Artist Ryder Ripps has compiled a list of all the evidence he has found against YUGA Labs and Bored Ape Yat Club, BAYC. This then recently got turned into a video by YouTuber Philion. Let us take a look, how bad can the evidence be?

The website and the video

First, the video is just over 1 hour long. If you are planning to watch it know that going into it. As far as I have seen the video covers everything that is posted on the website made by Ryder Ripps. That means you do not have to take in both of them. But it is still good to not take my word for it and DYOR, as they say. =)

https://gordongoner.com/

If I am to level any criticism on it it will be that at the end of the video they announce their own "monkey NFT" project. And for me, that detracts a little from what they are trying to do. Highlight a problem, but the fix is not merely to get rid of the BAYC but you do it by buying their NFT instead. While that may very well be a good strategy to combat them, offering the same thing but without the alt-right and NAZI propaganda. It still feels a bit crappy to me personally.

With that out of the way, I will now cover what I perceive to be the main arguments put forth. I will not go into details of everything brought forth. My friend The Crazy Dude has done a much better job at that in his post Did you know that Yuga Labs are Nazi friendly? so check it out if you want something like that.

Who are behind BAYC?

There are 4 main people behind BAYC. And they all come from the same community 4chan. And if you are unfamiliar with them it is basically a community composed of people who pride themself in knowing more about everything than anyone else and revel in this fact and look down on other "normies" who they do not think are as good as them. 

If you think that that sort of sounds familiar. It is because most in groups tend to have this type of thinking vs the outgroup. This is true for gamergate or any racist group. And those types of examples are probably the more apparent once.

4chan is also known for trolling. They love to pull one over on normal people. If you start looking into this you will find tons of examples of instances where they have trolled the media and others.

In the group, there are also two writers who pride themself on their creative work. As an example of how intricate, elaborate, and complex this work can be you can look at the BAYC game that is on their website. This puzzle game was first introduced as a competition where the first person to solve it would win a big prize.

To summarize they all hang on 4chan, spend a lot of time there, and are a part of that in-group. At least two of them are known to be very creative and have shown this.

The name Yuga labs

According to BAYC the company behind the NFTs is called Yuga Labs because of a boss you fight in one of the Zelda games, in particular The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds to the 3DS. And the Boss is known for turning himself or others into 2D art.

And at a first look, this sounds like one of the smartest names in history. And it would definitely fit as something that the crowd on 4chan would know. As the Zelda game is a very obscure one, and it is the only place where that boss is mentioned. So no problems there right?

Well if we dig a little deeper we find that on their website they pay tribute to a project called the Hashmasks that came before them. The company behind this project is Suum Cuiqce Labs. And the farce suum cuique is Latin, and it often gets translated as "to each his own". And the German translation of this was written on the gates of the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald. It was also used on Prussian helmets. And they like and pay homage to this company to the extent that they even copied their terms of service.

That is a bit far-fetched, no? RIght, I agree with you it is. On its own, it would be easily disregarded as a freaky coincidence. But there is more. Remember that all four of the founders hang on 4chan. And there the phrase "surf the KaliYuga" originated. Kali Yuga comes from Hindi and is there described as a dark age full of sin and corruption. Many believe it is the time we are in now. The phrase has its origins in a post on 4chan where they said, I am paraphrasing, "I know it is bad times, but you got to learn to embrace being the bad guy. You got to surf the Kali Yuga.".

This then was adopted and spread on 4chan. And later it was taken up by alt-right groups and spread all over made into a lot of alt-right merchandise. And I would say that being on 4chan for years and "missing" this phrase and how alt-right has adopted it. I would say the odds of that are about the same as spending years watching streams on Twitch and missing phrases like "PogChamp" or "KEKW".

Knowing this and then going ahead with that name, to me, is just signaling ignorance. And that is something that 4chan members would hate. Being part of the ignorant masses. And there are some other things as well that point back to members purposefully choosing this name. But I think these arguments are basic and easy to grasp for anyone. And pretty damming and on their own.

