The Internet has given fame and success to many people over the years. Whether it is a 10-second video or even just a picture, anything that goes viral has the potential to make or break someone.
Zoe Roth, a 21-year-old senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is encashing a picture o taken when she was just 4 years old. The picture was termed as the ‘Disaster Girl’ picture, and now holds a price tag of $500,000, approximately Rs 3.7 crores.
In 2005, Zoe became the face of a famous meme as the little girl who was smiling while a house burned in the background. Her evil smile at such a young age that too at a tragic accident caught everyone’s attention.
A little fact about the ‘Disaster Girl’ picture: That house was set ablaze as part of a training exercise for the local fire department. But since no one was aware that the picture was actually taken while no actual tragedy took place, people used Zoe’s picture to relate to almost every disaster. And now she is selling the original copy of the meme as a non-fungible token (NFT).
Until recently, internet-famous people couldn’t really cash in on their notoriety. This is where NFT comes into play. NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) are a part of the new trend to own digital assets such as music, photos, or in this case, memes.
They’re created via blockchain, like cryptocurrency. ‘Non-fungible’ means one-of-a-kind, something that can’t be replaced.
While talking about the auction and what she plans to do with the money, Zoe said that she would use the $500,000 to fund her college education and donate to charity.
Zoe will retain the copyright over the NFT and will get a 10 percent share every time it’s sold in the future.
