NFT and the Future of Digital Content

PerttiA

Mada said:

A blink of the eye :D

I forgot to mention smartphones which would be 2007 when the Iphone made its appearance so we're about due for new tech :)

I don't use anything with the term "smart" in their name and/or description, the 10 year old Nokia with real (working) buttons still fuctions a week without recharging, fits in my front pocket without causing discomfort and does everything I need from a phone

Ruphuss

actually its 50% of the world population owning a smartphone

thats not everyone

i am one of the other 50%

Mada

That's fair if you don't want to own one :) lots of valid reasons why people don't want to own a smartphone... doesn't mean that you don't want anyone else to have one either.

I'm an active member in the VR community and its been interesting to see how things are developing, its exciting to be part of a fast moving industry - and I suspect NFTs is going to be a part of that, especially for social VR. So I'm going to keep an open mind for about NFTs and the future of digital content for now. :)

plasma_ring

Mada said:

That's fair if you don't want to own one :) lots of valid reasons why people don't want to own a smartphone... doesn't mean that you don't want anyone else to have one either.

I'm an active member in the VR community and its been interesting to see how things are developing, its exciting to be part of a fast moving industry - and I suspect NFTs is going to be a part of that, especially for social VR. So I'm going to keep an open mind for about NFTs and the future of digital content for now. :)

I would personally love to have NFTs be something useful for artists. I really don't care about the whole "You're paying something for nothing!!" part of it; if rich folks want to redistribute their wealth to artists so they can show off an Original NFT, I think that's great. A lot of us online are already exchanging money for stuff other people think is fake that provides real emotions. Both my day job and my art job involve the exchange of real money for virtual fashion.

There are two aspects of NFTs that make it impossible for me to support them, or to support any artist currently involved with them:

• Crypto is horrible for the environment (not just NFTs) and will only get worse. There is no incentive for it to get better because the highest-value currencies can't just easily switch to green energy sources and in the meantime there's so much money involved that people are super motivated to justify participating in it now by telling themselves it'll get better. It won't get better until someone forces it to. Nobody involved cares more than they care about the money.
• People who go all in on crypto and NFTs are displaying cultlike behavior because the people deep into it use cultlike recruitment tactics. A common way for artists to get into it is that they're approached by someone in a career making position--more established artists, or a wealthy "longtime fan"--and encouraged to make an NFT. They're immediately hyped up and lovebombed by accounts 100% dedicated to NFT and/or crypto stuff, which also defend them when they get backlash from their actual followers. Now you have someone who has alienated significant numbers of their real fans and is motivated to keep their new NFT buddies by getting deeper into it and recruiting other artists. Nobody needs to deliberately set this stuff up as a pyramid scheme; it's naturally a system where if it doesn't immediately pay off for you (or if it does, and people are criticizing you and making you feel bad) the alternative to believing you'll eventually be vindicated and getting more people into it to validate you is to admit you made a costly, greedy choice and got bitten for it. 

Most artists are not being introduced to NFT selling with a legitimate goal of helping them make money, although some will. They're meant to boost its profile. NFTs have probably tipped cryptocurrency into never-going-away territory by legitimizing it as a way to make obscene money, which I think was the goal. And I can guarantee there's no good reason for people rich enough to buy and sell the state of Arkansas to be jovially tweaking an alternative currency into place as a lark. 

If the whole idea was really to help small artists, where are all these rich collectors when independent artists sell their own work? That's an established market where you can give real money to people directly and get custom work. You can even collect premade character designs and there's a whole system where, despite the fact that anyone can just save and use it if they want, there is a social agreement that the buyer owns the original and that contributes to the value of the piece. I'm supposed to believe someone who owns property in LA would pay me thousands of dollars for a certificate of authenticity on the same artwork they wouldn't commission? That Extremely Online rich people are just super in love with art and supporting small artists after "lmao, porn commissions to scrape by on rent" has been part of internet culture for over a decade? Sure. 

It sucks! This could be good, virtual avatars and the internet as an MMO could be good--that's basically been my Dream Internet since the 90s! It's just irrevocably tainted for me by knowing the people pushing it hardest actually have enough money to shape the future of the world with a "Let's just do it and be legends, man" level of unearned confidence in their own wisdom. When industries move fast, it typically means nobody is stopping to think about collateral damage. 

allenfesler_2df6b6e506

plasma_ring said:

[snip]

It sucks! This could be good, virtual avatars and the internet as an MMO could be good--that's basically been my Dream Internet since the 90s! It's just irrevocably tainted for me by knowing the people pushing it hardest actually have enough money to shape the future of the world with a "Let's just do it and be legends, man" level of unearned confidence in their own wisdom. When industries move fast, it typically means nobody is stopping to think about collateral damage. 

