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Shonen Jump Learns That When You Tease at an Upcoming Announcement, You Gotta Tell Us, Upfront, That It’s Not NFT Related

That was quite the Shonen Jump scare...
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Briana Lawrence
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Published: Jan 19, 2022 09:58 am

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It’s not uncommon for a company to tease at an upcoming announcement in an attempt to hype us up before the big reveal. Shonen Jump did so yesterday in preparation for some sort of announcement today, promising something exciting on the horizon.

If this were any other timeline, fans would be speculating if it were One Piece related since the picture they used is of Luffy. One Piece did just celebrate its 1,000th episode last year, so it wouldn’t be too farfetched to think that this new way to show your love toward Shonen Jump would enlist the help of the Straw Hat Pirates.

Or maybe they just used Luffy because he’s popular and the announcement would be related to Shonen Jump itself.

Surprisingly (not really, because I had the same thought as everyone else) most of the assumptions about the announcement were sour because everyone jumped straight into thinking that Shonen Jump was gonna start releasing NFTs.

Is it NFTs?

No.

That response came a few hours after the initial post and, as we can see, it has a lot more likes than the announcement of the upcoming announcement. By over 50,000 – insert gif of Vegeta breaking his scouter.

Anime fans celebrated throughout the digital streets of Twitter. I’m not exaggerating, there were a LOT of sighs of relief, so many that I dare say this “not NFTs” news is gonna trump whatever the actual news is. If I were the Shonen Jump social media manager, I’d callback to this moment when saying what the real news is.

Shonen Jump went on to say how they had no idea why fans would even assume that was the news they’d be sharing (news that should be revealed later on today).

Why did everyone think it was gonna be NFTs?

Honestly? Because more companies (and people) that hit close to the geek community are coming out in support of them.

At the beginning of the year, for example, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda came out in support of NFTs. Kickstarter announced future plans with NFTs back in December, and over the weekend, many voice actors took to social media to distance themselves from NFTs after Troy Baker made this tweet:

And followed it up with this thread:

This thread came after everyone dragged him for 1) getting into NFTs, 2) that “you can hate or you can create” comment, and 3) it was revealed that the company had stolen voice work it’d been using.

The company actually admitted to doing it but has since deleted the tweets. However, as we all know, screencaps are forever, and Eurogamer has the whole story right over here.

According to Eurogamer, 15.ai is a popular non-commercial text-to-speech service that’s free to use. If you go to the creator’s Twitter account, their pinned tweet explicitly states that they have no interest in NFTs, so the theft in this case is a double dose of “the audacity.”

I say all of this to explain why fans were so quick to believe that the Shonen Jump announcement would be NFTs. Lately, that is what geek-centric announcements have been from major brands or known names in the industry. The geek community is full of people who, frankly, continue to be harmed by the push of NFTs. While you’ll see many comment on the environmental damage, you’ll see just as many talk about the absurd amount of art theft that goes on with NFTs.

The situation with 15.ai is just one of many stories where creatives talk about their work being stolen and turned into an NFT.

So yeah, that’s why so many (myself included) saw the Shonen Jump tweet and prepared for another Square Enix moment, Kickstarter moment, Konami selling a Castlevania NFT for $26K moment (no, I’m not joking), Stan Lee moment (yes, really), just so many moments that inevitably lead to a collective eye roll of disappointment.

Brands, take note: when you tell us you’re gonna tell us something, be sure to note that it’s not NFT related. We need that extra sense of security right now.

(Image: Tove Jansson/Shonen Jump Twitter screencaps)

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Image of Briana Lawrence
Briana Lawrence
Briana (she/her - bisexual) is trying her best to cosplay as a responsible adult. Her writing tends to focus on the importance of representation, whether it’s through her multiple book series or the pieces she writes. After de-transforming from her magical girl state, she indulges in an ever-growing pile of manga, marathons too much anime, and dedicates an embarrassing amount of time to her Animal Crossing pumpkin patch (it's Halloween forever, deal with it Nook)
twitter Link to www.magnifiquenoir.com