Friend with benefit story

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Story: How four friends made millions of dollars in monkey pictures

Gohner, Gargamel, No Sass and Emperor Tomato Ketchup were all inspired by the crypto-enthusiast communities that have flourished on platforms like Twitter in recent years. Obviously, people with a once-specialized interest needed a place where they could gather, discuss developments in the field of blockchain and laugh at inside jokes.

Why not, they thought, give NFT collectors an official platform? This is how the Bored Ape Yacht Club was born.

??‍♂️???? @BoredApeYC pic.twitter.com/LrTIHlsSpn

— Rudy Gobert (@rudygobert27) November 14, 2021

“I always play big,” says Gordon Goner, speaking to Rolling Stone via Zoom.

Everything in his appearance indicates that this is the frontman of the group: a tattoo on his neck, a strong physique, dark circles under his eyes and some impudence. He really likes to take risks: in those days when he had problems with gambling, he hit the jackpot at the gaming tables, only to lose everything in the slot machines on the way to the car.

This is the only one of the four who has never worked from 9 to 5 - simply because he never had a "real job".

Gargamel's nickname is inspired by The Smurfs. He looks like a cross between the character of the same name and an indie music buff from the liberal arts department. The unexpected success still amazes him.

"Now I'm meeting the CEOs of billion dollar companies and I'm like, 'Hi, I'm Gargamel. What would you like to talk to me about?'" he says.

Gargamel and Goner first met in a small bar when they were in their early twenties. Both were born and raised in Miami.

The third member of the team uses the alias No Sass. He can be compared to a drummer - prudence helps him set the rhythm for the team.

“It's like I'm coming up with an idea that will help us break the bank,” Goner says, referring to his past in the casino. “And his job is to make sure we get to the parking lot.”

The band's "bassist" uses the pseudonym Emperor Tomato Ketchup. This is the secret trump card of the team, full of hidden talents.

Despite the fact that Goner and his comrades look very much like a rock band, they are actually the founders of the Web3 company Yuga Labs.

• This summer, a lot of 101 tokens created in early May sold for $24.4 million at Sotheby's.
• Shortly thereafter, rival Christie's also bid for $12 million with a digital art collection including four images of monkeys.
• Around the same time, a collector bought the token directly from OpenSea for $2.65 million.
• A few weeks later, Sotheby's set a new record value for a single Bored Ape token: number 8817 was sold for $3.4 million.

At the beginning of November, tokens associated with the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, including traditional monkeys, as well as the so-called "mutants" and a series of pets, brought in about $1 billion.

In the first days after the launch of the project, sales were meagre. Emperor Tomato Ketchup recalls: “I think we made between $30,000 and $60,000 in total. And then, overnight, sales skyrocketed. 10,000 tokens, each originally worth 0.08 Ether (about $370), were sold out.”

Bored Ape are not valuable for their visual appeal. The owner can use the image for commercial purposes and sell any product based on it. The tokens also act as identification cards that give the holders access to a kind of elite club.

Noah Davies, head of online digital art sales at Christie's, says it's the "permanent free services and perks" that make being part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club community so rewarding and desirable. Although it remains underestimated in the art scene, there are those among popular culture enthusiasts who would like to create a global hub for "like-minded, tech-savvy and forward-thinking people of the planet."

The name of the project Bored Ape Yacht Club is a reference to people who got rich by “aping in”. So in the field of cryptocurrencies they call large investments in an incomprehensible area. Because of the quick success, they are too bored and are only ready to create memes and argue about analytics. The image of the yacht club is a satire, as this digital club looks like a second-rate bar in the Florida swamps.

It's official, @BoredApeYC #961 & #9039 are owned by @PostMalone. Post Malone bought these two apes for a combined total of 160 $ETH ($734,401.60). pic.twitter.com/LdWbt0gaPe

— cr0ss.eth (@cr0ssETH) November 14, 2021

Gargamel, whose college roommate started mining bitcoin back in 2010, got into crypto in 2017 when the latter was bedridden with an unknown illness, bored and talking on the phone .

