I believe it was Gandhi who once said, “Pretending to quote me is a great way of getting people to read nonsense.” Got you !

Aight this won’t be too long. This is a meme project, make no mistake.

Cliche time; Merriam Webster defines ‘meme’ as: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.

That more or less covers it. The internet changed the world. Perhaps the biggest change is that it brought the world a lot closer. It is believed we produce 2.5 QUINTILLION bytes of data per day. That’s like downloading the complete works of Mozart approximately 1/7th the number of times as there are grains of sand on earth. Confusing, right? 4 years in America will have you using anything but the metric system. Accurate? Who’s gonna count and confirm?

Anyway, a lot of this data is being transmitted almost instantaneously over the internet. To put this in perspective, you could send the complete works of Shakespeare to someone as many as 1.75 million times as there are planets in the universe in the time it would take you to send the same to someone without using the internet in any way ONCE. Amazing, innit?

Okay enough jibber jabber. I’ve made my point. A result of this amazing speed of information sharing is being able to discuss stuff in live time. Now when rich Americans decide to buy a popular company with a bird logo, you don’t have to wait till they’ve already started pretending to do ‘due diligence’ in order to drive down the price,Nope…you’ll start seeing jokes about it on that surveillance device you keep within range at all times.

We know you get your news from meme pages, don’t worry…us too.

Memes have become a crucial part of human society. In fact, I would go as far as to say they are the single most important cultural creation of the 21st century. Memes are borderless, from the 'dee O double G' all the way to a random kid in Southeast Asia who decided to take pictures of himself every day. Memes encompass the entirety of the trippy ass spectrum that is human emotion and deliver it to us in a slightly easier to digest way.

As Alfred Hitchcock said, “Exposition is a pill that has to be sugar-coated. In other words, you are giving them information, but at the time it must seem like something else. ” (here’s a great video on exposition for any film nerds reading this).

The point is - memes are useful, important, and fun (Oxford comma much?). Memes are here to stay.

The phenomenon that is the Internet is also what enables the creation of your favorite buzzwords: Metaverse & Cryptocurrency. We are far closer to plugging into the soulless utopia of bright colors and algorithmically generated emotions than you think. Ready? Player One.

The very ideas of ownership are changing. For the first time, we are exploring the digital realm, being able to do our favorite thing: own stuff. Enter NFTs. The latest descendant in a long line of honeypots originating all the way back to the great Tulip of mid-17th century Netherlands.

The NFT is possible because of a little something called the Blockchain. You probably know what that is by now. If not, read more man…seriously pick up a phone some time.

Anyway, it is largely agreed that the two major value propositions of the blockchain are decentralization and security. But I believe there are two equally, if not more, important adds are incentivisation and community.

Anyone in the NFT space already knows about the power of community, a bunch of people doing word of mouth marketing for you with vested interest? Hell yeah. And as for incentivization, we’re only beginning to explore that plethora of possibilities. We can create models that allow rewarding people for anything. And I mean…anything(SEXN - a first of it’s kind sex-to-earn protocol). Yeah…everything is going to zero.

(All these things combined are what we call Web3.)

BUUUUUT, in case it’s not, we think the meme itself should find a way into this “Web3” too. In a manner that’s keeping up with the times. And that is what NotLuna is all about.

Now that you know the “Why?”, let’s talk about the “What?”.

NotLuna is a collection of 10,000 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. NotLuna is NOT, in any way, a reference to one of the best memes in history. It does NOT take inspiration from perhaps what is one of the greatest stories of human hubris.

But you know what they say: comedy is tragedy plus time…and we’re laughing about it already.

No, NotLuna is about a person, just like all of us.

Meet Do Gen:

Just like all of us, he’s trying to make it in Web3 too. And just like all of us, he goes through many emotions.

Do was born in NotSeoul in a time well before Web3. But technology always spoke to him. In fact, he even studied at the prestigious NotStanford community and then went on to work for behemoths like NotApple and NotMicrosoft. But it was in the blockchain that he found his calling.

Now he spends his days trying to find the next big thing and when he has time from that, he tries to create something of his own. Oh and he loves to water his plants, whatever that’s about.

Join Do on this emotional roller coaster that is the decentralized internet.

GMI or NGMI? Only one way to find out. (mint it)

FAQs

• Wen mint?

Not sure yet, but super soon.

• Free, right?

Yeah yeah. Y’all been conned one too many times for us to be able to charge you for this. But we’re keeping 1000 and we don’t need to explain why.

• Roadmap?

Yeah, as if you read roadmaps…you’re in it for the vibes and so are we.

• Really, nothing planned?

Not per se, but some people believe that when Do Gen was born, a mystic made a prophecy that if Do Gen’s collection reached a 1E floor, he would find his wife Di Gen and together they would create an army of De Gens. So we’ll see.

• Who are you?

Ah yes, the team. Another metric you pretend to look at before “aping in”.

The writer of this paper is @cryptanosaurus. I have been degening on the blockchain for about 6 years now and am now building something pretty cool (shameless plugin). Check it out here: https://novadao.xyz/#/

Oh and the mint link will be released in Nova’s discord so you probably want to hop in there.

And the Co-Founder, Archie, is an artist and architect. He has been in charge of bringing these traits to life.

The funny thing is, Archie and I have never met in real life. We met each other through the mutual ownership of the Pixel Vault Founder’s DAO. Maybe NFTs do have some promise after all. They bring people together .

You can suss us out on Twitter, we’re legit (like legit enough for you to take a free NFT from us).

• Hey these faces look familiar…what’s that about?

If these expressions ring a bell, you’re old enough to stop wasting time on random mints and get a real job. Ur old and ur poor and ur still wasting time on memes. But yeah, we felt a great way to begin the Web3 meme journey is with an ode to the first memes. Sit and think of new stuff and not just remake old shit combined with a topical element? Bitch Please!!

See you soon, my fellow De Gens Do Gens!!