It's called 'pump-n-dump' for a reason. The ones that started it and have the bigest stake want to do everything they can to make others want to buy into it. So you have a couple of them 'selling' an NFT for sixty-nine million to each other to make others think they want/need in as well. But most of us don't have patrions or friends with millions to throw at 'tokens' for links to something they won't actually own. When we shine a light on things we find the tokens cost real money - as does transfering that token, the only ones certain to make money at the ones selling you the cyrpto coins/NFT/transfer (and if your token doesn't sell for enough, you lose money.)

Talk it up big as far as it will go, then sell off what you can before the bubble pops. Then if it doesn't disappear you buy some of it back cheap and start talking it up again - there are always new fool to ride the next bubble (until it too pops!)

namffuak

What concerns me most are the popular press articles that conflate the purchase of the NFT with the purchase of the rights to the object it points to.

While I don't condone the action, I'd rather like seeing the resulting consternation if that $69 million NFT ended up pointing to something else as a result of a server hack - something like a full-on face of Mickey Mouse.

allenfesler_2df6b6e506

namffuak said:

What concerns me most are the popular press articles that conflate the purchase of the NFT with the purchase of the rights to the object it points to.

While I don't condone the action, I'd rather like seeing the resulting consternation if that $69 million NFT ended up pointing to something else as a result of a server hack - something like a full-on face of Mickey Mouse.

The popular press is owned by people more interested in making money(ads) than they are in telling the truth about anything. So if it will attract eyeballs it goes up!

kyoto kid

plasma_ring said:

Mada said:

That's fair if you don't want to own one :) lots of valid reasons why people don't want to own a smartphone... doesn't mean that you don't want anyone else to have one either.

I'm an active member in the VR community and its been interesting to see how things are developing, its exciting to be part of a fast moving industry - and I suspect NFTs is going to be a part of that, especially for social VR. So I'm going to keep an open mind for about NFTs and the future of digital content for now. :)

I would personally love to have NFTs be something useful for artists. I really don't care about the whole "You're paying something for nothing!!" part of it; if rich folks want to redistribute their wealth to artists so they can show off an Original NFT, I think that's great. A lot of us online are already exchanging money for stuff other people think is fake that provides real emotions. Both my day job and my art job involve the exchange of real money for virtual fashion.

There are two aspects of NFTs that make it impossible for me to support them, or to support any artist currently involved with them:

• Crypto is horrible for the environment (not just NFTs) and will only get worse. There is no incentive for it to get better because the highest-value currencies can't just easily switch to green energy sources and in the meantime there's so much money involved that people are super motivated to justify participating in it now by telling themselves it'll get better. It won't get better until someone forces it to. Nobody involved cares more than they care about the money.
• People who go all in on crypto and NFTs are displaying cultlike behavior because the people deep into it use cultlike recruitment tactics. A common way for artists to get into it is that they're approached by someone in a career making position--more established artists, or a wealthy "longtime fan"--and encouraged to make an NFT. They're immediately hyped up and lovebombed by accounts 100% dedicated to NFT and/or crypto stuff, which also defend them when they get backlash from their actual followers. Now you have someone who has alienated significant numbers of their real fans and is motivated to keep their new NFT buddies by getting deeper into it and recruiting other artists. Nobody needs to deliberately set this stuff up as a pyramid scheme; it's naturally a system where if it doesn't immediately pay off for you (or if it does, and people are criticizing you and making you feel bad) the alternative to believing you'll eventually be vindicated and getting more people into it to validate you is to admit you made a costly, greedy choice and got bitten for it. 

Most artists are not being introduced to NFT selling with a legitimate goal of helping them make money, although some will. They're meant to boost its profile. NFTs have probably tipped cryptocurrency into never-going-away territory by legitimizing it as a way to make obscene money, which I think was the goal. And I can guarantee there's no good reason for people rich enough to buy and sell the state of Arkansas to be jovially tweaking an alternative currency into place as a lark. 