“I knew he was risk-averse,” says Gargamel. - I said: "I want to spend money on one stupid idea. Are you with me?" He got in right away."

In early 2021, they took notice of the crypto community on Twitter, as well as CryptoPunks and Hashmasks, which have become a kind of cultural currency. Then they wondered what would happen if they combined the collectible art component with community participation through gamification.

The idea was great, but they lacked technical knowledge. So Gargamel called in No Sass and Tomato, who were studying computer science at the same university where he was a graduate student.

No Sass and Tomato were tech-savvy but not crypto-savvy. They both wrote their first lines of code in Solidity, the language for smart contracts, in February of this year.

According to No Sass, the first release of tokens brought a lot of "stress and fear". At the start, their goal was rather vague: to capitalize on the apparent trend. But after one night of endless talking, Goner realized that all he really wanted was something to do and talk to like-minded people in an exciting, fantasy world.

Virtual art was tempting, but it had to be put to some use. “It would be another collection of NFTs that didn’t do any good,” Goner says.

“I will never forget the night we sold out,” says No Sass. It was about two or three in the morning and I can hear my phone ringing. I see it's Tomato and I think something went wrong. I pick up the phone and I hear: "Dude, wake up. We just made a million dollars."

Nansen, a company that tracks blockchain analytics, reported that within one night, Bored Ape Yacht Club had the most popular smart contract on Ethereum.

"That's absurd," says Gargamel. Uniswap [a popular network of decentralized financial applications] makes billions and billions of transactions. But in that one night, we took over the world."

Going ape shit? @BoredApeYC

#BoredApeYachtClub #MutantApeYachtClub pic.twitter.com/Yt3zLDq5bH

— LIKE MIKE (@likemike) November 14, 2021

As of the beginning of November, the four have earned about $22 million in the secondary market alone. To reach out to those who didn't have the guts to buy the first batch and expand the community, Yuga Labs launched the Mutant Ape Yacht Club: 10,000 decaying monkeys filled with pus, strange growths, sometimes complete with missing limbs.

With a starting price of 3 ether (about $13.8 thousand), the mutants were sold out in an hour. Also, 10,000 “sera” were randomly thrown onto the market (now they are traded on OpenSea for tens of thousands of dollars), with which you can create a zombified clone of an existing monkey.

When the team sold 500 real hats to monkey owners in June, the foursome spent several days packing packages in Gargamel's mom's backyard in Florida.

“Immediately, some of them were resold for thousands of dollars,” exclaims Gargamel. — These were hats for $25. We thought, "Damn, we can become a Web3 streetwear brand. What is that even like?"

But the team is still exploring ways to create more value for the tokens.

• They recently surprised collectors with a treasure hunt; the winner received 5 ethers (more than $23 thousand) and one more monkey.
• From October 31st to November 6th, the first annual festival took place, featuring parties at the gallery, on the yacht and at the warehouse, gift shops and a charity dinner in New York.

The authors of the project suggest that the future lies in interaction, when collectors will be able to upload their monkeys to different parts of the metaverse. Hypothetically, the characters could appear in a game as popular as Fortnite, and users could dress them up in digital versions of Bored Ape Yacht Club merchandise.

“We want to encourage this as much as possible,” says Gargamel. “Now we are making 3D models of all the monkeys. But, you know, creating 10,000 perfect models takes a little time.”

At the beginning of the year, they had no idea that a potentially failed idea would turn into a full-time job. They put 14 hours a day into the project to get going, and after a big release of characters, they decided to increase that time to 16 hours a day. “None of us have really slept in almost seven months,” Goner says. “We are teetering on the brink of burnout.”

To avoid this, Yuga Labs has already recruited numerous artists, SMM and community managers for Discord, as well as a CFO.

"We want to be a lifestyle company for Web3," Goner says, pointing out that the project is still growing.

