Return of the Crazy Frog
Did you think I was finished talking about the Crazy Frog? Think again!
Back in August, you may recall that I stumbled across a cryptocurrency scam centered around Crazy Frog, an exceptionally irritating creature dating back to the early aughts. It didn’t take much time for me to fall down a rabbit hole trying to discover how or why the little blue fella attracted so much ire from people around the globe. When I finally hit the “publish” button, I thought that there really wasn’t much more to say on the topic.
Regrettably, I am here to inform you that I was very very wrong. There is much more that needs to be said about the revival of the lamentable beast and its recent plunge into crypto-culture.
It all started about 36 hours after I originally posted my abbreviated history on the incredibly annoying animated amphibian here on the ol’ Substack account. Just before turning in for the night, something possessed me to check my Instagram account. It’s a platform I’m not especially active on, and it usually takes me several days to notice any sort of unopened notifications. But that particular evening, the app greeted me with a brand new big fat red “1” superimposed over my inbox.
To my surprise, I found the following from an account going by the name “benfromcrazyfrog”:
Hello, my name is Benjamin and I am writing to you on behalf of the Crazy Frog team. We would like to thank you for your article about our character, we really appreciate your effort in writing down its history. All of us agree you did an amazing job.
Immediately, I was convinced that my partner (coincidentally also named Ben) was playing some sort of prank on me. As mentioned previously, I was aware that there was some activity on the official Crazy Frog Twitter page denouncing the CrazyFrogCoin cryptocurrency1. Technically, the Youtube account released a new upload at the end of 2019 titled “Everyone” (which, at this time, has accrued about 131 million views). But despite knowing all of this and pouring over Crazy Frog lore for hours, it had never occurred to me that an individual – let alone a team of individuals – might actually be out there, dreaming up more for the cartoon character to take on.
So reignited the quest for knowledge concerning the little rascal.
When we first began to talk, I asked Ben what drew him to the cartoon miscreant in the first place. Surprisingly, the viral ringtone campaign that initially shot the frog to infamy never seemed to have made its way to Poland, his home country. However, the Crazy Frog’s 2005 release of ‘Popcorn’ did well on Polish pop charts and hooked him as an impressionable kid. At one point, Ben even got his hands on one of those old Nokia brick phones and used it to listen to the electronic boings and bops of the Annoying Thing. “I remember doing so in a hotel I used to go to with my family, which after all these years, is currently in ruin”, he recalled. In those days, his admiration revolved solely around the music rather than the frog itself. “For the longest time, I barely knew what he looked like”.
The same nostalgia factor that initially endeared Ben to the meme eventually garnered marginal renewed interest on the character’s Youtube channel in 2019, a decade after the project went on indefinite hiatus. After coincidentally submitting some frog fan art to a Facebook group around the time of the uptick, the producer running the page took note of Ben’s interest in the character. One thing led to another, and eventually, he was invited to help launch a Discord server for Crazy Frog fans.
The global team working the project these days can easily be divided into two groups: the producers and animators that have been attached to Crazy Frog from the beginning, and the young recruits that grew up admiring the character. But one thing unites the disparate factions: a belief that the mostly-forgotten meme still has market potential. Even the doldrums of the pandemic did little to slow down the team’s efforts to reintroduce the Frog with “fresh new ideas and outlook”.
According to Ben, comeback plans don’t stop short at music releases. Everything from gadgets to live performances may be on the horizon. But even just a few months back, the social media manager couldn’t have anticipated the catalyst that ultimately has reignited interest in the brand – a head-first charge into blockchain.
For the most part, news of CrazyFrogCoin (and very possibly other Crazy Frog related cryptocurrency antics) largely remained far from the mainstream’s eye. However, the discovery of these crypto scams immediately caused panic among the Crazy Frog ranks. After multi-year efforts devoted to resurrecting the character, there was sudden concern that someone’s get-rich-quick rug pull might compromise the entire brand in an instant.
Pretty soon, the senior members of the production team came up with a foolproof means of combating the issue once and for all. Rather than try to beat back emerging fraudsters, a decision was made to mint an official Crazy Frog NFT in hopes of staving off opportunistic leeches trying to profit off of the image.
Unfortunately, it seems that backlash from the proposed solution may be conjuring a bigger storm than the fairly obscure cons managed to muster in the first place.
You may very well be wondering to yourself why a potential Crazy Frog NFT, of all things, is pissing people off. It’s far from the only entity eager to cash in on the concept. Melania Trump recently launched her own NFT venture, described unironically as “breathtaking watercolor art” that “embodies Mrs Trump’s cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire”. Shaquille O’Neal announced an NFT collection this week, too. Former US electronic retailer Radio Shack has completely rewired itself to cater to mainstream people interested in decentralized finance.
But the fact of the matter is that the more people learn about the ins and outs of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and NFTs, the more it inspires backlash. While the exact mechanics are a bit dense for most, here’s a crude graphic that I drew up to help explain what an NFT actually is:
So, an NFT transaction on the blockchain might look something like this:
Also often included with the code to an NFT is some sort of Certificate of Authenticity or another form of verification that shows that the NFT purchaser is in fact the legitimate owner of the artwork. But let’s not get too caught up in the details. What you need to know is that, much like physical works of fine art, people spend money on NFTs to support a cause/idea/artist or as flat-out status symbols rather than for any utility they might provide.
As mentioned earlier, the entirety of the data on a blockchain network is shared with every individual that’s a part of it. It’s crucial to the operation, as the members of the P2P network essentially act as auditors that make sure that each link in the chain lines up. Growing and maintaining the blockchain expends a tremendous amount of energy, which in turn eats up electricity. Generating all of that electricity involves burning fossil fuel, which (rightfully) concerns environmentalists.
