LORD VAINWRIGHT

Three years out of the Club. Today I came home. Meet #8144, my forever ape. Do apes still follow apes? 🍌 #ApeFollowApe #BAYC @BoredApeYC @BoredApeGazette

Salt Marble. New collection coming soon. Fine art prints available. troyschooneman.com

Smile like you own the room.

This is my first happy mutant Monday! HMM 🦍🦍 #MAYC

The ape on the left was mine. I bought him in 2021. Four traits. Bloodshot eyes, a grin, a blue sky. Nothing else. Clean. For two years he was my face on X. People knew me by him. Somewhere along the way he stopped being something I owned and became part of how I saw myself. In 2023 I sold him to @machibigbrother. And even though it was a sensible decision at the time, it was one I regretted deeply for years. I'd catch myself thinking about him. Not the price. Him. Then I heard he'd been chosen for a collection of apes curated by Machi who would be made available to museums. I was proud of him, and a little jealous. This month I found the one on the right. Same blue sky. Same grin. White fur, an eyepatch, a diamond in his ear. He looks like my old ape after three years at sea. I knew he was mine the moment I saw him. And then something happened that I never thought was possible. I started to like him more. My first ape was the classic Bored Ape, perfect in his simplicity. This one has a story. The eyepatch says he's been somewhere. The white fur makes him impossible to miss. The diamond says he came back with something to show for it. He's not just bored. He's been through it, and he's still grinning. Which, after three years of wondering why I ever let go, feels about right. Here's what nobody tells you about collecting. You don't just collect objects. You collect versions of yourself. A profile picture becomes a face. A face becomes an identity. And when you sell it, you find out you sold something that was never on the price tag. I don't regret that sale anymore. It sent me looking, and I found my forever ape. It feels so good to be home. 🦍🍌

Day after Halloween. The costumes are back in the box. I never had one. 🦍🍌 @BoredApeYC

Different species. Same family. 🦍🦎 The family portrait just got a little more mutant. Welcoming my new 4T M2 Cheetah to the company he’ll be keeping. @BoredApeYC × @creepz Iconic characters. Incredible people. Two communities I’m proud to call home.

Four traits. All character. M2 Cheetah #18311 is home. That blue backdrop, the cheetah fur, those gloriously deranged eyes. To my eye, one of the cleanest mutants in the entire #MAYC collection. Exactly the kind of ape that makes you fall in love with collecting. 🧪🦍 @BoredApeYC

Find your ape. Find your people. I keep seeing grails find new homes, day after day. Every new arrival is another personality, another story, another reason the swamp is such a special place. The art is iconic. But the humour, creativity, friendships and sheer generosity of this community deserve just as much attention. There really is no club quite like it. Today, my handsome white BAYC with the eyepatch gets his partner in crime: a 4T M2 Cheetah that, to my eye, is one of the cleanest mutants in the entire MAYC collection. Thank you, @kek0x, for making it possible. Proud to give him a forever home. If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, I can’t think of a better time to come meet the club. 🍌 The next grail could be yours. The next welcome will be. 🦍 @BoredApeYC #BAYC #MAYC @WelcomeApes

The word of the year is "maxxing." Aristotle defined virtue as the mean between excess and deficiency. Two and a half thousand years later, we have turned excess into a self-improvement plan. You cannot maximise everything. Whatever you maximise, you pay for with something you stopped counting. Taste is knowing what not to optimise. I have never once looksmaxxed. It was never necessary. 🦍

Inspired by the wonderful @freedznft collection. Check them out!

Yale economist Pascual Restrepo, who has co-written papers with Nobel laureate @DAcemogluMIT, argues in "We Won't Be Missed" that once machines can do the essential work, wages fall to the cost of running the machine that replaces you. So the question of the next decade is not "what do you do?" It is "what do you own?" The aristocracy understood this for a thousand years. They were never paid for their labour. They were paid for their land. Ownership is the only job that cannot be automated. And to be frank, I have always found work a little common. Show me what you own. I'll go first. 🦍🦎🕯️