Are NFTs really art?

theguardian.com:

In January, a clip from The Tonight Show featuring Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton went viral: not because either had said anything particularly interesting or scandalous, but because the interview was so uncanny in its content and its style. In the video, Hilton, who looks like a telegenic, radioactive Barbie in a lime green cocktail dress, is discussing Bored Ape NFTs, the popular crypto images that have been selling for a minimum of $200,000 since their first release in April 2021.

“I’m so happy I taught you what they were,” she informs Fallon in a voice a little lower than her usual characteristic purr.

“You taught me what’s up,” he agrees, “and then I bought an ape.”

Their back-and-forth, in spite of both these people having worked in entertainment for at least two decades, has all the breezy naturalism of a conversation between chatbots, as if somebody had made a Paris-Hilton-Jimmy-Fallon deepfake carefully designed to fail the Turing test.

Hilton, as it happens, is not the only quintessentially 00s cultural icon to have embraced NFTs (non-fungible tokens; a one-off digital artwork), even if she might be the only one who describes them as having “literally taken over my entire mind and soul”. Lindsay Lohan, who once helped advise the readers of Interview magazine on how to get “filthy rich on NFTs”, has worked with a collective called Canine Cartel to release a much-mocked “fursona” NFT that depicted her as a sultry cartoon wolf. Gwyneth Paltrow revealed last month that she had acquired a Bored Ape NFT, its blond hair and Breton shirt selected to reflect her subtle taste. Eminem – never one to miss an opportunity for wordplay – bought a so-called “EminApe”.

There is something oddly perfect about the marriage between NFTs