Fart art. Words don’t do it justice. The video in the article explains it…
“Wake Up, Beeple!,” by Valentina Di Liscia, Hyperallergic, December 4, 2025.
Crypto-backed artworks at Art Basel Miami Beach advance the wealth mechanisms they claim to subvert and make you, the viewer, a participant in the ploy.
A monstrous specimen of art as social commentary takes form when the work in question replicates the mechanisms the artist boasts about subverting, and at Art Basel Miami Beach, in a new section titled Zero 10 backed by the crypto marketplace OpenSea, Jack Butcher’s “Self Checkout” (2025) is its most shameless manifestation.
The installation consists of a checkout counter powered by Stripe terminals that beckon visitors to tap their cards and pay any amount, receiving a printed receipt whose length is proportional to their payment and comes with an “NFT companion.” A ticker above the counter tracks the lucre from an initial value of -$75,000, Butcher’s stated investment in the piece. Read the whole article here.
In the past few months, at least three of Joey Skaggs’ classic performance works have mysteriously resurfaced—-minus the credit, the context, and, of course, the artist himself. From Elon Musk promising to replace judges and juries with his Grok AI, to a TikTok “influencer” teaching New Yorkers how to walk politely, to a national law firm resurrecting The Fat Squad to sell legal services—Skaggs’ art seems to have been reborn through the copy machine of culture.
If plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, Joey must be the most loved man in America.
But underneath the irony lies a serious question: as artificial intelligence devours the world’s creative work—scraping, remixing, and regurgitating ideas at scale—what content ownership will artists be left with? Who gets to claim the joke when everyone’s telling it?
Skaggs has spent his life exposing how easily truth can be twisted, and how the media loves a good story—whether it’s real or not. Now, his work is living proof that in the age of AI and viral mimicry, even satire can’t escape being swallowed whole.
So, here’s to keeping art human, authorship honest, and mischief original.
IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
JOEY SKAGGS,
Plaintiff,
v. MORGAN & MORGAN,
Defendant.
COMPLAINT FOR MISAPPROPRIATION OF UNAUTHORIZED SATIRE AND CULTURAL DILUTION
New York, NY — Artist, satirist, and cultural saboteur Joey Skaggs today filed a lawsuit in the Court of Public Opinion against America’s largest personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan for shamelessly swiping his legendary Fat Squad media hoax and stuffing it into their latest commercial.
For the record, The Fat Squad (est. 1986) was a groundbreaking internationally successful performance art hoax in which comandos were contracted to guard dieters around the clock — tackling them away from Twinkies, escorting them past buffets, and yelling “Drop that donut!” before it hit their lips. It is memorialized in both Andrea Marini’s “Art of the Prank” documentary and Joey Skaggs’ Oral History film series.
Joey Skaggs: The Fat Squad tease:
Morgan & Morgan’s new ad? Blatantly similar — but with all the calories of satire burned off.
THE FACTS
Plaintiff conceived, developed, and performed The Fat Squad decades before TikTok, meme culture, or commercial law firms decided satire was good for business.
On or about August 1, 2025, Defendant released a commercial campaign which bears obvious similarity to Plaintiff’s original work.
Said commercial paraded themes, images, and absurdities long perfected by Plaintiff, without acknowledgment, credit, or the faintest wink of irony.
Defendant thereby committed cultural plagiarism in the first degree, profiting from the very social critique Plaintiff pioneered.
THE CHARGES
Count I:Cultural Grand Theft Satire
Defendant unlawfully adopted Plaintiff’s absurdist concept without permission, thereby reducing art to advertising.
Count II:Unwarranted Enrichment by Unjust Laughter
Defendant profited from a concept that wasn’t theirs, without even a courtesy “tip of the wig.”
Count III:Infliction of Mental Distress
Defendant forced Mr. Skaggs to endure the trauma of watching his biting social critique watered down into a punchline for legal fees. Symptoms include ironic groaning, eye-rolling, and muttering “I did it first” into the void.
DAMAGES DEMANDED
Plaintiff demands compensation in the form of:
A public confession from Morgan & Morgan, aired during the Super Bowl halftime, admitting Joey Skaggs is funnier than their entire marketing department.
Mandatory enrollment of at least one Morgan & Morgan attorney into the actual Fat Squad program, including midnight refrigerator raids and fast-food stakeouts.
Punitive damages: Morgan & Morgan agrees to provide lifetime pro bono representation for Joey Skaggs—and any other artists who suffer theft of creative concepts, whether analog or AI, in perpetuity.
PLAINTIFF’S STATEMENT
“When I created The Fat Squad, it was to satirize America’s obsession with weight control, and consumer excess. To see a law firm steal it and call it comedy? That’s not just plagiarism. That’s malpractice. Artistic malpractice.” —Joey Skaggs, Satirist-Still-At-Large
CONCLUSION
The Fat Squad doesn’t forgive. The Fat Squad doesn’t forget. And if Morgan & Morgan thinks they can out-satire Joey Skaggs… well, let’s just say the Court of Public Opinion is always in session, and the jury is already laughing.
A car company in China has a cartoonish approach to curing road rage.
XPeng has unveiled a quirky new feature designed to subdue angry drivers — though it may also prove to be a distraction.
Suppose you’ve ever thrown a digital banana peel at an opponent in Mario Kart. In that case, you might know the satisfaction that throwing something like a digital shoe or an angry face would illicit.
It was a crime of absurdist proportions, a heist worthy of Maurizio Cattelan himself. In the predawn hours of September 14, 2019, a gang of thieves stormed Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and made off with one of the most famous—and most satirical—works of contemporary art: America, an 18-carat solid gold toilet. The conceptual masterpiece, which once gleamed inside the Guggenheim Museum’s pristine white galleries, was yanked from its plumbing and vanished into the black market, never to be seen again.
“The artist is present, and standing by to take your credit card information.”
A lot has been said about internationally famous performance artist Marina Abramovi?: the woman, the artist, the brand. Though one might consider her various critical acclaim and excoriation to be exhaustive, this overlooks the fact that not nearly enough has been said about how unbelievably gosh-darn dewy her skin is. As a critic, I have often wondered to myself: “Why does she always looking vaguely wet-ish?” Say what you will about Marina Abramovi?, but she is possibly the dewiest living artist.
