Attempting to deface or destroy priceless works of art in the name of climate activism is all the rage right now, but what if you can’t make it to the Louvre in Paris, or the National Gallery in London? Don’t worry, there are still thousands of priceless works of art available online, and Matt Reed has created a simple browser tool that lets you deface NFTs with a simple click.
Matt Reed has made a name for themself by keeping their finger on the pulse of internet trends and then coming up with exactly the right tools the world needs. In early 2020, just as everyone was starting to get swamped with video calls while hiding at home from the burgeoning pandemic, Reed created a digital twin of themselves to sit in on those calls, complete with voice-activated automated responses to make it more convincing. And when the burden of endless video calls became almost unbearable just a few months later, Reed came up with a tragically short-lived tool that could Rickroll Zoom calls, with the goal of convincing co-workers to avoid sending invitations to Rickrollers.
If you want in on the food waste protest action without wasting real food or ending up in jail, you can find the code for Reed’s Protest-O-Matic tool on GitHub. All you need to do is create a new bookmark in your browser of choice, name it the “Protest-O-Matic”, and then paste that small chunk of code into the URL field.
Visiting a website containing your favourite NFT and then activating that bookmark brings up some simple on-screen tools giving you the option to deface the masterpiece with “Liquified Buttery Mashed Potatoes” or “Pie” with every click. The tool works on almost any website — just look what I did to our dear Gizmodo.com — and includes a handy template for where to super glue your hand to the screen so everyone knows you’re very serious about whatever cause you’re advocating for today.