Yeah I'm talking about NFTs and crypto again. What of it? It annoys me. Although it is partially on me, since most of research now a days is crypto related so are a lot of my advertisements and suggested content. Anyway, onto the title of this blog. I suppose that, like a lot of these NFT "projects" we should go back to the beginning. This one is a doozy.
Stoner Cats is an animated series revolving around six cats and their owner. Oh, and the cats are high on marijuana. That's it, that is the show. The project is consisted of multiple episodes (three as of the time I am writing) and claims it will go on for multiple seasons. On the Stoner Cats website, they say that the project was conceived sometime before 2020 and was later picked up by Orchard Farm Productions. The actual production of each episode is being done by Ghostbot Studios. They are a San Francisco based animation house that has worked on high profile projects in the past such as "Lost Treasure Hunt" with PBS and "N.E.R.D" with Pharrell Williams. They are now the animators and editors of this little project however.
That's a bit of an overview, so let me get a bit more specific. First off, this is an NFT project believe it or not. And, to be quite frank, it's not one of the worst ideas. What the project did was mint a whole bunch of Stoner Cat NFTs that can be bought and sold on the open market. Owning one of those tokens in your wallet enables you access to not only the show, but also gives you the ability to be a part of the creative future of the show. Kind of. See they are very vague about what it means to have a hand in the creating of the show. As far as I can tell, they aren't going to let fans write the actual script or dictate any future casting. In fact the most I could find was some slivers on their public discord that hint at Zoom meetings for NFT holders to discuss possible backdrops or locations for future episodes. In my own opinion though, that does not sound horrible. Through this system, NFT owners are getting something of value, especially if they enjoy this show. And a lot of people are going to be excited to dictate a show's future, even if it is only what the animated backdrop will be. So all in all, props to them for at least putting the unique concept of NFTs on the blockchain to use.
But are you ready, because here is where the story takes some twists and turns. Because I bet you were wondering why I was praising an NFT project all of a sudden; because just like many things in life, this is great in theory.
Let's start with the prices to these NFTs. With them you get access to one show and some exclusive perks, but don't forget that each episode is only 5-7 minutes long and the animation isn't winning any Emmys anytime soon. So if a Netflix subscription is $15 a month which grants you access to a plethora of movies, TV Shows, cartoons, original content, and you can share it across people, that should be roughly equal to this right? Alright maybe because Netflix is a monthly fee and this is a one time fee, let's up the price from $15 to $180 (the yearly price for Netflix) That is more than a fair price for the content you are getting. Even Patreon subscriptions to content creators are cheaper, while granting you exclusive episodes and perks monthly. No matter what you were thinking, you were wrong. As of writing this, the cheapest you can buy a Stoner Cat NFT is for $978 (0.2205 ETH). Nearly one thousand USD just to see some poorly drawn cats get high for seven minutes. The highest last sale was for around $250,000 (55 ETH). That is the extent of this project, which has minted over 10 thousand of these NFTs. And to make matters worse, not all of them are even good investments money-wise. For example, even the cheapest NFT is currently being sold for less than its original price of .028 ETH. So here you have a project that is way over priced, not well valued, and all for seven minutes of stoned cats. And I still have issues to talk about.