“At the moment I am a metaverse maximalist. I think our world will soon be on the cusp of a similar experience to Ready Player One,” he adds.

Probably Bored Ape Yacht Club is just the band's debut album. It's hard to imagine what her greatest hits will be.

Source.

Cover photo: Rokas Tenys / Shutterstock

The friend zone doesn't exist. What do people really mask with this word

November 6, 2020Relationships

Natalya Kopylova - about why, instead of friendship, manipulation and the imposition of guilt appear here, and the villain is not at all who you might think.

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What is called the friend zone

It is believed that for the first time the word "friend zone" (from the English friend zone) was heard in the first season of "Friends". It surfaced in a conversation between Ross and Joe, where the latter explained that if you don’t talk to a girl about your feelings for too long, then she will begin to perceive you only as a friend.

@Friends Videos / YouTube

Dictionaries give ^{Friendzone the following meaning of the word: the state of friendship with someone with whom you would prefer a romantic or sexual relationship.}

Sounds pretty neutral, but it's not really true. Compare the emotional coloring of the two phrases:

• She treats me like a friend.
• I'm in her friend zone.

The first phrase is more like a statement of fact, perhaps with bitterness from non-reciprocity. And the second often contains additional meaning. It involves a relationship in which one person is in love and therefore invests in another morally and financially, and he enjoys all the bonuses and gives nothing in return.

To be honest, it's usually about some selfish girl. She keeps a “good” guy who is ready for anything for her, in the friend zone, accepts his help and gifts. But he dates other, "bad" guys.

It seems that everything is obvious: the poor man in love is a pity, the bitch friendson deserves censure and condemnation. In fact, it turns out that the situation is far from being so straightforward.

Why the friend zone doesn't really exist

"How come?!" - you will be indignant. After all, almost everyone has a story in reserve where someone uses a person in love with him. Someone for sex, someone for help - you never know how to draw someone else's resource. But what's with the friendzone? Here friendship does not smell from all sides. Just one person trying to improve his life at the expense of another.

Love cannot be earned. If you are forced to do it, bargained, lured with promises, nothing good will come of it. No need to fight windmills, just leave the battlefield.

Relationships are much easier than they seem. Let's say you're in love with a person who can't love you back. He offers to remain friends, and it's up to you to agree or refuse. At this particular moment, friendship or nothing is possible between you.

The very concept of "friend zone" here is manipulation in its purest form, but not in the way it seems. Let's take a classic situation that people love to parasitize on. Our hero, a good boy, rushes to help his girlfriend, is there in difficult times, spends time with her. But at the same time, he does not count on symmetrical help, support, which would be logical to expect from friendship, but on sex. And the main complaint, as a rule, lies precisely in this: he did so much for her, but she "did not give."

Friendzone, as it were, implies that there is an unspoken contract, according to which one person owes sex to the second for a good attitude. So, surprise: there is no such agreement.

Sex is not an object of bargaining, not a reward for anything and not a duty even in marriage. And courtesies are not investments that should bring profit.

Another function that justifies the existence of the friend zone is to soften the blow to the ego. You are so good, but you were rejected. It's not because there's something wrong with you. She is a mercenary monster. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Perhaps it is the same with you, and with her. The feelings are just not mutual. There is nothing special to look for in this.

Why the friend zone is often associated with sexism

Anyone can fall in love without reciprocity. But men often find themselves in the friend zone, and this is not because of the special prudence of their lovers. It's just that they are more often ^{Benefit or burden? Attraction in cross‑sex friendship are attracted to their friends of the opposite sex, while women are just friends.}

This may partly be due to the fact that men have more ^{The suprachiasmatic nucleus of the human brain in relation to sex, age and senile dementia brain region responsible for sexual desire. But there is another important detail. It is easier for women to be friends with men, because they perceive them as people suitable for this kind of relationship - interesting, complete and equal. Worthy friendship. It doesn't always work the other way around. Even the term girlfriend zone appeared. It means that a girl is only interested in a man in terms of a romantic relationship. The possibility of friendship is not even considered.}

Moreover, a girl's feelings are often irrelevant. After all, her "no" is not taken seriously. She promises friendship, honestly makes friends, and then receives complaints and attempts to impose guilt for having "offended a nice boy" simply because she kept her promise. And upon closer inspection, it turns out that the very “good guy” could easily be the main villain in this story. Because all his good attitude is built precisely on the illusion that in this way he will be able to achieve what he wants.

