One of the aforementioned feverish Bored Ape Yacht Club replicants, a hand-drawn (and painfully derivative) PPC collection called Jungle Freaks, stepped into quicksand this Halloween as it turns out the artist got famous making racist Hustler cartoons.
The cartoonist, George Trosley, issued a video apology, claiming the 50-year-old comics were intended to shine light on the racism of the 1970s. They sure do, albeit only as nauseating relics of the kind of blatant bigotry once deemed acceptable for publication, rather than any sort of functional satire. Maybe his intentions really were good, and only his execution was disturbing and racist. Then again. The collection is fucking called Jungle Freaks.
Doesn’t matter either way. The floor price dropped 80% since the news broke, and noted crypto enthusiast / former Frodo Elijah Wood offloaded his holdings and donated the proceeds to charity. It’s especially depressing to see this sort of prejudice in a space with such high diversity and potential for facilitating equality. But the overwhelming and immediate response is promising, at least.
Trosley still has his defenders, unfortunately, inevitably. It is, after all, the Internet. But in a high risk market where value stems almost entirely from reputation, there’s no small schadenfreude in watching someone’s deservedly get shot to shit.
(Until the Proud Boys decide to take this collection to the moon, that is.)
