I remember the spaghetti tree harvest and the tons of folks who thought it was real.
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I don’t actually remember it from the first time round. In 1957 I was too young to watch Panorama - although I do remember the BBC radio broadcast of the Sputnik launch, as Jodrell Bank tracked the radio signals. I may not have known that spaghetti didn’t grow on trees, but I did understand that the first spacecraft was exciting.
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Thing is, the banana is replaceable. You can buy another one (not for 6.2 million), replace the original, and you’ll have the same artwork.
This guy has not paid 6.2 million for a banana taped to a wall. He’s paid 6.2 million for the idea of a banana taped to a wall.
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When I saw this yesterday I realised we really are in a post-parody era, leave it to a crypto bro to do this, remember when they tried to convince everyone NFTs were art worth talking about and paying for?
It’s like these rich CEO types don’t even realise they’re sociopaths/psychopaths anymore and are doing a terrible job of blending in and pretending they understand the concept of art.
More money than sense, more power than empathy, more drive than brains.
Edit:
Sharing this because I need to add a laugh to this post.
I’m not a sports fan and I don’t follow Rugby so I don’t really fully get the context of this post, but there is a player on the Australian team called Harry Potter and I guess Ireland’s jersey looks like the Slytherin jersey? (I have also not seen Harry Potter)
I figured those who know will enjoy this
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Mr Crypto currently has the opportunity to excrete the bananna, then tape that to the wall & sell it on as a new art piece even rarer than the original. Probably double his money.
Crypto Coprite.
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That’s kind of always been the relation between rich people and art, though, hasn’t it? Artists have always needed rich patreons to pursue their interest, and rich people have always looked for ways to to distinguish themselves from other rich people, because if you have enough money to buy literally anything that’s being sold, the only real way to one-up your peers is to buy something they can’t buy by virtue of it only being sold once.
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I just watched a video on the 80/20% ratio. Pareto Principle.
So the poor man who sold the banana for mere cents should just give up. Those of us in the 80% will never make it to the 20% without shuffling someone out of the 20% which would likely take 80% of us to make happen.
I think I will go back to bed and spend 80% of my time there so I can preserve the 20% of myself that is still useable.
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But then, is that actually a goal worth aspiring to? People seem to forget that money does not make you happy…
Lack of money is a problem, obviously, but at some point of stability, getting more money becomes one of the emptiest life goals I can imagine.
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I agree. Tell that to the banana vendor. 
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Beyond a certain level of wealth, the money itself becomess meaningless. You can only eat so much food, live in so many houses, drive so many cars. There comes a point where these people can’t actually spend the money they have. They could give it away, or they could gamble it, I suppose - but almost anything else they spend it on is still worth money.
What becomes attractive to people in that position seems to be exclusivity. They can use their money to own things nobody else can have. Once the money itself is meaningless, it’s a way of keeping score.
And that’s where the international art market is only too happy to step in. The art works don’t have to be inspired - they don’t have to be skilfully executed - and they don’t need to look good. What they do need to be is the only one - something nobody else can have. And by that alone, they become status symbols.
That, of course, waas also the thinking behind NFTs. And they may yet take off - Bitcoin was pretty much worthless for the first 10 years.
It’s got nothing to do with art - it’s about a person being able to say “I can afford something you can never own”.
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I always assumed this was a point No Mans Sky was trying to make at launch. Before nanites etc, so many things just gave you random units, usually a pittance, and there was barely anything to spend it on.
I felt launch No Mans Sky was a just a big middle finger to games that rely on wealth and tech tree acquisition that ultimately ends with you hitting an end point and no longer having a purpose to continue playing. But I did always wonder as well, how much of that was me Projecting? The motives of Apollo only further cemented this idea in my head.
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And, as we are finding out, it can mean free reign to do as you please and remain untouchable from a legal standpoint. Wealth = power.
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