Popular YouTuber Philion published an investigation in which he accused the BAYC creators of using racist symbolism and white-supremacist messaging.
Known as Philion, Filip Rusnak says the video was the culmination of the investigation, including input from experts in art and internet culture. He says he devoted hundreds of hours to it.
The spark for the inquiry was a note by digital artist Ryder Ripps, who drew similar parallels in January 2022. For this, the latterplaced materials on a specially purchased domain, echoing the pseudonym of Yuga Labs’ co-founder.
According to Philion, BAYC is “one mass alt-right internal joke” that uses language, symbols and memes from the anonymous imageboard site 4chan.
“BAYC is a big puzzle … with a hidden meaning, … “the biggest troll” … “a cute little social experiment” — added the researcher.
According to him, NFT images of BAYC contain racist caricatures of Black people and Asians, and the symbols and language used “resemble what the Nazis used.” In particular, adherents of this theory see a similarity between the BAYC logo and the “Totenkopf”, the blogger asserts.
He noted that in both cases the imagery shows 18 teeth [a number associated with Adolf Hitler]. The researcher also drew parallels with the death date of the founder of Nazism and the BAYC’s — запуск метавселенной Otherside — both events, as well as the launch of the Otherside metaverse, occurred on April 30.
The blogger uncovered BAYC references to the phrase on the gates at Buchenwald, “codes and ciphers” of modern far-rights, and the alleged not-coincidence of the founders’ chosen pseudonyms.
Philion urged viewers to pressure BAYC owners to burn their tokens.
“I want every famous actor, athlete and influencer to burn their damn monkey” — said the video author.
In January, after Ryder Ripps’s accusations, the Yuga Labs team explained that the ape image is used by many as themselves and by those who invest substantial sums in crypto projects without DYOR. The skull in the image has come to symbolize the boredom they feel “to death.”
It’s a ‘Yacht Club’ that’s actually falling apart and smack dab in the heart of the Everglades. As such, it needed an appropriately grimey, intriguing logo. We went with an ape skull to help convey just how bored these apes are — they’re ‘bored to death’.
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) January 3, 2022
A month later, extremism expert Mark Pitkavedzh said that there is no connection between BAYC’s logo and the “Totenkopf,” because “all skulls are similar to one another to some extent.”
The specialist agreed that the use of a gold chain and the sushi-chef’s headband are features associated with African Americans and Japanese, respectively.
As reported, machine-learning expert Yannic Kilcher created an application that generates BAYC-style images.
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