elon musk

What the hell is an NFT anyway? Non-Fungible Tokens are basically digital assets or collectors items, sort of like a rare Pokémon card that has gained value over time due to its scarcity, except NFTs only exist digitally on 'proof of work' blockchains, like Ethereum. When one buys an NFT, they aren't buying the image itself, but rather the token that points to the image or video and says 'this is the only one that exists.' Now people can even buy individual tweets as NFTs, but the way that works is a little more complicated, and frankly, we don't really get it. All we know is, Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet ever for like, millions of dollars and 'Bad Luck Brian' sold an NFT of his school photo for 20 ETH (about $36,000 at the time). NFTs aren't only being used to sell digital art, the memes have unsurprisingly taken over and you can find everything from the 'Deal With It' sunglasses to 'Nyan Cat' selling for lots of money. All of this absurdity might seem like a harmless game to some—buying the metadata of original troll face for thousands of dollars in crypto? Sure, okay. But sadly minting NFTs on proof-of-work blockchain has disturbing environmental consequences. The average NFT that gets minted to the ETH network has the same carbon footprint as one European resident's electricity consumption for 1.5 months. So until we can figure out a more efficient way to sell digital assets, some suggest that participants in this madness will have to offset the environmental cost by doing things like reinvesting their gains into renewable energy.

We've collected some tweets that paint a picture of the current NFT frenzy—some from high-profile public figures who are participating and some reactions from people who are watching from the sidelines.

Elon Musk has really out-memed himself with his latest stunt. In a recent SEC filing, the CEO and CFO of Tesla have dubbed themselves Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin, respectively. I mean, I suppose if you're one of the richest people in the world who can come back from the dead and whose tweets have the power to sway the meme-stock market, the world must look like some sort of game to you. Unsurprisingly, Twitter has some takes after waking up to the news of Musk's latest trolly moves, and we've collected some of the most amusing latest reactions. 

Okay first of all, let's get something out of the way: no, Elon Musk is not dead. We're not quite sure who is responsible for the initial spread of the rumor that Elon Musk died yesterday from a lithium battery explosion, but a handful of fake screenshots of news articles were circulated and caused chaos and confusion on the internet. It didn't take long for things to get set straight, but the truth didn't stop the memes. In fact, the debunking of the rumor seemed to spark even more memes, perhaps because the joke isn't so morbid if Elon is actually alive. At the end of the day, Elon Musk even tweeted an eye-roll emoji to help dispel the Twitter frenzy. We've collected some of the funniest memes that came out of today's chaotic internet prank. 

It appears that memes are taking over the economy. If you've been keeping up with the GameStop saga and the rise of DOGE, by now you're probably well aware that bitcoin reached its all-time high of $48k early this morning. While bitcoin has been powering through its ascent for over a decade now and is certainly no meme stock, we can't deny that this forceful crypto rally may at least be loosely connected to the recent Reddit short squeeze meme schemes. Elon Musk has not-so-subtly been hyping both dogecoin and bitcoin for months—mysteriously putting 'bitcoin' into his Twitter bio, retweeting ridiculous pro-dogecoin memes, claiming that dogecoin is 'the people's crypto'—even Snoop Dogg (aka Snoop Doge) got in on the hype. But it all came to a head when Tesla announced its purchase of $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin on Monday. It didn't take long for the price of bitcoin to skyrocket to the moon. 

But how much further can bitcoin go? As more and more institutions adopt bitcoin as a legitimate form of currency, the plebs are wanting in, but many are wondering if they're too late. In retrospect, one could say there was never a bad time to buy bitcoin. Remember when one coin cost $9k a year ago? To be honest, I personally thought I was too late then. Now look at me. But obviously hindsight is clear as day, and the future of bitcoin is still foggy for those of us who need blockchain technology to be fully demystified before we can 'YOLO' our life-savings into cryptocurrency. If there's one thing we do know for sure, it's that the inherently viral nature of memes has shown to be a useful tool in pumping crypto. Just as r/WallStreetBets rallied to pump the GME short squeeze, subreddits like r/SatoshiStreetBets have been hyping altcoins like DOGE in order to raise the price floor. Some brush off dogecoin as a bubble or pyramid scheme that only functions as a pump and dump rather than a viable currency, but skeptics said the same thing about bitcoin in 2009, so who knows?

