Using bots to snag rare items loses its shame

The Future. Sneaker-buying bot creators, such as Better Boy Nova, are doubling their income by pushing both their tech and videos on how to use it as successfully as they do. The rise of botters is a nuisance for normal buyers… but now that bots are both being used across different industries and also silently encouraged by sellers, using software may soon be the only way to score anything online that’s in limited supply.

Click handicap
Botter Boy Nova, who calls himself a “part-time botter, full-time content creator,” gave VICE a bit of a sneak-peek into how he makes money.

• Botter Boy Nova came to prominence as a coder for bots that helped streamline the checkout process for rare sneaker drops — a process that can have as little as a 20-30 second margin of error.
• Nova not only sells the bots, but posts instructional videos on YouTube on how to use them successfully.

To make sure he’s getting the most bang for his buck, Nova focuses on the sneakers or websites that he knows will sell out, which gives him the chance to make a higher return on his investment.

Code capitalism
Nova admits that he has a few thousand “tasks” — or bots trying to snag sneakers — and that “one task is equal to one person trying to get the sneaker.” So, he essentially has his own army to make sure he gets the sneakers he wants.

Bots have become a controversial reality in the $60 billion global sneaker market because adept coders, such as Nova, can walk away with several pairs of rare sneakers… leaving less for those without bots. Resale markets like StockX then inflate the price much in the way that ticket scalpers do.

Instead of criticizing the practice, sneakers companies such as Nike and adidas actually silently welcome it because, at the end of the day, what matters to them is the hype. Bot-users ultimately dwindle the supply, which juices up the demand… for both shoes and bots.

Women are making NFTs to own their image

The Future. After years of exploitation on the internet, women at the center of popular memes are taking back control by turning memes that were made about them into NFTs. The reclamation shows how the early, free-wheeling remix days of the Internet may be giving way to an era of hyper-ownership… even years after the fact.

Ms. Meme
These much-memed women are showing that their faces aren’t free anymore.

• Laina Morris, aka Overly Attached Girlfriend, sold an NFT of her meme to Dubai-based 3F Music for 200 ETH (Ethereum), which comes out to $411,000.
• Zoe Roth, known for the Disaster Girl meme, also sold her meme to 3F for 180 ETH ($403,000)
• Allison Harvard, aka Creepy Chan, sold her Creepy Chan 1 and Creepy Chan 2 memes to the company as well for $72,000 and $82,000, respectively.

Misery money
Even though some of these women have leveraged their meme status into careers on YouTube, they describe how empowering it is to be able to take back control of their image — especially when these memes were sourced as screenshots in the early, Wild West days of Internet culture.

• Harvard tweeted: “for years, they have circulated the internet without me ever having a say how they were used. I feel like I got to take my power back today.”
• Roth echoed her, saying that “it’s kind of cool after you’re getting passed around the internet for your entire life that there’s some way you know that you still own this picture.”

As expected, the NFT practice is working its way up the totem pole. Actress and model Emily Ratajkowski is auctioning off an NFT of herself titled Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution through Christie’s after notoriously having her image stolen by controversial photographer Richard Prince for a gallery called New Portraits.

Meet Sev Ohanian: Award-Winning Producer, Screenwriter, and Co-Founder of Proximity Media

Even if you don’t know Sev Ohanian, you probably know the movies he has written and/or produced: Fruitvale Station, Searching, the Academy Award-winning Judas and the Black Messiah, and the soon-to-be-released Space Jam: A New Legacy.

Ohanian’s Proximity Media (which he runs with Ryan and Zinzi Coogler) recently scored a 5-year exclusive deal to create a Black Panther-based TV series for Disney+. But Ohanian’s film career has humble roots. His first feature film, My Big Fat Armenian Family, had a budget of $800... and Ohanian served as the movie’s writer, director, producer, editor, and cinematographer.

Here’s what Ohanian has to say about the future of the film industry, the importance of diverse representation on — and off — screen, and the value of networking.

Diverse representation will become common in ALL movies
“I expect the future of the movie industry to look more and more like the real world we actually live in,” Ohanian told TheFutureParty. “I’m looking forward to more representation on screen, behind the scenes, and in positions of power at studios/financiers.”

Still, Ohanian said that he’d love to see representation become more normalized in genres that don’t typically embrace diversity. In his own career, Ohanian has run up against resistance to diverse casts in movies that don’t “need” to be diverse.

“My team and I fought hard to cast John Cho [in Searching], and to set the story around a Korean-American family,” he said. “When asked ‘why?’ — as our story was not technically a ‘Korean story’ — our response was a simple ‘why not?’”

To Ohanian, diverse casts not only improve representation… they also add cultural specificity that makes for excellent films.

Relationships > Networking
As a relative outsider in Hollywood, Ohanian has worked hard to build relationships across his industry. But for Ohanian, it has always been more important to establish meaningful relationships with other up-can-coming filmmakers than to impress established ones.

“It’s not about grabbing drinks or swapping business cards... that type of networking was never effective for me,” Ohanian explained. “Instead, I think it should be about doing favors, sharing resources, and working with others in a meaningful way. Over time that adds up, creating a good reputation. Eventually it’s less about who you know, and far more about ‘who knows you.’”

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GetMyBoat rents an escape

The Future. When the economy is in turmoil and people are stuck at home… boat sales go up? Apparently, it’s true. And rental company GetMyBoat is cashing in on the action. International travel is still hit and miss, but since communities are opening up more and more as people get vaccinated, boats may provide the best middle ground for a vacation when being stuck on ground just doesn’t cut it anymore.

“Airbnb for boats”
People are so tired of being stuck inside that they’re hitting the open water… at least for a day or two.

• After COVID lifted boat sales, boat rental marketplace GetMyBoat reported banner growth over the past year, with bookings jumping 3,900% between April and July 2020.
• From January to April 2021, bookings have throttled another 700%, beating its last booking record in July 2020.
• In 2020, GetMyBoat served 178,000 customers, and expected to hit a whopping 1 million customers by the end of this year.
• The company operates in 184 countries.

GetMyBoat allows customers to “search where and when they want to rent the boat, a preferred hourly price, the number of passengers, and the type of boat they're looking for — whether it be a jet ski, powerboat, or yacht.”

With the National Marine Manufacturers Association reporting that U.S. boat sales hit a 13-year high in 2020, expect there to be a lot more supply on the market for rent. (Fun fact: the last time boat sales were this high was during the Great Recession in 2008).