"It is an eye-watering reminder that the most influential and expensive digital artists at the top of the pyramid might have arrived there because they are very good internet users, not necessarily good artists.
It is crucial for the digital art community, as well as the media that covers it, to recognise that this reactionary, adolescent approach does not have to define digital art. Digital art does not need to be viral or so exhaustingly post-internet. It does not have to be defined or governed by the rules of the internet at all. Cryptocurrency culture has led to a paradigm shift wherein viral fame and shock value, rather than conceptual heft, seem to determine value, and consequently even enabled some artists to present at an Art Basel fair without passing through the traditional art world filters. The implication seems to be that those filters are somehow incapable of vetting digital art and that doing so requires different metrics and channels. Ironically, most digital art that successfully passes through those filters has been much more likely to stand the test of time."
– Sarp Kerem Yavuz
Digital art today has a narcissism problem in: The Art Newspaper, 22 December 2025