During the 2021 NFT boom, NFT-facts said: “I would love even if it were zero” as an ironic countercultural statement that meaning and membership imported more than profits.
It became a kind of Punk Rock spirit on web3. Burning money (figuratively or literally) was flexible to indicate that the individual belonging to a group that positioned itself as the moral antithesis of speculative frenzy that defined time.
Like the first cypherpunks that fought for freedom and autonomy, or the Bitcoin Maxis that were carried out through multiple accidents, the NFT of the next generation threw amounts of eyewitnesses of magical internet funds in the JPEG of another type, clicking with the right button on the right click on the click with the right button.
But even the most ardent believers in Blockchain’s promise are not immune to doubt when a long and cold cryptographic winter drains capital and conviction. And the NFT bear has been brown.
Despite a flutter from the activity in recent weeks, someone collected 45 cryptopunks for almost $ 8 million, someone else took a rock rock for more than $ 300k, the floor of the duplicate penguins of the duplicate penguins, the birds of the triplicate moon, for the most part, the NFT market is bad. At $ 156 million for July 2025, we are not close to the maximum crazy people of August 2021 when OpenSea reported more than $ 3 billion in NFT negotiation volume. For NFT art specifically, negotiation has dropped 93% since its 2021 peak.
So, assuming that his beloved NFT is approaching his rock bottom, it’s time to register and see: Do you really love it?
Then, because You still love it?
And you can’t say: Oh, I love artOtherwise, a jpeg captured screen would be enough.
Because keep loving these things in your rock bottom, first of all, you should be content with the value you paid in relation to the value you still get.
Secondly, there must be a reason for a NFT. If it were just a beautiful image that can be saved, copy or share without consequences, it makes no sense to be an NFT and no sacrifice when you see it go to zero.
As everyone’s favorite media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, he would argue: the medium is the message. You do not love the image for its content. You love more because as NFT, the image is something else. The NFT reprogram its role from the mere spectator of the image to the participant in a medium that tracks property, identity, value and state.
McLuhan believed that each medium is an extension of ourselves. A book extends the eye. A phone extends the voice. Similarly with an NFT, we are in relation to an object in a way that we could not have been if it was just a JPEG.
Bert is evil
With this in mind, allow me to present a case study for my beloved NFT: Bert is Evil. In November 2022, I bought an NFT that probably worth it today. Called Bert is evil, this was one of the first viral memes on the Internet (around 1997), coined as NFT by its original creator 25 years later.
Despite its rich story as an early online joke, it failed horribly as a NFT collection. Which is a great part of why I love it. For me, the NFT is an invaluable artifact that you could marvel at a museum.
It is a historical residue; An immutable memory of a failed cross between two times of the web. He revealed the translation limits between networks, times and cultural grammars and how the meaning and value on web3 are not guaranteed by the act of coining.
The meme og
Before Pepe The Frog and Trolface, Wojak, Lol Guy and Gigacad, there were: Bert is evil. He preferred perhaps only by Mr. T ate my balls and the baby dancing, the early internet meme exposed the sordid secret life of half of the Sesame Street, Bert and Ernie duo.
Photoshop In a series of simulated photographs, the MUPPET was photographed along with the most infamous in history, from Jeffrey Dahmer and Lee Harvey Oswald to Hitler and Ku Klux Klan. There was “evidence” by Bert smoking marijuana, caressing the crotch of a young Michael Jackson and forcing Ernie to get a Pore dance.
Another “photo” referred to an alleged scene eliminated from the filtered sexual tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, where the newlyweds had involved in “a torrid orgy” with Bert.
Between 1997 while he was still a student of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, the website was just one thing that Dino Ignacio made to make his friends laugh. Armed with a modem of 14.4 handbauds and a collection of magazines covered by Omni Heavy Metal to Mad Magazine, Ignacio was a disciple of Mashup’s culture in the Internet dawn.
Bert quickly went viral, traveling through the nascent forums on the Internet, email chains and blogs. At that time, the website was participatory and anarchic. The remix was unbridled and blurred authorship, privileged circulation on origin. Anyone could edit Bert; No one possessed it. He muttered incessantly at the hands of Photoshop Pirates long before terms such as “false news” would enter our lexicon.
When Bert won a Webby, his popularity exploded. The website became so popular that Ignacio could no longer afford to execute it on its own. Instead of turning it off, he offered it and offered it to others to reflect in exchange for organizing the original site. After decentralization, hundreds of mirrors appeared throughout the world, increasing Bert’s scope and notoriety.
Then, in 2001, an altered image of Bert and Osama Bin Laden appeared in the signs of the protester in a pro-workshop. Ignacio felt that he had gone too far. He closed the website for concern.
But the meme had a life of its own. Lived.
The NFT
A quarter of a century later, Ignacio had the idea of immortalizing Bert is evil as an object of historical and possible registration. Coining the meme as an NFT consciously resurrected an icon of a previous technological breakup. The gesture was not destined to be commercial but cultural: an act of continuity of the media.
