The Best NFT Gags and References From the Viral ‘Simpsons’ Episode

On Sunday, the long-running animated collection “The Simpsons,” recognized for skewering many points of American life, lastly put the beleaguered NFT market in its crosshairs. 

Throughout one phase of the present’s thirty fourth annual Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” anthology collection, Homer unintentionally mints Bart onto “the blockchain” as an NFT, triggering a daring rescue mission that includes a number of eerily recognizable designs and characters from the NFT ecosystem.

Listed below are just a few key highlights from the episode, which pokes enjoyable at NFT hype whereas referencing the Bored Ape Yacht Membership, Doodles, Beeple, Dmitri Cherniak’s “Ringers,” and many in between. 

Homer’s Ideas on the Worth of NFTs

As soon as Homer realizes he’s destroyed the bodily physique of his son by turning him into an NFT, he’s devastated—till he realizes that NFT, the first-ever created from an actual human, is value $1.5 million.

After that, Homer, excessive on revenue, tries to persuade his spouse Marge that the transfer was for the most effective. 

“Honey, keep in mind how we have been all the time saying we wished Bart was much less fungible?” he asks her.

Marge doesn’t take kindly to the event although, panicking when she sees Bart on Homer’s cellphone display screen.

“Aaahhh! My child is an app!” Marge exclaims. 

Homer shortly corrects her: “Uh, no, apps truly do stuff. He’s an NFT.”

Marge Meets the Decrease Courses of the NFT-Verse

Intent on saving her son, Marge quickly mints herself as an NFT. She shortly discovers that “the blockchain,” as she calls it, is ordered in a strict hierarchy, from the most-hyped and useful tokens, to the forgotten and now-worthless.

In the back of the literal prepare that embodies this hierarchy, she encounters a number of NFTs harking back to CryptoPunks, Doodles, Axie Infinity, and NBA High Shot moments—every which, over the past yr and a half, has encountered substantial hurdles or depreciations in worth. 

The Engine of the NFT Ecosystem: FOMO

We quickly study that the prepare Marge is touring on, which carries all NFTs, is powered by the uncooked energy of FOMO—a propulsive, hyperactive power supply that (because the present in the end reveals) can collapse in on itself at any second. 

A meter exhibits the prepare chugging alongside at a wholesome stage of FOMO: “Uber driver says ‘go for it.’”

The True Supply of NFT Worth: Conquering the Market

Within the subsequent carriage of the prepare, which is supposedly for slighter extra useful NFTs, Marge encounters a gathering of “Cuddle Kittens”—apparent stand-ins for the CryptoKitties NFT assortment. CryptoKitties, a few of which offered for lots of of hundreds of {dollars} every in 2021, at the moment are promoting for a median worth of $19, in response to NFT Stats. 

Marge learns from these cats that with the intention to enhance her personal worth as an NFT, she should kill as many different NFTs as potential. As one Cuddle Kitten places it: “What you name senseless slaughter, crypto bros name ‘disruption.’”

Digital Artwork: The Higher Crust of the NFT Hype Cycle

When Marge lastly will get to the entrance of the NFT prepare, she finds herself in a chic corridor populated by digital artworks value tens of millions of {dollars}. The items she encounters are clear stand-ins for actual on-chain artwork items, together with “Everydays: The First 500 Days” and “Human One” by Beeple, “A Coin For the Ferryman” by XCOPY, and Dmitri Cherniak’s generative “Ringers” collection. 

There she additionally finds Bart, who’s receiving a therapeutic massage from a “Jaded Ape”—an unmistakable reference to the Bored Ape Yacht Membership, which apparently nonetheless counts among the many prime remaining NFT collections of worth, within the opinion of “The Simpsons’” writing group.  

A number of the artists referenced within the scene took to Twitter to rejoice within the references, which they apparently discovered to be complimentary. 

And One Final Nice Line From Homer

“That is my likelihood to not miss out, after I’ve missed out on every thing! The housing bubble, the primary tech bubble, the second tech bubble, the present tech bubble. Only one time, I wanna be the man who offers all his cash to Bernie Madoff!”