I, like so many of us, was both confused and intrigued by the introduction of the slurp juice ape memes into our social media discourse earlier this week. A cursory dive into its origins at first glance appeared to reveal yet another inane, nonsensical bit of NFT culture perfectly tailored for ridicule over the next two or three days before getting relegated to the online salvage yard. Once there, “multiple slurp juices for a single ape” would get repurposed every so often by those of us far too online for our own good, and that would be pretty much the end of it.
Less than 24 hours later, however, we received the tiny, necessary update on Buzzfeed News’ writeup confirming a sad but all-too-familiar online arc: the account behind the original “slurp juice ape” post had some very unsavory associations. Although publicly denying this, a trail of receipts appears to indicate a far-ranging web of crypto-fascist sympathizers and racist edgelord trolls, all operating on the nihilistic spectrum that makes it difficult to separate bad taste humor from actual violent ideology.
