Posted by Well this is pretty stupid:
On Saturday, [actor Seth] Green teased a trailer for White Horse Tavern at the NFT conference VeeCon. A twee comedy, the show seems to be based on the question, “What if your friendly neighborhood bartender was Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398?” In an interview with entrepreneur and crypto hype man Gary Vaynerchuk, Green said he wanted to imagine a universe where “it doesn’t matter what you look like, what only matters is your attitude.”
Unfortunately for Green, what also matters is copyright law. And when the actor’s NFT collection was pilfered by a scammer in early May, he lost the commercial rights to his show’s cartoon protagonist, a scruffy Bored Ape named Fred Simian, whose likeness and usage rights now belong to someone else.
“I bought that ape in July 2021, and have spent the last several months developing and exploiting the IP to make it into the star of this show,” Green told Vaynerchuk. “Then days before — his name is Fred by the way — days before he’s set to make his world debut, he’s literally kidnapped.” Green did not respond to a tweet from BuzzFeed News regarding the show.
What a stroke of luck! If someone hadn’t stolen his ape he’d have to make the show. It would be funny if the liability to make the show went with the ape, like, if the anonymous teen or whoever who tricked Green into giving up his ape (or the subsequent purchaser) now has to write and star in the show. I would probably watch that. No, no, just kidding, I would never watch a Bored Ape show for any reason. Anyway I don’t think intellectual-property law works like … any of this … but I also don’t care. If Seth Green wants to not make a Bored Ape comedy then that’s fine, the system worked.
He could just make the show with a slightly different drawing of an ape? Like the person who supposedly stole his ape now supposedly owns the intellectual-property rights connected to Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398, but that person does not own the concept of “a cartoon ape with an attitude.” “What if your friendly neighborhood bartender was a member of the Blasé Bonobos Boat Club,” the show could ask, and the ape could hold his cigarette like this instead of like that. No, I’m sorry, I will stop suggesting solutions, I don’t care, don’t make the show, everything is fine.
I am going to start a business that offers celebrities the following service:
- I will sell you a Bored Ape.
- Then I will steal it.
- Then you can go on talk shows and talk about how you had a Bored Ape and it got stolen, which is the defining experience of modern celebrity.
If you have not gone on a talk show to talk about your Bored Ape getting stolen, are you really a celebrity? In today’s competitive attention economy, celebrities need a Bored Ape thief at least as much as they need an agent or a stylist or someone to post on TikTok. Your Bored Ape thief plays a critical role in building your public image, and you want to hire the best possible Bored Ape thief. Here at Money Stuff Bespoke Bored Ape Thieves we have spent an industry-leading five minutes thinking about this joke, and what other Bored Ape thieves can match that experience? Lots of them, probably.
If I manage the pipeline right I’ll only need one Bored Ape. Just keep selling it to a celebrity, stealing it back, selling it again. What amazing provenance that ape will have when I eventually sell it to someone for real. “Buy the Bored Ape that Seth Green and Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg and Donald Trump and Elon Musk all owned, briefly,” I will say, and some billionaire will pay me millions of dollars for it. Then I will steal it again because that will make it even funnier.
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