Not a derivative nor an expansion but a secret third thing

This is a side project that imagines the digital avatars that goools use on the gooolnet. Yes, basically your PFPs have PFPs. We must truly be in the death knell phase of the tokenized art space now. But why not keep making fun stuff as the world falls apart?

Like the other goool based collections on Ethereum (eGOOOL) and Tezos (Goools on XTZ), Very Internet Person (VIP) is a meta layer on top of/apart from the main Fantom goool collections. VIP is a goool mirror to goool gang online activity. A pastiche of all the neochibi, cat, and meme posting I see on my timeline. The name is an ironic subversion of the idea of being a VIP - usually meaning you are granted standing and exclusive access to something (as many NFT projects often promise) – here, all it really means is that you have a hash that points to a picture that says you're on the internet a lot. Seems more honest this way.

I drew this onion in gooolchat and, as Bimps pointed out, it kind of looked like a Milady and I knew what he meant. It's fascinating how internet language and meaning develops.

For VIP, I cited elements from the visual internet vocabulary – meme and rage comics expressions, anime iconography, emojis, and other common computer/internet/crypto cultural artifacts/signifiers – and randomly combined and remixed them with fashion accessories into simple 32x32 pixel icons to see what new things come out. They have transparent backgrounds so they can be pasted easily onto your own background or other things as a memeing or anonymizing/privacy tool. These are meant to be ciphers, or blank slates, to encourage user generated content with loose visual prompts rather than the top down direction by an centralized author or project. (This is what makes the original Milady project most interesting to me. With its somewhat more ambiguous and looser references and messaging and its atemporal aesthetic, it harnessed a chaotic mystery. The openness of the subtext meant anyone could make it what they wanted and you can see this through the various subgenres of posting that organically make up the whole of "miladyposting." The subsequent Remilia collections, with more direct hypercitation and satirical mode, gained wider accessibility to a more general audience but lost some of the mystique. But I digress.)

I'm using scatter.art to mint/distribute these since Scatter seems to have lately evolved into the Milady village market and a place for releasing weird art experiments – and this is just that – an experiment. They asked me if I wanted to do something on their platform a while ago, probably because they saw me posting some milady related art. Given how complicated the Ethereum scene has become with marketplace wars, botting, etc., I figured it was best to stick to a road tested and optimized contract for this simple fun mint rather than use my own hacky solidity.

There are also some interesting things on the Scatter platform that I want to utilize in this experiment. Here are the details for the distribution:

1. Free Mint. This is an allotted free mint and Scatter allows for multiple simultaneous minting lists. The Fantom goool gang (addresses with any Fantom goool pfps) will get 5 free mints per address, and Riot Goools and eGOOOLs addresses each getting an extra 5. Since I'm encroaching on Milady land to release this, Milady and Pixelady will also get 1 free per address. This means that the total number of free mints is more than 100% of the collection but I don't think everyone will claim. Some addresses are dormant, some don't want to use Ethereum/pay ETH gas, and some people won't care as NFTs may be over. The supply is 9,999 so this could be a slow/forever mint because of the way I'm doing it. I'll make and add more free lists as time goes on until they are all gone or I’ll trim the supply once it feels like everyone’s had their fill of them. Tip: this is erc721a so if you are claiming/minting multiples, you should do it in a batch transaction instead of minting one at a time and paying gas for each individual mint.

2. Affiliate link. There will be a public mint cost of 0.02eth for anyone outside the free lists who want to grab any before they all get claimed (or for anyone who wants to mint more than their free allotment and become a VIP whale for whatever reason or for anyone who just wants to give me some extra gas money for my network travels.) I'm also going to activate Scatter's affiliate link system to allow people to earn 50% of mints that go through their personal referral link and the minter gets 10% off (you can generate your own link on the minting page.) You can also trade links with a friend and give each other a discount off the public cost.

3. 0% Royalties. The royalties situation is messy on Ethereum and I don't agree with centralizing mechanisms like operator filters that limit what people can do with their digital possessions. I don't know if royalties is the end all model for artists anyways, it’s just a carryover from the old world. I think the most important thing in this nascent space is to keep experimenting with different models and methods to maybe discover something better. Also, most of my existing audience is from Fantom where we usually only pay (fractions of) cents for gas so maybe having no royalties can compensate for some of the ETH gas cost involved with these. So, if this ends up all minted for free and there are no creator royalties, doesn't that mean I could stand to make $0? Yes! But, whatever, I just want to experiment and see what happens. I'll be minting a bunch as an artist reserve/inventory that will likely be used to set up an NFTX pool so people can swap for ones they like more. If I'm in a desperate situation, I could always sell some of those if they gain value. Anyways, if the unlikely happens someday and someone manages to sell one of these on secondary for 100eth or something, I won't be upset that I didn't get a cut of the sale – I'll be happy that I helped someone log on and win forever that day.

To sum up and perhaps as a disclaimer: this is a high supply, controlled free mint with no strings (royalties, roadmap, etc.) attached. It’s an experiment and maybe a litmus test to see how much life is left in the space. This is mainly just for fun and to amuse myself and others during crypto winter. I wanted to cut loose a bit and give people some free art while I continue to work on my slower 1/1 and edition goool work. Who knows if these will ever be worth more than the gas to claim them? I hope people find creative uses for these and they can be used to inject more anarchic energy into the timeline. This project is CC0 or copyleft or whatever buzzy words you want to use for "you are free to permissionlessly enjoy this art in any way you please." Personally, I just wanted a new thing to make messy weird collages with in a way that didn't quite fit with my usual work. But I'm interested to see how and if this can grow beyond me. Have fun!

💾 Mint link 💾