NFTs: Every thought is now for sale

Anyone can mint their own “non-fungible tokens” and commodify a meme. A digital token of a famous GIF of a famous cat recently sold for $580,000. People who are particularly good at Twitter are experimenting with selling NFTs of their tweets. (I seriously contemplated buying one that reads, “I feel like NFT’s are basically those certificates that say you have a star named after you . Like ok sure babe.”) What counts as user content—and is thus for sale—can be defined more broadly still: Some of the biggest IP disputes on the social audio app Clubhouse, for example, have been over general premises for interaction. In February 2021, a group of friends who’d been gathering in an Asian-diaspora chat set up a new chat room where people pretended to moan like whales. Then a bunch of influencers heard how popular it was and made rip-offs. Around the same time, a group of white NYU students were accused of stealing the idea of a “shoot your shot” dating-show room from the many Black creators who had been hosting similar rooms for months. The students have now signed on with a major talent agency, with the goal of creating a “cross-platform franchise.” At this point, when most of our interactions happen in this handful of highly commodified spaces, who could be blamed for feeling like everything they do is—or at least feels like—commerce? “I’m actually very torn on this,” says Stacey Lantagne, a law professor at the University of Mississippi who researches copyright in the digital age. She’s seen white influencers steal ideas from people of color who never see any compensation, and she wants this to be corrected somehow. Yet it’s difficult to advocate for fairness without perpetuating the logic that all human expression can and should be for sale. “I’m really resistant to the idea that everything we do needs to be owned,” Lantagne told me.