{"id":31485,"date":"2023-11-07T20:22:34","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T01:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=31485"},"modified":"2023-11-08T10:08:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T15:08:24","slug":"the-grift-that-keeps-on-grifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2023\/11\/the-grift-that-keeps-on-grifting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grift that Keeps On Grifting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, I posted an editorial cartoon<\/a> about Melania Trump cashing in on the dubious and now quickly-fading<\/a> NFT fad.\u00a0 To refresh your memory, NFTs are to actual art what cryptocurrency is to real money — a few hundred bits of computer memory, backed by no authority whatsoever, which supposedly denotes ownership of an item of value.\u00a0 You can read about how NFTs are supposed to work, and why they exist, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the point of this post is not that NFTs are exploited by savvy grifters like Melania, which they certainly are; rather, it is that NFTs reveal just how lazy<\/em> such grifters are, laziness being the essential quality that defines people like the Trumps.\u00a0 Donald J. and Melania and Don and Eric and Ivanka — they all have trained themselves to look for the lowest-hanging, most-readily-dropped fruits to gather into their bottomless ego-baskets.\u00a0 NFTs were practically designed for people like the Trumps.\u00a0 Whom I wish were rarer.<\/p>\n

As a point of evidence, here is one of Melania Trump’s NFTs, titled Melania’s Vision<\/em> and touted thus by the so-called NFT “broker” that offered it:<\/p>\n

Melania Trump\u2019s personal journey has been enlightening; from Slovenia through Europe and into the United States of America \u2014 including as First Lady. The beauty and hardships of individuals, majestic landscapes and profound architecture have entered her lens and remain in her heart. Marc-Antoine Coulon\u2019s breathtaking watercolor embodies Melania Trump\u2019s cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire. Melania\u2019s Vision provides the collector with strength and hope.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ll give you a moment to catch a fresh breath after that inspirational floe of rotten algae.<\/p>\n

[Inhale through your nose, draw the breath into your belly… hold the breath a moment… now exhale slowly through your mouth… it’s okay if you make a soft, cleansing sound.]<\/p>\n

According to the NFT trading site OpenSea<\/a>, this digital rendition of Melania’s eyes is going for 0.o2 Ethereum (the second-most-popular cryptocurrency) or $38.o6.<\/p>\n

May I venture that $38.o6 is pretty generous for this piece of flotsam.\u00a0 One needn’t look very closely to see that this image signed by PERSON WHOSE SIGNATURE HAS DENSE VERTICAL STROKES JUST LIKE DONALD’S<\/span><\/a> is less an original watercolor than a Photoshop creation.\u00a0 Melania’s right eye is an obvious digital mirror image of the left, or vice versa.\u00a0 The computer-artist simply did a cut-and-paste-and-flip.\u00a0 Only Melania’s washy eyebrow strokes are non-mirror-image.<\/p>\n

Not that time-to-create is the essence of art, but I genuinely doubt that Melania’s Vision<\/em> took more than 20 minutes to produce.\u00a0 Graphic artists, as I once hoped to be, learn to do things super-quickly because they are paid so little.\u00a0 The majority of the time spent on this work no doubt took place on the upper floors of Trump Tower, discussing the best way the Trump grift family could make a buck off it.\u00a0 They could care less that Melania’s right eye was a mirror-image, down to the smallest eyelash detail, of her left eye.<\/p>\n

To them, it’s just another part of the unreality show that the Trumps star in.<\/p>\n

Half of Americans want this guy, and his family, to rule this country again.\u00a0 If only I could make an NFT of my head-slap, but it may not matter.\u00a0 Americans vote for people of their class these days:\u00a0 Trump the Grifter, along with his Fagin Family, has somehow convinced a multitude that he’s one of them.\u00a0 This doesn’t speak well of the multitude.<\/p>\n

As to the other half of America… well, there’s my market.\u00a0 If I want to make a difference, I\u00a0had better start perfecting my head-slap and hire a graphic artist who works cheap but markets well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, I posted an editorial cartoon about Melania Trump cashing in on the dubious and now quickly-fading NFT fad.\u00a0 To refresh your memory, NFTs are to actual art what cryptocurrency is to real money — a few hundred bits … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31485"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31509,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31485\/revisions\/31509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}