‘Disaster Girl’ cashes in on NFT of her meme for whopping Rs 3.20 crore

The woman in the viral "Disaster Girl" internet meme has managed to sell her original photograph at a recent auction as a non-fungible token (NFT) for 80 Ethereum, equivalent to a whopping $473,000 (£341,000) or Rs 3.20 crore. The now 21-year-old Zoe Roth turned to a 'meme girl' when she was aged just 4. As a child, Zoe's father Dave Roth captured her photograph during a training exercise at a firehouse, near their family home in Mebane, North Carolina, wherein she can be seen giving an evil smirk that turned hit on the internet.  Zoe's father Dave first uploaded the image on Flickr. Shortly, his daughter's evil smile, which the internet identified as a pyromaniac, inspired the dark-humoured web to photoshop her image into memes until it was popularised worldwide.

Years later, this week, the 'disaster girl' was able to auction a digital ownership certificate (NFT) of her original meme photograph. The bidding opened at $25,000, according to The News & Observer. Zoe, who is now a student at UNC-Chapel Hill and works part-time at an Italian restaurant Il Palio, told the network that when the auction finally came to a close at 4:10 p.m. on April 17 with @3fmusic purchasing the image 180 Ether, or $486,716.40, she was shouting expletives into the air. Every time it would bump up, she said, she just couldn’t believe it was happening.

Zoe’s father was constantly on the phone checking the progress of the auction and was excited each time prospective buyers took the bidding higher. The North Carolina resident had uploaded the image on Flickr in January of 2005, and it had turned a hit with millions of resharing on the MySpace. Roth submitted the same image to JPG Magazine and it was also selected for the February- March 2008 print issue of the magazine. 

Hired manager to convert image to NFT

This past February, Dave had received an email about turning the image into a non-fungible token (NFT). He immediately heeded the idea and hired a manager and a lawyer who would help him create the NFT, to be auctioned later. The 24-hour Foundation auction, @3FMusic updated the sale on its official Twitter handle after it bought the digital version of the image. NFTs, in the likeness of the cryptocurrency, constitute unique codes and can be stored in ledgers or Digi wallets. The non-fungible token (NFT) based art is on the surge with art collectors spending unimaginable amounts of money to secure digital ownership of their favourite works.