‘Doop Snogg’: a Snoop Dogg impersonator is fooling fans at the NFT conference
With NFT sales drastically declining in recent months, NFT startup Fair.xyz decided to spice things up by hiring a Snoop Dogg impersonator to trick people into an NFT conference – and it worked. Here’s why.
Snoop Dogg-look-alike debuted at the NFT.NYC conference in Times Square in New York City on June 21, arriving in a rented Cadillac Escalade SUV with a mustache glued on and accompanied by a fake security guard. Using the alias “Doop Snogg”, the famous rapper from Long Beach, California, received the celebrity treatment when fans fell for his disguise and asked for selfies with him. Although apparently coincidental, the trick was part of a very specific mission from Fair.xyz to call out the occurrence of fake counterfeits in the NFT industry.
For many fans, it probably made sense that Snoop Dogg would attend an NFT conference, after the rapper publicly shared on May 28 that he had purchased two non-fungible tokens made by former Barclays Plc trader, Ovi Faruq. In fact, Snoop has shown a serious commitment to the industry lately, on his part official Twitter profile picture and posts to his verified account for Death Row Records.
Believing that the rapper was actually on the spot, fans showed his guarantee across social media. Unfortunately, instead of being a funny and clever comment on fraud in the NFT arena, the statement was just confusing to most people. NBC News reporter Kevin Collier released and tweet He explained how he was first tricked by the Snoop Dogg dupe and even asked for an interview before he got the real scoop that the imitator was hired to “drum up excitement”. Snoop Dogg even quote-tweeted Collier’s post on Twittersimply subtitles the post “Doop Snogg” for comic effect.
According to a statement sent to Insider, the joke was intended to highlight how bots, hackers, scammers and other fraudsters have become common in the NFT industry. “Doop Snogg was Fair.xyz’s ‘fun way’ to promote their” goal of removing scammers, robots and scams from the NFT site. “
Although it created some buzz, was not stunted enough to make the non-fungible token industry relevant again. As the NFT arena has calmed down in recent months, fraudsters have moved in to cheat buyers and further weaken the already weak reputation of cryptocurrency. Although the Snoop Dogg scheme may seem playful to some, many NFT companies are severely damaged. According to a May 2022 report from the Wall Street Journal, NFT “sales have plummeted 92% since peaking in 2021”, which means that the industry is rapidly disintegrating after NFT trading was nearly $ 40 billion in the market in last year.
NBC News revealed that one of the most prominent NFT marketplaces, OpenSea, has failed to protect the work of many artists, resulting in an open season for hackers to steal assets and even hijack social media accounts to illegally sell NFTs. Corruption even extends to current charges against former OpenSea employee Nathaniel Chastain, who is accused of NFT insider trading. While the Snoop Dogg / “Doop Snogg” trick may have drawn attention to the flaws of the NFT industry (and the gullibility of people in general), there is only a grain of sand in restoring the NFT arena to its former glory.
Danielle Broadway is theGrio’s daily lifestyle writer, as well as screenwriter, journalist and activist from Stockton, California. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from Cal State Long Beach with bylines in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Black Girl Nerds, Allure, USA TODAY, and more.
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