Well, it’s a good thing he at least tried to address concerns before today.
Because today we all found out:
1. There ain’t one NFT. There’s 1,105 of them. That means that instead of his NFT using approximately 75 kWh (the same amount of energy as an average US household would use in about 2.5 days (source)), his NFTs are going to use a collective 82,875 kWh (the same amount of energy as an average US household would use in about seven and a half fucking years).
2. There’s three tiers. This doesn’t affect the environmental impact, but it does speak to the business tactics of the people behind this project. All along, it’s been touted as an animated NFT of Colin dancing to a song that was chosen by him and the TSR crew. NOT TRUE. Only five of the 1,105 NFTs being sold are of this - and those five “bad boys” are being sold to the highest bidders. The other 1,100 NFTs are not what was promised at all. This is like Apple advertising a new iPhone for weeks, then revealing on release day that only the five richest people can buy the iPhone they’ve been advertising - but everyone else can choose one of these two new iPod models, instead. It’s a bait and switch, people.
3. They’re ridiculously expensive. Not only are the five dancing Colin NFTs going to the highest bidders, but the base tier ones, the lowest priced ones that only provide virtual “perks” and the presumed glory (source needed) of owning an NFT are going to be sold for .1 ETH (Etherium) a piece. You probably don’t know off-hand how much real world money that equates to. It sounds like a low price, doesn’t it? IT’S NOT. Each of the basic first tier NFTs costs $179 US dollars. We’re not even given a price tag for the second tier NFTs… but we can safely assume they’ll be asking a good deal more for those. The third tier ones are listed as having a value of 13 ETH (equivalent to $23,202 USD), so I’m assuming that’s the starting bid.
Yes, you read that right. TSR is looking to make at least $300,000 dollars off of Colin O’Donoghue’s NFTs.
Listen, I said I would continue to support Colin himself, even though I am not supporting this project. I said I was moved by his attempt to smooth things over and address fans’ concerns. But now I see why he actually did it - because he knew damn well that if we were unhappy already, we’d be seriously disturbed once all this additional shit hit the fan. It wasn’t him listening to us or trying to make things right - it was pre-emptive damage control.
I allowed myself to fall into the seductive belief that Colin just got in a little over his head, maybe didn’t fully understand what he was signing up for, and maybe it was too late to back out now or else he would… hell, I even let myself imagine that maybe poor, innocent Colin was being taken advantage of - that his fame and fandom were being used to make money for greedy NFT bros.
But you don’t accidentally stumble into a $300,000+ profit business venture. You don’t unintentionally lend your voice and likeness to a three part video tutorial to walk your fans through the process of turning their real-world cash into virtual currency that they can fund that venture with. You don’t innocently try to do damage control two days before dropping a metric shit-ton of exactly what everyone’s afraid of onto their proverbial doorsteps.
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.
This isn’t what I signed on for.