If the whole idea was really to help small artists, where are all these rich collectors when independent artists sell their own work? That's an established market where you can give real money to people directly and get custom work. You can even collect premade character designs and there's a whole system where, despite the fact that anyone can just save and use it if they want, there is a social agreement that the buyer owns the original and that contributes to the value of the piece. I'm supposed to believe someone who owns property in LA would pay me thousands of dollars for a certificate of authenticity on the same artwork they wouldn't commission? That Extremely Online rich people are just super in love with art and supporting small artists after "lmao, porn commissions to scrape by on rent" has been part of internet culture for over a decade? Sure. 

It sucks! This could be good, virtual avatars and the internet as an MMO could be good--that's basically been my Dream Internet since the 90s! It's just irrevocably tainted for me by knowing the people pushing it hardest actually have enough money to shape the future of the world with a "Let's just do it and be legends, man" level of unearned confidence in their own wisdom. When industries move fast, it typically means nobody is stopping to think about collateral damage. 

...you hit the proverbial nail on the head with the parallel between the NFT/Crypto crowd and cult behaviour.   

jjmainor

With all the hate for these things, is there anyone here minting their own NFTs for their own work?

Sevrin

Mada said:

That's fair if you don't want to own one :) lots of valid reasons why people don't want to own a smartphone... doesn't mean that you don't want anyone else to have one either.

I'm an active member in the VR community and its been interesting to see how things are developing, its exciting to be part of a fast moving industry - and I suspect NFTs is going to be a part of that, especially for social VR. So I'm going to keep an open mind for about NFTs and the future of digital content for now. :)

NFTs in their current form are not about digital content; they are about money. 

BlueFingers

Also interesting, not directly about NFTs, but certainly relevant background information: Could digital currencies put banks out of business?

Is there a way to find out to find how much the enviromental impact is of a collection of NFTs from a certain origin? I thought there was, if any one can point me in the right direction I'll seen if I can find out, very curious about this.

Torquinox

People should take special note of the part about servers getting hacked. I'd also add in, hard drives can be lost or can fail, passwords can be forgotten. People have lost digital coin fortunes in all those sorts of mishaps. And re: NFTs, as has been noted in this thread, the links have a nasty habit of dying. It's all a house of straw. But even without that, it's reasonably well known that the existing fractional reserve banking system is unsustainable and expected to collapse at some point. It's not reasonable to expect a state of constant, seemingly infinite grouwth within a finite system.

kyoto kid

...anything is vulnerable to hacking.  Just yesterday there was a report of a ransomware hack against a major petrol supply pipeline on the east coast that caused it to be shutdown.  It isn't certain when it will be in operation again which is leading to concern over higher petrol prices in the region for the upcoming holiday.

namffuak

Sevrin said:

Mada said:

That's fair if you don't want to own one :) lots of valid reasons why people don't want to own a smartphone... doesn't mean that you don't want anyone else to have one either.

I'm an active member in the VR community and its been interesting to see how things are developing, its exciting to be part of a fast moving industry - and I suspect NFTs is going to be a part of that, especially for social VR. So I'm going to keep an open mind for about NFTs and the future of digital content for now. :)

NFTs in their current form are not about digital content; they are about money. 

And illustrating P.T.Barnum's statement that there's a sucker born every minute.

Mada

That's why its good to educate yourself before jumping in feet first :)
I'm still listening to both sides of the argument, haven't made my mind up. If I end up being a sucker its on me, but I'll be an educated sucker at least lol

jbowler

Alistair Dabbs' take will be amusing to some, annoying to others; https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/something_for_the_weekend/

Mada

Fun read :) he nailed it on the head

Luciel

Torquinox said:

People should take special note of the part about servers getting hacked. I'd also add in, hard drives can be lost or can fail, passwords can be forgotten. People have lost digital coin fortunes in all those sorts of mishaps. And re: NFTs, as has been noted in this thread, the links have a nasty habit of dying. It's all a house of straw. But even without that, it's reasonably well known that the existing fractional reserve banking system is unsustainable and expected to collapse at some point. It's not reasonable to expect a state of constant, seemingly infinite grouwth within a finite system.

There's also the more than likely at some point with all this (and associated junk), the constant chance that it will be either deemed illegal, heavily regulated and or heavily taxed at some point. It mostly flies under certain radars due to being minor (kind of like ecommerce and online gambling did), but the bigger it gets the more likely there will be a big crackdown on it. Which will likely greatly decrease the value if not remove it entirely

Torquinox

kyoto kid said:

...anything is vulnerable to hacking.  Just yesterday there was a report of a ransomware hack against a major petrol supply pipeline on the east coast that caused it to be shutdown.  It isn't certain when it will be in operation again which is leading to concern over higher petrol prices in the region for the upcoming holiday.