We can't say what the future holds for bitcoin, but we can offer what we know best—memes. We've got some amusing bitcoin memes and tweets both old and fresh for anyone who's either curious about crpyto for the first time or obsessive about checking those candlesticks every two minutes. 

Happy Monday, y'all. We know a lot of you are supposed to be working, but there's something to be said for rewarding yourself for simply making things work. Before you surrender yourself to responsibility, it can be good to carve out a little time to just enjoy life. For some people that might mean a morning yoga practice or an extra large latte. For us? It's all about enjoying memes.

Sure, Twitter has its drawback. Painfully bad takes, constant political debates, and weird K-Pop in-jokes seem to inundate our feeds. It can be hard to sift through the madness and enjoy the humorous commentary and comedy writing that we actually want to see. In the spirit of making everyone's lives easier, we've taken the funny stuff (both old and new) and put it all in one convenient place. So you don't have to see some all caps tweet about how masks don't work or another opinion about the storming of the Capitol.

If you thought the internet was done talking about Karens or Elon Musk, you were dead wrong. And Twitter offered us an unholy amalgam of the two this weekend. The SpaceX founder tweeted on Friday that "something extremely bogus is going on," regarding Covid-19 tests. 

Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020

The tweet, unsurprisingly, was not well received. While many people resolved to call Elon Musk a "pos" and decry his penchant for fueling conspiracy theories, doctors and academics instead called him out in the best way they know how: with facts and statistics. While we admire every own, it was Dr. Emma Bell of Toronto, Ontario that delivered the harshest blow. In their takedown tweet, they refer to Elon Musk as "Space Karen." The nickname was received far better than Musk's cringey tweet. We've put together some of the best reactions to Musk's tweet and subsequent Karen-dom, but we're willing to bet you'll find more goodies on Twitter.  

Reddit's got a lot of things going for it. At its best, it's a place for people to share their interests and support one another. At its worst? A hellhole of bad political takes, creepy anime obsession, and cringey idiocy. Twitter's @AwfulReddit painstakingly collects these yucky moments and presents them in a way that masochistic lovers of schadenfreude can easily enjoy. We've put some of their latest and greatest "yikes" offerings for quick enjoyment - but be sure to follow if you dig the pain. As long as Reddit exists, we're sure they'll be churning out the funny. 

Grimes has officially joined Kim Kardashian in begging their posting partners to step away from the keyboard. On Friday, Elon Musk tweeted a what sounded like a very J.K. Rowling transphobic message of "Pronouns suck." His partner, the Canadian pop star Grimes, promptly responded "I love you but please turn off ur phone or give me a dall [sic], I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn't your heart."

She quickly deleted the tweet, but speedy Twitter users screenshot the tweet and it spread like wildfire. Women like Grimes and Kim Kardashian having to rein in their thoughtless and post-happy partners is something the internet appears to eat up with relish. But Grimes wasn't the only person to call Elon out for his offensive take. Many users replied attempting to mock or chastise the billionaire - including Chasten Buttigieg. The tweet is still up, so we're willing to bet the messages have fallen on deaf ears. And based on the couple's antics (naming their child X Æ A-12, for one) we're gonna go ahead and assume there will be more weirdness and drama to come. Which is cool, cuz it's nice to read about something other than mass unemployment and pandemic deaths.

When we reported on Grimes & Elon Musk naming their son X Æ A-12 yesterday, we were hoping it was a joke. But alas, Grimes confirmed the unique choice in an explanatory tweet last night. The name, which at least seems to have some personal meaning to the parents, has been the butt of many memes and jokes since Elon tweeted it yesterday. And with the confirmation, we don't expect them to stop. Here are the reactions, plus some of our favorite X Æ A-12-related zingers. We hope this child has a lot of emotional strength. They're gonna need it on the playground.