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The word 'cheugy' is being sold as an NFT

Don't just be cheugy. Own cheugy.

Daniel Van Boom Senior Writer
Daniel Van Boom is an award-winning Senior Writer based in Sydney, Australia. Daniel Van Boom covers cryptocurrency, NFTs, culture and global issues. When not writing, Daniel Van Boom practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reads as much as he can, and speaks about himself in the third person.
Expertise Cryptocurrency, Culture, International News
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Daniel Van Boom
2 min read
nft

The picture of the word being sold as an NFT. 

 Foundation

Get ready for the most 2021 sentence of all time: "The word cheugy is being sold as an NFT." If you're not extremely online, very few of those words make sense together. Let me try to explain.

Cheugy -- pronounced chew-gee, with a hard g -- is Gen Z slang popular on social media in general and TikTok in particular. It's used to describe things or people that are out of date or trying too hard, particularly if those things relate to millennials. Essentially, it's how young people dunk on slightly less young people. If you're confused, there is an Instagram account, Cheug Life, created for the specific purpose highlighting cheugy stuff. 

Disclaimer: I understand none of this. At 28 years young, I am certainly cheugy. 

Then there are NFTs, or nonfungible tokens. These are certificates of ownership that are minted on blockchains, unchangeable digital ledgers accessible to everyone. You may remember the blockchain from such hits as "Bitcoin" and "Dogecoin." These tokens of ownership can be for anything: digital art, tweets, pictures, GIFs, movies, audio files and, apparently, a word.

"The collector of this 1/1 NFT will own a word," says Gaby Rasson, the 23-year-old creator of the NFT, who's selling a picture of the word as a nonfungible token. "I created the word in 2013. At first, it was just me and my high school friends using it. Fast-forward to 2021 and cheugy has gone viral." 

The beginning price for the auction is 0.1 Ethereum which, with the cryptocurrency surging massively, translates to $396. It will inevitably be bought for more than that, as, alarmingly, there is some precedent for this. Kyle Craven, the guy photographed in the "Bad Luck Brian" meme, sold that meme as an NFT for $36,000. That's chump change, with the "Overly Attached Girlfriend" meme selling for $411,000. 

To be clear, NFTs don't technically allow you to own a word, just a picture denoting the word. Nor do they allow you to own a meme, just a picture of the meme. But it seems in Cryptoland the picture is good enough.

If you're confused, you're not alone. It's a confusing year for cheugs everywhere.