SNL Tells American Viewers what NFTs Are – via “Eminem” & “Janet Yellen”

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 2 min read

The long-running American comedy show Saturday Night Live has attempted to answer the question on many non-crypto people’s lips: “What the Hell is an [non-fungible token] (NFT)?”

Source: A video screenshot, Youtube/ Saturday Night Live

In a three-minute-plus sketch aired yesterday, the popular show went to impressive pains to explain how NFTs are built on blockchain protocols, their unique nature – and even contained a short explanation of what distributed ledgers are, in addition to a number of gags.

The music-heavy sketch featured the comedienne Kate McKinnon playing the American Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen addressing a bored-looking class of young economics students.

Fellow comic Pete Davidson played the role of a crypto-keen student dressed as the rap star Eminem in the iconic music video for the 2002 hit “Without Me.”

And from here, the sketch took a distinctly Eminem-themed turn, with three comics taking it in turn to rap about the tokens, referencing a number of celebrities and characters from cultural franchises that have been immortalized as NFTs of late.

And the sketch ended with a surprisingly bullish “Yellen” inviting the trio to join her at a UFC event. The image of them walking away was then frozen as a snapshot and the quartet was then superimposed onto the pedestrian crossing in London’s Abbey Road, made famous by The Beatles on the front cover of the 1969 album of the same name.

This image was then seen accruing sky-high bids on a mock NFT auction platform.

SNL typically has a viewership of between 9-10 million, but per Popculture dipped to a seasonal low for the March 28 episode. However, there are signs that the NFT-themed skit may have outshone the popularity of the rest of the show: The official SNL YouTube video of the sketch already has more than three quarters of a million views.

And it looks like it helped to increase interest in NFTs, according to Google data.

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