That's a fact! 

Torquinox

Luciel said:

Torquinox said:

People should take special note of the part about servers getting hacked. I'd also add in, hard drives can be lost or can fail, passwords can be forgotten. People have lost digital coin fortunes in all those sorts of mishaps. And re: NFTs, as has been noted in this thread, the links have a nasty habit of dying. It's all a house of straw. But even without that, it's reasonably well known that the existing fractional reserve banking system is unsustainable and expected to collapse at some point. It's not reasonable to expect a state of constant, seemingly infinite grouwth within a finite system.

There's also the more than likely at some point with all this (and associated junk), the constant chance that it will be either deemed illegal, heavily regulated and or heavily taxed at some point. It mostly flies under certain radars due to being minor (kind of like ecommerce and online gambling did), but the bigger it gets the more likely there will be a big crackdown on it. Which will likely greatly decrease the value if not remove it entirely

Good points here, too. It's likely the big players have all this well-scouted and will hide the money in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.

Subtropic Pixel

I am NOT going to read almost 400 posts just to get caught up.  So I'm going to make up for it by responding to an old post, and we'll call it even.  No, I don't care if this one has already been responded to.  I have a headache and feel yuckysick and grouchy this evening. 

Deadly Buda said:

Here are some alternative thoughts about NFTs:

1. I think the "resource/energy hog" argument isn't that great. Any human or animal activity can be criticized for using energy, and depending on your bias, too much energy.

Hmmm, it seems to me that a simple google search would have disabused you of this notion.

Cryptomining I'm guessing uses less energy to validate economic transactions worldwide than a small town's brick and mortar banks, their connected banks, constructions firms, etc.

But it's worse than that.  A LOT worse.  See this link from the Visual Capitalist.  Link  Here's an excerpt:

From the Visual Capitalist:

Why Does Bitcoin Mining Require So Much Power?

When people mine bitcoins, what they’re really doing is updating the ledger of Bitcoin transactions, also known as the blockchain. This requires them to solve numerical puzzles which have a 64-digit hexadecimal solution known as a hash.

Miners may be rewarded with bitcoins, but only if they arrive at the solution before others. It is for this reason that Bitcoin mining facilities—warehouses filled with computers—have been popping up around the world.

These facilities enable miners to scale up their hashrate, also known as the number of hashes produced each second. A higher hashrate requires greater amounts of electricity, and in some cases can even overload local infrastructure.

The way I read the wording in yellow and gold above, we have massively parallel processing being done, with an awful lot of overlapping effort.  All because everybody is racing to complete the same work before the next person. 

How is this not duplicate effort by 5, 10, 100, 1000 or more cryptominers all at the same time.  And only the winner gets the credit and the payment.  Why would anybody design a system of any kind where we have built-in duplication of effort, where N-1 of the effort just simply gets discarded?  Are we TRYING to use up all of our fossil and radiative fuel sources?  Are we TRYING to heat up the world?

Example:  If I have a few million envelopes offering extended car warranties (see what I did there?  ) that need to be addressed and stamped for mailing to every man, woman, and child in Utah, and I want to give the job to 5 unemployed IT workers so that they can afford to move to Florida, I'm still only going to print unique letters for each envelope, and I'm going to make certain that no two envelopes go to the same address with the same contents duplicated, right? 

But if I'm correctly understanding that quote above, then can anybody explain to me why I would pay 5 unemployed IT workers to do the job that could be done in the same amount of time by one worker?  Wow, these extended car warranties aren't going to pay for themselves!  I could give unique pieces of work to each worker and maybe finish the job in 20% of the time, but that seems so...pro common-sense, right?

By contrast, let's look at Folding @ Home (an easy Google search if you're inclined to do something good with your fancy billions of transisters there).  F@H is the distributed processing research project that originated at Stanford University in Connecticut, but has since moved to St. Louis School of Medicine.  F@H uses a server which HANDS OUT WORK UNITS (Work Units is abbreviated to "WUs") to any of thousands of clients who may be connected at any given time.  Once the F@H servers dispatch a WU for processing, that same WU is marked "dispatched" or "out for processing" and will not be dispatched again unless the Work Unit expires before it comes back from the client.

