What’s it going to take to get you to care about NFTs? Apparently, for me, it’s the word cheugy. Yes, I know. I hate it here, too.
Gaby Rasson, the 23-year-old who claims credit for the word, is selling cheugy as an NFT. “The collector of this 1/1 NFT will own a word,” Rasson writes on the listing. “I created the word in 2013. At first, it was just me and my high school friends using it. Fast-forward to 2021 and cheugy has gone viral.”
If the sentence “cheugy is being sold as an NFT” means absolutely nothing to you, good. Get out while you can. For those of us who are already in too deep, here’s a quick refresher on what those words even mean. Cheugy is the latest way for Gen Z to remind millennials we’re getting old. According to Rasson, cheugy means outdated, untrendy, or just generally trying too hard. Aesthetically, it’s “basic” meets #girlboss meets the early 2010s. Whether the word is actually taking over TikTok or just being willed into existence by media coverage — our own included — is up for debate.
Now, let me try to explain NFTs without passing away. Short for “non-fungible token,” an NFT is an exclusive digital asset that says, you own the original version of this thing. As my colleague Emilia Petrarca previously explained, it’s like when Shane West buys Mandy Moore a star in A Walk to Remember. You can’t actually own a star, but you can buy a piece of paper that says you own a star. An NFT is kinda like that.
Cheugy joins other memes turned NFTs like “Overly Attached Girlfriend” and “Disaster Girl,” which sold for $411,000 and $500,000, respectively. On Sunday, the cheugy NFT was listed for the price of one ETH, currently equivalent to $4,131.01 USD. (ETH, short for Ethereum, is the second-largest cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin being the first.) After receiving no bids, cheugy has now been marked down 90 percent to 0.10 ETH, currently equal to $413.10. C’mon, cheugs! You know you love a discount. Right now, there’s only one bid, and the auction is set to end tonight, around 11 p.m. ET.
None of this answers the main question: But why, though? As Rasson put it, “I thought it would be very cheugy to create The Cheugy NFT.”
