Milady before Musk called the order: the sub-to-extreme "network mental patient"

Although Milady's audience is as subcultural and niche as the "abstract" groups in China, it can catch people and make people have the charm of pushing a mysterious door to see what's going on.

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

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「There is no meme, I love you」

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Milady's rapid rise after Musk's "calling orders"

The market's attention is once again focused on this "old" project that was born in 2021. Due to Milady's rapid rise and rapid fall, many players think that this situation is just Musk's "intermittent shouting order", just like the "wolf is coming" staged by $DOGE again and again, there is no value for analysis - Ma SK "calls for orders", everything can take off, and it is strange that Milady can't rise.

But in fact, Milady's performance in the bear market can be described as very impressive. From the beginning of April this year to before Musk's "calling for orders", Milady's floor price has tripled.

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The floor price trend of Milady from mid-August 2022 to now, Milady has stepped out of the independent market

If you are an NFT player like the author who doesn’t know much about Milady, maybe you, like me, still have an impression of Milady in 2022 when the founder Charlotte Fang fell into the negative news of “racism” and “suicide cult” May. After Charlotte Fang admitted her association with a "suicide cult" and announced her withdrawal from the Milady team, Milady's floor prices fell rapidly.

Such negative news is too heavy compared to Azuki founder Zagabond who has been involved in multiple "Rug Pulls", so that for a long time, the author thought that Milady's story was over, and this project would be annihilated with countless others. Like the projects in the long history of NFT, they are gradually forgotten by NFT players. But Milady not only proved the author's view to be wrong from the price trend, but even in terms of influence, Milady also slapped the author in the face.

Groups that use Milady as their Twitter avatar will give the impression of "Geek" and "deep Degen players", such as Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, Muse DAO developer @surfcoderepeat, etc. Just like when you see CryptoPunks as your avatar, you may subconsciously think that this is an "NFT OG". When you see BAYC as your avatar, you may think it is an "NFT Whale". People"... Maybe the number of people using Milady as a Twitter avatar is not large, but it is not easy for this group to leave a "memory point" for people.

The continuation of the NFT bear market has made us insensitive to many of the past "upward logics". If we look back at "community culture", can we dig out something different? With a strong curiosity about Milady, Rhythm BlockBeats interviewed 3 Milady community members who have a deep understanding of Milady:

• CodyBoy（Twitter：@codeboymadif）
• Tamara（Twitter：@_s0ftmachine）
• JChen（Twitter：@0xJChen）

Milady's "Counter Culture" Spirit

CodeBoy explained his understanding of Milady's spirit in this way:

We are free human beings, but the mainstream domesticates us. We didn't even discuss and pry into the shadowy powers, and get blamed by the morality police for the slightest offense. Everything that is banned seems to be a unique art, Cancelled Culture (cancelled culture), daring to be banned, can help reshape our network spirit (Network Spirituality).

What is Internet spirit? "Anti-idol" should be welcome. In the face of a controversial artist, an open attitude of support is not a sophistry, "she never did these bad things", but "she did, but so what? This thing is still cool", which is the opposite. Idol. Elon Musk, Kayne West are the biggest anti-idols in the world.

CodeBoy's interpretation of Milady's spirit made the author's head quickly pop up a word, "punk". Sid Vicious, bassist for the legendary punk band Sex Pistols, can't play bass at all, but should that matter? Maybe someone will try to convince you how bad the Sex Pistols are on a "musical" level, maybe someone will think you're stupid for liking such a band, but so what? Your favorite band is cool, and so are you.

Sid Vicious is controversial and mentioned in Charlotte Fang's article

Loving a band with a bassist who can't play the bass might just make you "weird" or "stupid" to those around you, but if the person you express your affection for is a "big villain" that everyone despises, you will be under enormous pressure.

JChen introduced me to the first key player in the development of Milady - Martin Shkreli. Martin Shkreli became a "big villain" in 2015 when he raised the price of the anti-parasitic/AIDS drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill. At the time, Turing Pharmaceuticals, which it acquired, was the only manufacturer of the drug, and the production cost of the drug was only $1 per pill.

What made the public even more angry was Martin Shkreli's attitude and what he did:

"You are rich and unkind, and you don't care about the pressure of people who are still in debt to see a doctor", to which Martin Shkreli replied, "Blame me?"

Martin Shkreli also paid $2 million for the one-release album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" by the American hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. However, he's not a fan of Wu-Tang Clan at all and doesn't intend to listen to the album

A female reporter named Christie Smythe fell in love with Martin Shkreli during an interview, so the pressure was transmitted to her through the Internet, and countless people tried to tell her, "You are wrong."

The first wave of Milady's surge in May 2022 was precisely because Martin Shkreli was released from prison and used Milady as his Twitter avatar.

