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That Pakistani meme which shook the world.

A retrospect of how one humorous meme got sold for a hefty price, how NFTs work, what artists can expect in Web 3.0?

Hamza Mahmood
5 min readAug 31, 2021

On August of 1st, Muhammad Asif Raza went live on Facebook, as he sat with both new best friend Salman Ahmad Naqsh and ex-friend Mudassir Ismail Ahmad, huddled side by side on a couch as the meme they created back in 2015 got auctioned and sold for 20 ETH. Converting the amount into dollars makes it equivalent to $49,000 or PKR 7,898,800. Gratitude was in the air as the three actual friends expressed their love to supporters of the meme watching the live stream.

Final selling price of the “Friendship ended with Mudasir” meme

The “friendship ended with Mudassir” meme is embedded as part of modern Pakistani internet culture and for all the unusual reasons. The quirkiness of the message typed in WordArt and green colored cross on the friend, a symbol marking an end of a friendship. A perfectly imperfect MS-Paint job generated seismic-level buzz that broke the internet.

The meme went viral first in the global south and as it reached western shores, it became a worldwide sensation. Considering the appeal of memes within Gen-Z and…

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Hamza Mahmood
Hamza Mahmood

Written by Hamza Mahmood

Business Solutions @Voiant. Solving problems for humanity through design. I sometimes write for Startup Grind and UX Collective. Twitter: @mahmooyo

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