The BAYC logo

It is an uneven circle, featuring a skull of a monkey with the text Bored Ape Yat Club circling the skull and the letters BA and YT to the left respective to the right of the skull. The skull and text are white and the circle is black. Let us take a look at it.

Looks ok, right. Nothing strange there. What about if we put it side by side with another logo as a way to compare them.

Both the layout and overall design scream similarity. And if we count the number of teeth on both skulls we see that they both share 18 teeth. And why is that significant. Because with alpha numeric code 18 stands for the 1st letter and the 8th letter in the alphabet, more commonly known as A and H. The initials of one Adolf Hitler. And alpha numeric code is very popular in alt-right groups, along with 18, for obvious reasons.

But alpha numeric code, that sounds far-fetched. Codes and ciphers how can you know that they are into these sorts of things. Well if you look at the game they made it becomes clear that they love this sort of stuff, as that is basically all the game is. Highly complex codes and ciphers.

The logo also shares a general layout, design, and color scheme. Both logos also share an uneven edge. And an uneven edge is very uncommon in circular emblems. But it is just coincident, right? Sure it can be. But what do Yuga Labs say?

It’s a ‘Yacht Club’ that’s actually falling apart and smack dab in the heart of the Everglades. As such, it needed an appropriately grimey, intriguing logo. We went with an ape skull to help convey just how bored these apes are — they’re ‘bored to death’. -Yuga Labs offical staement

They have also provided a letter to the designer of the logo where they share reference pictures and their inspiration behind the logo.

Reading their letter and looking at the reference pictures they provided, I have to say the logo they ended up with. I am hard-pressed to see how that was the result of the reference and background info they gave. And the skull is the result of the monkey being bored to death. I find that to be even more far-fetched than some of the claims levied against them. And the edges are uneven because it is falling apart. Well if I am being honest if the purpose behind the logo is to convey that the whole place is boring and falling apart, then that is one sh*ty logo. 

Not to mention the fact that it is looking very much like the 18th and the last teeth of the monkey skull just look like it is added on for the soul porous of the number being 18th. At least in my book the skull would look much better and nicer without that last little thing added to the very left end. And why not have the skull missa teeth or two, if the idea is to convey the place is falling apart. And if the apes are so bored all the time I do not think they brush their teeth every day as they should either.

To me, this is very much the same case as with the Washington Redskins. If you have a name with derogatory slang for an ethnic group in it. Then change it. And if you have a logo that looks like the Waffen Totenkopf just change it. It is not like the company is particularly old and can try and claim "tradition" like the owner of the Washington Redskins tried to do. And by the way, that is a shitty argument, just in case you were wondering. IT is akin to "I am not racist because I have a friend who is black".

Why refuse to hear any of the criticism?

By the look of things, BAYC is trying to brush off every criticism levied at them either by shallow arguments or by simply ignoring the criticism. They also try and claim "it is just coincidental". Sure, once maybe twice I can buy. But if you can make a video over 1 hour long where you highlight thing after thing. Then it switches pretty fast from coincident to purposely designed. 

Especially if you think about it from a 4chan perspective. Making "normies" buy art with hidden racist messages would be one of the ultimate trolls you could pull off.

But what is up will all the defensive stuff then, if they trolled people why not just say so? Well, you now have added the magical ingredients of a ton of money to the mix. And that drastically changes everything.

However, it can also be that they are just not used to receiving feedback or criticism. As if you have the mindset that you are better than everyone else. It is almost impossible to accept that others have a valid critique of your work. I do however think that this is extremely unlikely. Not because I think they would be able to accept criticism, but because of the sheer number of things that all point in the same direction.

This is where I will end my look into the BAYC alt-right/NAZI sh*t storm. If you do not think that the things I brought up are enough to convince you I would highly recommend watching the video, taking a look at the website, or why not do both. And if you can still say "it is just coincidences" after that...

All I have to say to that is you should look into Occam's Razor.

What is your thought on this thing, is this enough to cause you to sell your BAYC NFT if you own one? Or is money just money no matter if it is NAZi Gold or not? Yea that was probably an unfair way of putting it from me, sorry for that. Please share your thoughts in the comment section down below.

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