The price by itself isn't really a big deal to me. People are free to spend their money as they wish, and if they truly feel this independent project is worth it to them, then so be it! Be happy! Except this project isn't even that indie. The creators are independent creators who came up with the idea and the pilot episode, sure. But they were then picked up by Mila Kunis and Orchard Farm Productions. And suddenly, this project had a team with experience on projects such as Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse and Toy Story 2. But you couldn't tell by the animation of this show, and here's a trailer to show you what I mean. And here is my second least favorite part of this project; all of the names attached to it. We have Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Macfarlane, Chris Rock, Jane Fonda, and the co-founder of Ethereum himself Vitalik Buterin. You read that correctly, these acclaimed actors and comedians all voice one or more characters in this not so acclaimed show (and I'm sure the short episode times is in no small part directly related to their paycheck). Now look, in theory this should only add to the credibility of the show and elevate its public standing. We have on our hands a show that is being produced by a production company (albeit one with no real reputation), animated by a studio that has worked with some big names in the past (Disney, PBS, Drake), and voiced by some of the funniest and most well-known actors in Hollywood. On paper this should be great, a really fun and exciting time that proves enjoyable for viewers. And yet it instead really feels like more of a cash grab by those involved. If you go to the IMDB reviews (as well as the discord server for Stoner Cats which is populated by the NFT owners) you will see that the show is praised because these actors and animators have brought a whimsical and heartfelt show directly to the audience and cut out the pesky middlemen and studios from the process. And I don't doubt the voice acting and even writing is great! Seth MacFarlane's career is built on voice acting, and Chris Rock and Jane Fonda are always great no matter what they're in. But I doubt very much that this project is their way of delivering a passion project directly to the people, and there are two reasons for my claim. Firstly, YouTube exists. It is really just that simple. When fans of NFT projects like this talk about a decentralized platform to create content without the aid of a studio or streaming service that is YouTube. That is a service on which it is both free to upload and accessible to watch. There is no middle man in the way of the content creators and consumers, the platform allows for any project to be delivered directly for the people. So if this really was some passion project, they could have made it available to all through YouTube, leading directly to my second point; this is not a decentralized project for the people at all. All Stoner Cats has done is make an ultra exclusive club that ensures only a select few of the general public have access to the show. And forgive me if I am wrong, but that is not delivering anything "to the people". That is actively restraining them from the content being made. To the view the content it is technically true that there is no studio or middle man, in that you are not paying a 3rd party like a cable company or a streaming service. But you are instead being forced to purchase a ticket at a very high price in return for very little content. And on top of that, there is no real guarantee that these "tickets" are going to those that actually wish to consume the content. When Stoner Cat NFTs were first minted, many "whales" as they are called but up numerous tokens with the sole purpose to resell. So how is this project going directly to the people? The only ones who can afford to watch are those with high levels of disposable income and even then, there is no guarantee that those buying the tokens aren't just holding them with the goal to resell rather than watch. And the team behind Stoner Cats has to know this, as do the actors involved. There are no strides being made here, this is not somehow intrinsically better than Netflix or Hulu subscriptions. If anything it's worse because it is more expensive, more exclusive, and with far less content and quality.
But if I was to tell you the truth, if I was to be truly honest with you, none of those are the real reason I deemed this topic worthy of our collective time. Cash grabs and idiotic NFT projects are a dime a dozen in this world and Hollywood is no stranger to these types of deals. And because I am also but human I have no real right to pass any judgement on the stars or animators of this show because while the concept is quite aggravating overall, technically no one is getting hurt. But my gosh are the people behind this stunt annoying! Just a quick glance at the website for Stoner Cats results in an assault on the human mind in the form of worn out, out of touch weed jokes. The tokens are referred to as "TOKEns", there are weak jokes centered around the use of the words joint and blunt, and the never ending claims of how revolutionary this project is. The weed jokes themselves are what really got me going, they are just so poor. And I don't mean poor taste, plenty of exceptional comedy can revolve around marijuana use (Seth Rogen's whole career, the Harold and Kumar movies, etc.) but these jokes just have zero though behind them. They're scattered across the site as if to say "We're hip and cool, we're with the times you can trust us". To use a word I never thought I would type in a work that is going to be on LinkedIn, the jokes are just cringe. They scream desperation, as if they know the content isn't actually worth it but maybe these globs of weak weed references will be enough to sway consumers.
Finally, as far as those grandiose claims go, they truly are just very annoying. They mention on the site that this project can be a way for fans to work with their biggest stars, which as we established doesn't seem to really be true. The site also mentions how the project can allow independent creators to fund their own passion projects, although the how is very fuzzy. I can only assume that they mean by reselling the NFTs linked to this content which is strange because it implies that either this entire project is just about the buying and selling of NFTs or that if an artist has the minimum hundreds of dollars required to buy an NFT they should buy this one rather than just go ahead and fund their project. Strange. In my opinion, this project shouldn't exist in this format. What I think happened is that the creators of this show were unable to get funding in the traditional way for this concept and were therefore restricted in their means of production and distribution. Then someone got the notion of making it a crowd funded project, which would have been absolutely fine until someone came in and planted the idea of making it a NFT project. This simply should have been avoided and instead of trying to get some big names as voice actors, they found some more up and coming alternatives.
All in all, this is of course nothing more than my opinion. I am no expert in either NFTs or media and therefore none of this should be treated as the works of one. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts either in the comments or by messaging me directly.
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