The author does not intend to be entangled in "right and wrong", and the direction of interpreting Milady's spirit does not lie in this. Let's go back to the Cancelled Culture. As Tamara said, the rebellion against the "cancelled culture" is where Milady truly unites the community:

Milady is somewhat like a resistance to the "mainstreaming" of Crypto. "Mainstreaming" means that you need to support certain "mainstream" views. If you hold certain "non-mainstream" views, then you will be "blocked".

When the bad news about Charlotte Fang came out, a lot of people focused on whether Charlotte Fang actually did these things and ended up selling their Milady. At the same time, they ignored the rebellious aspect of Milady's values against "killing culture", which actually made the Milady community stronger.

Indeed, the Milady community has grown stronger. As JChen said, no one cares about those things about Charlotte Fang, "Go to his Charlotte Fang, just have fun." Tamara also believes that this is why Su Zhu used Milady as his Twitter avatar:

The spirit embedded in Milady makes it the medal of the "Controversial Ones". He's extremely controversial, and he's picked up the heat on Twitter. Use Milady as your Twitter avatar, join the ranks of the Controversials, and, well, that's it.

And this is also a major feature of the Milady community. There are all kinds of "strange" people here, just like The Factory (The Factory) created by Andy Warhol, where the "lunatics" flock there and run wild unleash their creativity.

Milady's art style

According to Charlotte Fang's description, the core of Milady's art is the subcultural trend on the streets of Tokyo from the late 1990s to the early millennium.

Is there a familiar feeling? CodeBoy helped me find the Chinese localization counterpart from my memory - "Sha Matt Culture".

"Why does Milady feel empathy at a glance? Friends who grew up in China are familiar with it. In 2000, we were also swept by this trend. Combining with the local became a non-mainstream, occupying the entire QQ space" - CodeBoy

But "killing Matt culture" is not derogatory. CodeBoy said that this is the largest national cultural movement born of the Internet, affecting hundreds of millions of people for 10 years. This trend has not stopped, but has continued to change and develop, and it has also begun to take root in Europe and the United States.

Integrating the Neochibi animation style, plus some "dark colors" (this is also a description from CodeBoy), there is a Milady with a slight "Cult style".

Although aesthetics is a very subjective thing, you may think that Milady is ugly and shoddy, but Charlotte Fang's design of Milady is indeed quite careful. You can refer to Charlotte Fang's understanding of promoting the development of generative PFP financialization through design.

Tamara said that many of Milady's derivative works of art have formed a "genre". Commercial products and commercial art can be integrated. You can accept art as a commercial product and expand art on this basis. This once again brought the author to the point. Although Milady is not the only NFT project that is active in secondary creation, there are very few NFT projects that escape from the "image" itself and are based on "style" re-creation.

Tamara also mentioned a deeper level of "performance art", that is, founder Charlotte Fang used "role-playing" earlier to subvert the "mainstream" by "bluntly speaking out about controversy" on social media. This reminds me of the map "My House" of the old game "DOOM" that I came into contact with some time ago. The author logged into the game forum again 17 years later and released a map commemorating his deceased partner. Because a series of content is too delicate, it is difficult for the author to judge whether it is the real reality background or "performance art"... But it is really immersive.

Conclusion

Milady is unique.

Before Milady, it was difficult for the author to describe "what" the community group of an NFT project was relatively clearly. Although Milady's audience is as subcultural and niche as the "abstract" groups in China, it can catch people and make people have the charm of pushing a mysterious door to see what's going on.

There are many well-made NFT projects on the market, but there are only a handful of projects that can leave a deep and lasting "memory point". Is the difficulty in building the NFT project community really the lack of funds to hold various activities to keep holders engaged? How to connect individuals in the community and enjoy the feeling of being in the community is probably the most difficult and most neglected problem. When the close connection between communities is formed, fission-style re-creation is already a natural display of community power, not the result of trying to create a driving force.

Many players said that NFT projects have lacked new narratives for so long that everyone has lost the desire to invest in new projects. The success of Milady has given us a new perspective to think about the project - the grand narrative of "fashion brand", "game" and even "metaverse" is indeed a path worth exploring. But when we are looking forward to the emergence of new grand narratives, go back to the "vibe" and even "community" that were once regarded as key bonus items to re-examine. It seems that this place is still barren?

Although Milady is not a Free Mint project, from Milady, the author has gained a new understanding of the Free Mint model-the "honesty" represented by Free Mint can be the best narrative for an NFT project. Do you and I both like this picture? So let's start by making a friend, have fun, and see what else we can do with that emotional connection, shall we? Perhaps, the simplest emotional connection is the most solid foundation for exploring infinite possibilities.