People might be willing to contribute spare cycles to various projects, but why would I jump into the mosh pit of distributed computing and just do the same (exact same) thing that everybody else is doing, with no guarantee that I'll be able to return WUs before anybody else?

There's lots of material out there on how expensive cryptomining really is, and how it's so damaging to the environment.  Sure, some articles try to pass it off as "hydro power is virtually free", but the power grids don't work that way, and if reservoir water levels fall too much, then the water can't turn the turbines with enough force to create electricity in the amound we really need.  Even if low water levels didn't interfere with electricity production, there's no way that I could call my electric company and insist that they send only watts to my house that were made by windmills or solar panels.  Not even if the windmill or solar panel is my own, out standing in the field generating precious watts to run my toaster in the morning.  (inside joke there, lol!)

2. How many digital files have you lost over the years from disk failures? Water or fire damage, maybe you just thought it was a good idea to wipe those 250mb zip discs in 1997 to make more room for your excel files or something... NFTs can go a long way to preserve digital files longer because people care.

None.  Wait, was this a serious question?  Please read my signature and write it on the chalkboard 1000 times before you go home today. 

3. The art can be animated. A plus for Dazzers.

I don't think NFT means what you think it means.

4. It is a way for a person to confirm their support of certain art they hold dear. And being a confirmed holder confirms some status that could be beneficial to the purchaser, artist and public in the long and short run.

5. Everyone collects stuff that other people find silly. Baseball cards, comic books, modern art, cabbage patch kids, beanie babies, etc. This is just another collectible getting its round of hype.

6. NFTs could really be good for Daz artists, so I think Daz is doing a favor to its buyers by getting them more familiar with this marketplace and concept. Sure, the execution could maybe be better, but there are always mistakes with anything new.

I don't really care about any of this.  It doesn't really apply anyway. 

[digression]I used to collect baseball cards, comic books, and coffee mugs.  But my house is too small for collections.  But yeah, I wanted an Al Kaline (pronounced "kay-line") baseball card when I was a kid.  A Willie Horton, Aurilio Rodriguez, Mickey Lolich, John Hiller, or Mark "The Bird" Fidrych card would have also been awesome.  Oh and who were those two at 2nd and Shortstop during my childhood?  They were awesome!  And that dude named Northrup in Right Field; what was his name?

But I always seemed to get cards from National League players who were headed back to the minors, so I became more self-reliant.  I started looking for real things in life and I stopped looking to sports heroes for inspiration. 

But I digress! [/digression]

McGyver

Meanwhile in a small upstate New York town...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/?comments=1

Basically, if people complain you are doing something environmentally unfriendly, buy your own power plant solely to mine bitcoins, so you can prove them right.

Paintbox

A lot of miners feel they are the "little guys" , taking on the big boys of money, but if you read the news like above, you know the big boys will just take over the game. Pump & dumps are already here and will be more frequent and more annoying as time goes by. Crypto is interesting from a tech viewpoint, but it's really in its infancy and should, in it's current iteration, just go away.

It's also six weeks we had NFT given a prominent position in the main menu, which means it's still supported as a Great Thing. I've cut down my spending significantly with the ending of PC+ until it goes away or goes somewhere backstage.

Also I'd love to see the actual numbers or stories of PA's or artists making a buck with this thing, because I can't imagine it being something else than close to zero.

namffuak

And the insanity continues - eBay is looking at selling NFTs.

AbyssalEros

Another reason why cryptocurrency sucks: Chia mining can wreck a 512GB SSD in as little as 6 weeks

BlueFingers

namffuak said:

And the insanity continues - eBay is looking at selling NFTs.

OMG, there goes the enviroment. I suspect that will lower the threshold for people to get into it, with the danger of blowing the bubble up even more. 

kyoto kid

AbyssalEros said:

Another reason why cryptocurrency sucks: Chia mining can wreck a 512GB SSD in as little as 6 weeks

....glad I just got my 2 TB SSD today to for transferring my content library/runtimes to before these become scarce and overpriced like GPU cards. 

AbyssalEros

I am glad that DAZ cured me from spending so much money here. Soon I can afford to buy something of "real value" again that is not a total Q&A disaster.

ColinFrench

kyoto kid said:

....glad I just got my 2 TB SSD today to for transferring my content library/runtimes to before these become scarce and overpriced like GPU cards. 

