Milady before Musk's call: "Internet psychopath" at the extreme of Asia.

Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

On May 10th, Musk's sudden tweet "There is no meme, I love you" caused Milady's floor price to skyrocket from 3.75 ETH to over 7 ETH within an hour.

「There is no meme, I love you」

After Musk's "shout-out", Milady quickly rose

The market's attention once again focused on this "old" project that was born in 2021. Due to Milady's rapid rise and fall, many players believe that this situation is just Musk's "intermittent shouting", just like the "boy who cried wolf" played by $DOGE again and again, without any analytical value - Musk's "shouting", anything can take off, and it's strange that Milady can't rise.

However, in fact, Milady's performance in the bear market is quite impressive. From early April of this year until Musk's "call for orders", Milady's floor price has tripled.

Milady's floor price trend from mid-August 2022 to present, Milady has broken away from the independent market.

If you, like me, are an NFT player who is not very familiar with Milady, perhaps your impression of Milady is still stuck in the negative news of founder Charlotte Fang's involvement in "racism" and "suicide cult" in May 2022. After Charlotte Fang admitted her association with the "suicide cult" and announced her departure from the Milady team, the floor price of Milady plummeted.

Such negative news is too heavy compared to Azuki founder Zagabond's involvement in multiple "Rug Pulls", so much so that for a long time, the author thought that Milady's story had come to an end and the project would gradually be forgotten by NFT players like countless other projects that have disappeared in the history of NFT. However, Milady not only proved the author's view wrong in terms of price trends, but also dealt a heavy blow to the author's influence.

The group of people who use Milady as their Twitter avatar gives the impression of being "geeks" and "deep Degen players", such as Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix, and @surfcoderepeat, the developer of Muse DAO. Just like seeing someone with a CryptoPunks avatar may subconsciously make you think they are an "NFT OG", seeing someone with a BAYC avatar may make you think they are an "NFT whale", and seeing someone with an Azuki avatar may make you think they are a "trendsetter"... Perhaps the number of people who use Milady as their Twitter avatar is not large, but it is not easy for this group to leave a "memory point" in people's minds.

The continued NFT bull market has made us less sensitive to many past "rising logic". If we turn our attention back to "community culture", can we discover something different? With a strong curiosity about Milady, BlockBeats interviewed three Milady community members who have a deep understanding of Milady:

CodyBoy（Twitter：@codeboymadif）

Tamara（Twitter：@_s0ftmachine）

JChen（Twitter：@0xJChen）

Milady's "Counter-Cultural" Spirit

CodeBoy describes his understanding of the Milady spirit as follows:

We were originally free individuals, but the mainstream has domesticated us. We don't even discuss or peek into the power of darkness, and any slight offense will be criticized by moral police. Everything that has been banned seems to be unique art, Cancelled Culture, daring to be banned can help reshape our network spirituality.

What is internet culture? It should be about welcoming the "anti-idol". When faced with a controversial artist, an open-minded supportive attitude is not to argue that "she has never done anything wrong", but rather "she did it, but so what? It's still cool", and that's anti-idol. Elon Musk and Kayne West are the biggest anti-idols in the world.

CodeBoy's interpretation of Milady's spirit quickly brought to mind the word "punk" for the author. Sex Pistols' legendary bassist Sid Vicious couldn't even play bass, but does that matter? Perhaps some may try to convince you of Sex Pistols' lack of "musicality," or think that liking such a band is foolish, but so what? You like a cool band, and you're cool too.

Sid Vicious is controversial, as mentioned in Charlotte Fang's article.

Liking a band with a bassist who can't play bass may make people around you think you're "weird" or "stupid", but if the object of your affection is a universally despised "villain", you will face immense pressure.

JChen introduced me to the first key figure in Milady's development history - Martin Shkreli. Martin Shkreli became known as the "villain" in 2015 for raising the price of the anti-parasitic/AIDS drug Daraprim from $13.5 per pill to $750 per pill. At the time, Turing Pharmaceuticals, which he acquired, was the only producer of the drug, and the production cost of the drug was only $1 per pill.

What makes the public even more angry is Martin Shkreli's attitude and the things he has done:

"You are rich and heartless, you don't care about people who are still burdened with medical expenses." Martin Shkreli replied, "Blame me?"

Martin Shkreli spent $2 million to purchase the Wu-Tang Clan's album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," which was only released in one copy. However, he is not a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan and has no intention of listening to the album.

A female journalist named Christie Smythe fell in love with Martin Shkreli during an interview, and as a result, the pressure was transmitted to her through the internet, with countless people trying to tell her, "You're wrong."

In May 2022, Milady experienced a significant surge, due in part to Martin Shkreli's release from prison and his use of Milady as his Twitter avatar.

