Spider Drawing Email Meme Used to Satirize NFT Valuation
Every time I hear people talking about NFTs I think of this
Text content
From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account
Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.
Regards, David.
Overview
This meme is a screenshot of an X (formerly Twitter) post by user @feistybunnygirl. The tweet text states 'Every time I hear people talking about NFTs I think of this', followed by an image of a 2008 email from David Thorne to Jane Gilles regarding an overdue account. In the email, Thorne states he has no money to pay the debt, so he is sending a crudely drawn smiling black spider he values at $233.95 to settle the account. The joke draws a satirical parallel between the arbitrary high value assigned to the low-effort doodle in the email, and the common criticism of NFTs as overpriced digital assets with arbitrarily assigned, often unsubstantiated monetary value.
Origin notes
The core content of the meme is derived from a famous 2008 viral email written by Australian humorist David Thorne, originally published on his website 27bslash6, where he jokingly sent a crude spider drawing to a debt collector to settle an overdue account. This specific iteration of the meme was posted as a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) by user @feistybunnygirl (display name Potato Guard), who repurposed the classic viral email to satirize NFTs, a trend that gained widespread traction during the height of NFT popularity in 2021-2022. The provided source attribution notes this is an X.com meme.
