversial ride that features the "Song of the South" theme. Disney needs to part ways with the controversial past of the ride's stereotypical racist undertones and Disney Imagineers have plenty of movies featuring water to be able to reinvent the beloved log ride.
Sin City has become Tesla City but this move wasn't made by Elon Musk's company, which does have a major Las Vegas presence.
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from Season 5, Episode 5, of “Yellowstone,” “Watch ‘Em Ride Away,” which premiered Sunday, Dec. 4 on Paramount Network. Last week‘s “Yellowstone” ended with sexual intrigue, as Beth (Kelly Reilly) grew increasingly skeptical of the women sleeping with both her father (Kevin Costner) and brother Jamie (Wes Bentley). This week, […]
Borat is back! Sacha Baron Cohen returned as his iconic character at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night (via The Guardian) to eviscerate Kanye West for his outspoken antisemitism. Baron Cohen attended the Kennedy Center Honors to pay tribute to U2, but he used his time to bring Borat back to life and also […]
The full trailer for Harry and Meghan's six-part documentary on Netflix has been released, and it's filled with explosive statements from the couple.