The author has no intention of getting caught up in the "right or wrong" debate, and the direction of explaining the Milady spirit is not about that. Let's return to Cancelled Culture, as Tamara said, rebellion against "cancelled culture" is where Milady truly embodies the community:

Milady is somewhat resistant to the "mainstreaming" of crypto. "Mainstreaming" implies that you need to embrace certain "mainstream" views, and if you hold certain "non-mainstream" views, then you will be "blacklisted".

When negative news about Charlotte Fang surfaced, many people focused on whether Charlotte Fang really did these things and ultimately sold their Milady. At the same time, they overlooked the rebellious side of Milady's value against "cancel culture", which actually made the Milady community stronger.

Indeed, the Milady community has become stronger. As JChen said, no one cares about Charlotte Fang's affairs anymore, "to hell with Charlotte Fang, as long as everyone is having fun." Tamara also believes that this is why Su Zhu used Milady as his Twitter avatar:

Milady contains a spirit that makes it a "controversial" medal. It is highly controversial and attracts attention on Twitter. Using Milady as a Twitter avatar and joining the ranks of "controversial" people, that's it.

And this is also a major feature of the Milady community. Here, there are all kinds of "strange" people, just like the factory created by Andy Warhol, where "crazy" people flock and unleash their creativity wildly.

Milady's Artistic Style

According to Charlotte Fang's description, the artistic core of Milady is the subculture trend of Tokyo street in the late 1990s to the early millennium.

Do you have a familiar feeling? CodeBoy helped me find the Chinese localization counterpart from memory in a straightforward way - "Sha Ma Te culture".

"Why can Milady empathize so well? Friends who grew up in China are familiar with this trend. In 2000, we were also swept up in this wave and combined it with local elements to create the non-mainstream culture, which dominated the entire QQ space." - CodeBoy

However, "Sha Ma Te" culture is not derogatory. CodeBoy said that this is the largest popular cultural movement born from the Internet, which has influenced hundreds of millions of people for 10 years. This trend has not stopped, but continues to change and develop, and has also taken root in Europe and America.

Combining Neochibi's anime style with some "dark color schemes" (also described by CodeBoy), we have Milady with a slightly "Cult style".

Although aesthetics are subjective, you may find Milady to be very ugly and crudely made, but Charlotte Fang's design for Milady is indeed very meticulous, as can be seen in Charlotte Fang's understanding of the financial development of generative PFP through design, which can be found in this article.

Tamara said that many derivative art works of Milady have formed a "school". Commercial products and commercial art can be integrated, and you can accept that art is a commercial product and expand art on this basis. This once again touched me. Although Milady is not the only NFT project active in the secondary creation field, there are really few that jump out of the "image" itself and are based on "style" for re-creation.

Tamara also mentioned a deeper level of "performance art", in which founder Charlotte Fang used "role-playing" to subvert the "mainstream" by speaking out on social media. This reminds me of a map called "My House" in the old game "DOOM", which was created by the author to commemorate his deceased friend 17 years after logging back into the game forum. Due to a series of intricate details, it is difficult for me to determine whether it is based on real-life events or "performance art"... but it is truly immersive.

Conclusion

Milady is unique.

Before Milady, it was difficult for the author to clearly describe what kind of community a NFT project had. Although Milady's audience is a subculture and niche group similar to the "abstract" group in China, it can attract people and have the charm of opening a mysterious door for people to peek into.

There is no shortage of well-crafted NFT projects on the market, but the number of projects that leave a lasting and profound "memory point" is few and far between. Is the difficulty in building NFT project communities really due to a lack of funds to hold various activities to maintain holder engagement? Perhaps the most difficult and overlooked problem is how to connect the individuals in the community and create a sense of belonging. When a tight connection is formed between communities, the naturally occurring community power of fissile re-creation is already a natural manifestation of community strength, rather than the result of trying to create driving forces by any means necessary.

Many players have said that NFT projects have been lacking new narratives for too long, causing everyone to lose their desire to invest in new projects. Milady's success has given us a new perspective on how to think about projects - the grand narratives of "streetwear", "games", and even "metaverse" are indeed paths worth exploring. But when we are waiting for new grand narratives to emerge, let's revisit the "vibe" and "community" that were once considered important bonus points. It seems that they are still barren here?

Although Milady is not a Free Mint project, the author gained a new understanding of the "honesty" represented by the Free Mint model from Milady - which can be the best narrative for an NFT project. Do we all like this picture? Then let's become friends, enjoy the fun, and see what else we can do on the basis of establishing emotional connections. Perhaps, the simplest emotional connection is the most solid foundation for exploring infinite possibilities.

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