Of course, if you view emerging cryptocurrencies as a means of avoiding the issues that come when a single entity controls all of the money, the blockchain’s consumption may be worthwhile. But what’s important to remember is that NFTs are not a type of cryptocurrency. They simply take up space on the blockchain. And, for the tens of millions that don’t buy into the value of highly volatile cryptocurrencies or a global digital ledger, the expenditure can’t be justified.
And that, my friends, is why the Crazy Frog NFT is pissing people off.
From the get-go, Ben and the other social media managers sensed that the very concept of a Crazy Frog NFT would generate backlash for many of the same reasons that other NFTs generate backlash. The choice to pursue creating an official NFT was certainly an ironic solution, considering the idea spawned after they themselves were victims of NFT-related art theft (a rampant issue with the medium). At the very least, all signs indicated that the junior members of the team felt that an NFT would not appeal to anyone outside of “crypto bros”.
What’s more, while NFTs and the like have brought riches to a few, far more have publically struggled with the fallout that comes with hopping on board such a controversial trend. Back in April, The Annoying Orange made waves on Twitter for a short time due to the particularly poor job it did handling the immediate public outcry.
But once the idea made its way to the head producer2, there was no calling the project off. “We do not want them,” the social media managers clarified on the Frog’s official Discord server, “but they are going to happen”.
It’s murky how the news initially made its way to the general public. The social media team specified that they wouldn’t be mentioning the venture on Twitter at all. But it was only a matter of time until casual internet denizens found out about the NFT partnership between the Frog and Metabeats, “a music based metaverse where artists and fans can interact.” Like clockwork, vitriolic hate emails came piling in. Discord channels, once populated with sporadic niche frog memes and fan art, suddenly started filling up with messages like this:
Unfortunately for this irate poster, there really wasn’t much to respond with. Like yelling and shaking your fist at a violent oncoming tornado, empty threats and insults usually aren’t enough to stop a determined party with power hellbent on profiting off of a cash cow. On the contrary, from the stance of a producer, criticism is welcomed with open arms. Even negative press garners more reactions, more followers. When you’re far removed from the crossfire, hatred is preferable to obscurity.
Meanwhile, on the relative privacy of Discord, the following comments shed some light on the voiceless ‘voices’ that compose the Crazy Frog’s online persona:
On December 13th, the plot thickened. The following image went viral on Twitter, further catapulting the controversy to the eyes of people that hadn’t thought about the Crazy Frog since 2005:
It’s unclear whether the member of the team that liked this tweet truly realized the attention it would garner. Perhaps they simply were taking a page out of the Steak-Umm or MoonPie Twitter accounts, which have been known to use ironic likes and absurdist replies to make people laugh and bolster their respective brands. Maybe the action was a means of silently protesting a decision the social media team had no real control over. It could have been as simple as a slip of the finger. Whatever the case, it triggered an onslaught of reactions. #FREECRAZYFROG began to trend across the platform, which culminated with the account breaking character to release a nine-part thread clarifying the situation at hand.
On a surface level, the whole thing is hard not to laugh at. It’s ludicrous to imagine that someone would wish death upon a fictional character because of their frustration with blockchain technology. But when you peel back just a little bit, there lies a much grimmer reality. The fact of the matter is that the people that moderate servers and maintain social media platforms – in many cases, independent contractors or volunteers lacking the rights of a bonafide employee – are acting as sacrificial lambs. As they’re bombarded with insults and hate mail, a higher-up shielded from the shrapnel is taking delight in the optics this debacle has sparked before ever having launched. Having been in the position (like many Millenials) of a freelance worker at the mercy of a morally ambiguous client, it’s hard not to view the whole operation as a bit ghoulish. At its core, it’s a PR stunt designed to profit off of the Frog’s biggest fans and most vulnerable team members enduring verbal abuse.
Ben eventually stopped answering my questions, and I sent a follow-up message following the nastiness of the viral tweet last week. I never heard back, and I can’t blame him. Whether he’d been advised not to answer or simply grew tired of comments and criticism out of his control, I’ll probably never know. In life, we’re rarely fortunate enough to get stories with clear endings, and the story behind Ben and the Crazy Frog team is another loose end I might never be able to tie with a clean, concise bow.
That said, one thing has changed in the time it took to write all of this out. Initially scheduled to launch on Christmas Eve, it seems that the project launch has been pushed back to an unspecified date in the first quarter of 2022 for unspecified reasons. There’s no way of knowing for sure just how the Crazy Frog NFTs will perform, if they’re ever released at all. But regardless of how it pans out, you can rest easy tonight knowing that even when you think you know it all, the internet’s most annoying amphibian still probably has a few tricks up its sleeve.
If you’re looking to invest your savings in CrazyFrogCoin, I’m afraid that it’s too late to cash in now. The official site is no longer accessible, and social media accounts promoting the cryptocurrency have also been removed. According to Live Coin Watch, after peaking at $26.48 USD per coin, the value rapidly dropped down to $0.12 USD. CFROG screams “rug pull”, the crypto equivalent of a pump-and-dump scheme. In other words, coin prices are artificially inflated and presented as a good investment opportunity for hapless victims, only for developers to cash out and leave backers empty-handed.
While original creator Eric Wernquist still retains some rights to his creation, he has primarily stepped away from the project. Having developed a Frankenstein/Frankenstein’s monster type of relationship with the Frog, the producers making current Crazy Frog branding decisions are working separately from Wernquist for all intents and purposes.