Initially, my affection for the NFT was based on the Nerdy McLuhianism. But, as Bert could not attract fans, my relationship with the NFT deepened.
He had learned it by reading the bachelorette of the Philippines Vogue (September 2022), where Ignacio had been profiled by the brilliant in recognition of its impact on the technology industry. While Vogue is not the obvious place to obtain his NFT alpha, he was intrigued, thinking that this NFT not sold and unknown could have been overlooked and underestimated.
In history, the journalist investigated Ignacio about why he thought his NFT project was a failure. “Maybe I don’t understand NFTS,” he said.
If I were a better investor, I would have recognized this as the red flag that was and continued to go through my magazine. Instead, I jumped to the base and bought the first of four in the collection. In a matter of hours, a common friend had seen the transaction in the chain and connected Ignacio and I on Facebook DM.
Ignacio was surprised that one of his NFT had finally sold, almost a year after the mint. His friend told him that I was someone In Crypto, so he accepted a phone call and then, I heard the background history. Ignacio said he felt as an imposter on web3, false, foreigner. While trusting its existing web2 spheres that orbit the design of games, software development, virtual reality, avatars and more, did not feel the same credibility on web3 and blamed itself for not doing enough to advertise the mint.
Some of his friends offered advice on how to develop exaggerations, such as immersing themselves in discords, zero on Twitter and making some spaces. But Ignacio spent only a couple of weeks before surrendering.
Admission requirements
While cryptography is technically without permission, culture is less. As much as the web community loves to hit the incorporation of the next billion, and insists on the brand itself as inclusive and empowering, for the most part, it is a clique with its own meeting places, rituals, languages and admission requirements.
In the case of Ignacio, his Pedigrí Web2, after having had senior roles in Electronic Arts, Oculus, Facebook and Roblox, earned him few reputation points on Web3; Slipping in discord to collect those roles evokes that Steve BusciMi “How do you go, colleagues?” Meme
The Bert NFT failed because Ignacio brought a web artifact to a web3 context using web2 assumptions about reputation, attention and state. Ignacio was properly respected in the first Internet circles. But he did not strive to establish a presence in the web3 spaces.
Web3 is tribal and very close to a shit detector adjusted to strangers who have not done time. Web3 does not care who it was in other internet versions. Web3 gives Zero fu*ks what he listed in his LinkedIn. You cannot appear and wait for your legacy to accommodate. Web3 wants to know which NFT you are collecting, what the fuck destroyed you, what damage you have contributed.
The wallets tell stories. And without a real and verifiable participation with Crypto, the network sees you as only reading, not writing. I mean, Ignacio admitted that he couldn’t even go into Twitter crypto. I guess it was quickly labeled with an extractor instead of added value. That is, perhaps, the fastest way to kill a NFT project before it lashes.
For that reason, I wonder if Ignacio really dodged a bullet. He never had to have that conversation with his clients about why those Bert Nfts went to hell instead of the moon.
In a final, tragic turn, OH-so-Christ in history, Ignacio was cheated when he clicks on a malicious link sent by email; A false consultation that seeks to buy one of the other Bert NFTS.
Ignacio made me help and after investigating her briefly, all I could say was that the 1 eth that I paid for Bert #1 had gone forever. This was particularly painful since Ignacio had promised to donate 50% of the profits from the Seattle subsidiary of the public broadcasting service. The only reason he had no longer made the donation was because he had told him (in 2022) that it was better to wait until the entire collection was sold, and at that time, the value of his ETH treasure would surely increase. In retrospect, that was the worst advice in history.
He is not still dead
And so, I thought, that was the end of the story. Bert had a rich but poor meaning in the offers, he had no longer sold, he was never going to sell. I wrapped my faithful tribute to this market resistant NFT, I sent the article to my editor and shot Ignacio to let him know that something was coming out.
“Were you the one who bought the second?” Ignacio responded, with a link to a hash Tx of a couple of days ago.
Umm, what? No! I did not buy Bert #2. So who did?
When looking for the direction of the wallet, I discovered that it belonged to the Office of Internet Culture (BIC) –Historical Treasury of Immutable Meme of CryptoAs described in its X profile. When navigating its collection valued in more than 900 ETH, I saw that they held iconic Internet memes such as NFT, including I like it, Baton Roue, Vibing Cat, Night Club Girl and Kevin, and had paid up to 11.11 Eth by Bailing Baby and 36 ETH per keyboard cat.
I couldn’t believe it. These boys obtained it; This was the museum in which Bert always belonged.
I was wondering: if Ignacio had known that there was a collective in the chain that actually ‘obtained’ Bert, and that recognized Ignacio as a visionary whose legacy online deserved a place in a lounge of fame based in blockchain … So, perhaps, wouldn’t he have felt only on web3?
And then I wondered: what would happen if I was right in my original thinking that Bert was undervalued in 1 eth? All that was needed was that this external body agreed that it was worth buying the NFT and suddenly it was. The belief in the value must be validated: through the action of the price, the cultural narrative, the support of influence and the community exaggeration. And when that happens, the thing becomes valuable.
But well, maybe I loved it even more when I was at zero.