 

I've had a 4TB SSD on order at Amazon for a couple of weeks -- still no estimate of when they will get more in, let alone a shipping date. Sigh.

McGyver

Announcing the evolution of NFTs…

 

 

VFTs are the natural evolution of Fungible Tokens

VFTs are environmentally friendly*

VFTs transcend the virtual world by occupying physical space.

VFTs are absolutely unhackable

VFTs are impervious to online theft or any sort of theft** 

VFTs are yours forever***

VFTs are unique****

VFTs are completely fungible 24/7/365 

VFTs are affordable to any average dope willing to buy them*****

VFTs can be splorked [1], by anyone, anytime and for no cost******

VFTs can be transferred to anyone, anytime, anywhere*******

VFTs can be purchased using existing currencies********

 

What are VFTs?

 

VFT stands for Very Fungible Tokens. 

Previously, tokens of similar nature were “Non Fungible” meaning they were not interchangeable with identical units of equal value… meaning each unit was technically “unique” despite the fact that anyone could make millions of copies of it and sell these copies as limited stock of a uniquely individual item to people who didn’t understand what words mean. In addition, anyone who “owned” said item could make copies of that item and in most cases anyone could download an unofficial copy of the item anywhere it was being displayed.

In 2021 a group of data scientists and a stray cat, led by the entrepreneur and semiprofessional penguin wrestler known only by his online name “McGyver” were studying the vulnerabilities and technical shortcomings of the NFT phenomenon and concluded it was pretty stupid.

The scientists suggested several highly controversial ideas involving Thermodynamics and Electropolygonal Facsimiles but all of them were too boring and complicated.

McGyver offered a simple solution he’d stumbled across decades ago when he got lost in a NYC museum he mistook for a hospital he was trying to steal cadavers from… Back in ancient times, Egyptian scholars would mash together the stems of an indigenous wetland reed…

They would pound the flattened strips together to form thin sheets of durable material which they would draw pictures of cats on or tear little bits out of to mash up into little balls which they would spit out of reed straws at each other. 
For a brief period of history this idea caught on but was eventually forgotten. 
The concept was undeniably enticing… what if someone could somehow make a similar material out of a more contemporary substance, perhaps made out of trees of turnips? 
Could art be placed on that material and then be sold to people willing to pay for it? 
Was there even a system available that could get these unique items to the customers?

After some level of exhaustive research it was determined that yes… yes there was… and yes it was doable. 
And thus the VFT was born.

 

Behold the very first VFT…

 

This unique item is handmade out of cutting edge, super thin ultra-technological materials… so thin, it’s both flexible and lighter than a standard cockroach. 
Viewed edge-on, it’s almost invisible, yet it still exists in 3 dimensional reality. 
Currently the technology is limited to six inch squares of material, until a method or source for larger pieces can be found.

 

This first unit will go on sale for the low-low-low price of only...

$12,000 USD**********

Upon purchase, it will be delivered by a specially contracted uniformed government employee specially trained in the task of delivering such items and the item will arrive in 6 to 12 weeks… assuming there are no unforeseen events or the item is not lost in transit.

All transactions are non-refundable and items are sold “as-is”, Caveat emptor, etc. 
Offer void where prohibited by law or common sense.

 

All interested parties are to advised to immediately contact McGyver via a summoning circle or in the event that is unsuccessful, a trained psychiatric professional or veterinary assistant.

 

[1] Splork or Splorking is the act of transferring a mental image onto a thin physical substance know as “Papus” using a splorking rod or splorking pen. 
Only skilled splorkists can achieve a proper splorking or use splorking tools. 
Improper use of splorking tools can lead to serious eye pokings or papus cuts and all splorking tools pose a serious but comical choking hazard. 
Splorking training will soon be available for a modest fee for those willing to endure the grueling and dangerous instructional course.

* Except for trees, it’s very bad for trees.

** Unless someone breaks into your house and steals it.

*** Unless you lose it, it catches on fire or rats eat it.

**** Mostly... unless you make xerox copies or photos of them, or hire a good art forger… even a pretty bad one actually.

***** Relatively affordable if you have a trust fund or win the lottery frequently.

****** Provided you know how to splork 

******* Provided it doesn’t get lost in the process or it’s really windy when you hand it to them.

******** Preferably in small unmarked bills.

********* Or whatever you are willing to pay... seriously, the cadaver stealing thing had unforeseen legal consequences.