It seems that the friend zone is a zone of friendship. But it turns out that he is no friend. It is unlikely that our “good boy” will be offended that a classmate, whom he carried home drunk at five in the morning, did not sleep with him. He does not count on a hot sex marathon with a friend whose car had to be urgently “lighted up” on the weekend.

All these things are normal components of friendship. And if you agreed to it, make friends like human beings.

Julia

Understands the value of friendship.

After the divorce, I talked a lot with only one guy. We went for walks, drinking tea, coffee, wine and any liquid in general. Gallons of liquids. It dragged on for a very long time, a year for sure. During this time, I managed to fall in love with him and move away from a divorce.

And then one day, after a beautiful evening with wine, he called me home under the pretext "I'll give you a bottle of apricot moonshine, which my dad drives." We knocked over a couple of glasses, settled down in the hall on a huge sofa, he turned off the light so that the starry sky could be seen ... and turned on YouTube. We watched clips until my patience ran out and I went home.

But I am very glad that I have such a wonderful friend. And I believe that the roles that people play in our lives are not chosen by us, but by them. If a person is given to me not as a lover, but as a comrade, he should rejoice, and not his function.

Can friendship grow into love

Of course. In the same Friends we started with, Monica and Chandler's love grew out of a real friendship. And this happens in life, but feelings originate precisely from friendship, and not from the consumer attitude that characterizes typical "victims of the friend zone."

Maria

Married a friend.

We played together in the university team on “What? Where? When?" and were friends. Then he had an accident and was locked at home. I was sad, went to visit him - by the way, not alone, but with someone else. He was alone there and such a lapula. I got out of a bad relationship at the time. Then we were still friends, but I already liked him.

I was still in some romantic stories, because I did not understand if he liked me. Then she confessed. And we started dating. It turns out that about five years have passed from friendship as part of six people to living together and getting married.

What to do if it is not clear what is happening between you

Relationships are simple, but not as simple as we would like. Sometimes it happens that a resolute “no, let's remain friends” did not sound and you yourself do not understand what the status of the relationship is.

The best way is to be honest and discuss everything. It seems that the person you are in love with must understand everything himself. Especially if you follow a stereotypical set of gestures that show your attention. But the signals are not always read correctly. People are different, and for many, romantic interest is not obvious. You communicate as friends, why not consider it friendship.

And some people may not really notice for years that someone is in love with them.

Ivanna

Does not know how to make friends for profit and expects the same from others.

I well remember the sadness from several situations when it turned out that a person paid attention to me, spent time with me, did some nice things for me, assured me that I was wonderfully good at something, because it turned out that he had me , there were some kinds. To me, if you're good to me, you're good to me, just like that, no reason. And to show a good attitude because you need something - it somehow smells bad. I myself have never been friends with anyone for the sake of something, and I naively expect the same from people.

So there's no better way than to talk things over. And in order not to fall into the trap when you experience false hopes, take everything that is not “yes” as “no”. This will save you a lot of nerves. You have done your part of the work, confessed everything. The next step is in any case for the subject of interest. If the feelings are mutual, you will be informed. If this card is played for manipulation, this, as we have already found out, is not love and not friendship.

Read also 👩🧡👱‍♂️

• What is braincrambing and how to understand that your feelings are being played
• How to understand that a person is holding you on an emotional leash and get away from him
• "Our couple would be perfect if not for you.

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