Bored Apes and the battle for the future of the Internet

The tension around Bored Apes and the community started a week ago.

On Friday, BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos posted a story that kicked an online war. The reason was straightforward: In the story, Katie revealed the names of the main founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. Those two men were named Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow. Almost instantly, the public identification of the earlier pseudonymous Solano and Aronow led to anger. Many supporters of crypto and NFTs believed Notopoulos had “doxxed” the men and put their physical safety at risk.

Moreover, a former Facebook employee, García Martínez, commented on this event. He said that he did not understand the point of doing such a thing.

The CEO and co-founder of Messari, Ryan Selkis, wrote that he couldn’t wait to give BuzzFeed the Gawker treatment, referring to the lawsuit that killed the digital news site. 

Selkis and Martínez were a few examples among people in their condemnation. Jordan Fish, who runs the popular show UpOnly, called Notopoulos someone after clicks. The founder of a crypto recruiting company suggested the Bored Ape community could complete a Gordon Gekko-style hostile takeover of BuzzFeed.

People started sending Notopoulos threatening messages, stating that they could reveal the addresses of her home and workplace and those of her parents and siblings. In fact, one person told Notopoulos that her parents’ and siblings’ suburbs are not that far away.

Bored Apes and the reaction on the community

The reaction felt like the next chapter in the web3 movement. For simplicity, Motherboard will use a catch-all to describe the community rallying around crypto, the metaverse, and NFTs. It hopes for a more decentralized web. Broadly, the movement tried to position itself as a collection of nice guys pushing toward a more honest, more communal form of internet capitalism. But some of the reactions to the Buzzfeed story took a dark turn.