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Bored Ape Yacht Club Under Fire for Potential Racist Imagery

Tyler Irvin

Summary: Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a non-fungible token (NFT) project, is once again under some serious fire for racist origins and imagery, after YouTuber Philip Rusnack attempted to prove just that in an hour-long video on the social media giant. “What if I told you that hidden within Bored Ape Yacht Club was a series ...

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a non-fungible token (NFT) project, is once again under some serious fire for racist origins and imagery, after YouTuber Philip Rusnack attempted to prove just that in an hour-long video on the social media giant.

“What if I told you that hidden within Bored Ape Yacht Club was a series of 4chan trolling, racist imagery and white supremacy dog whistles?” the video narrator asked. “And with a deep understanding of cypher and cryptography the founders of Bored Ape Yacht Club are making a mockery of the entire word. Pulling the strings of the global elite including celebrities, athletes, actors and influencers.”

Rusnack, a YouTuber with over 717,000 subscribers, alleged that the images featured in Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are racist caricatures of Black and Asian people with a deep underlying symbolism in white supremacy. In the hour-long video he stated numerous arguments that he believes are evidence for his claim.

At the end of the video he gave a call to action, asking every celebrity, athlete and influencer that owns apes to burn them. His goal is create such a storm that everyone from Steph Curry to Post Malone to Jimmy Fallon are forced to act.

This video comes roughly 5 months after Ryder Ripps, a top internet artist and internet cultural expert, created a website alleging the same things that Rusnack alleged. Ripps’ website was titled gordongoner.com as an SEO tactic for anyone that looked up Gordon Goner, a pseudonym for one of the BAYC co-founders, online.

Heaps of celebrities own Bored Apes according to Bizinga.com, including Tom Brady, Madonna, Ben Simmons, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone and Neymar just to name a few.

At the time of writing, BAYC’s trading volume has decreased by 6.26% in the last 24 hours via OpenSea, a top NFT marketplace.