You might not know Zoë Roth’s name, but you’ve probably seen her face. Ms. Roth, who was immortalized in the “Disaster Girl” meme when she was 4 years old, recently sold the image as an NFT for nearly half a million dollars. https://t.co/ePjCYGVmGy
— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) April 29, 2021
The New York Times article featured above details how the girl who was dubbed ‘Disaster Girl’ and made into one of the most popular memes to ever exist, has now made $500,000 off of her meme induced stardom via a recent trend in the world of digital art: NFT.
NFT (non-fungible tokens) allow digital creators to sell their work online with ease. NFT’s are assets that can be traded using the same tech as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and have caught fire in the art world much the same as the house in the background of the Disaster Girl meme.
Sotheby’s sold an NFT collection (The Fungible Collection) for $17M recently, and some are now pointing to how, absurdly, “the frenzy around NFT art is now entering the physical realm” as physical spaces are being bought and prepared for the display of digital pieces of art.
While NFT’s are arguably the hottest topic in art right now, some say they are a “bubble poised to pop“, while others say they are here indefinitely.
Presuming this form of digital art purchase persists, in the context of the Disaster Girl meme selling for half a million, we might ask ourselves, what meme is next? And what’ll the payday be?
Might the Star Wars Kid, who once stood on the other side of a lawsuit with his parents attempting to quell the memes rising popularity, sell his video for a sizable bag of virtual coin? Maybe what is currently a stock photo clunkily named “Disloyal man walking with his girlfriend and looking amazed at another seductive girl” and shot by Antonio Guillem will be reclaimed by the photographer and sold for NFT?
