Zuckerberg’s RoboDog Face Theft
Mark Zuckerberg is having some week! Slashing the funding for the MetaVerse (finally) and now this.
Turned into a robot dog for the amusement of, well anyone who enjoys a billionaire being slapped down to size. Cute though, aren’t they? Aren’t they (the aren’t).
https://youtube.com/shorts/BQ4pBwwILYc?si=V64hC2g7X4S6yZT9
The future has arrived
Beeple’s new installation Regular Animals debuted at Art Basel, and it’s less “digital art” and more “post-modern crypto-performance meme”.
Robot dogs with silicone heads of your favorite tech and art moguls. That means Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, Warhol, Picasso, and more, roaming the gallery floor and pooping out NFTs. Not metaphorically. Literally. There’s a printer (they’re robots, OK?). It’s art. Nobody is entirely sure why, but there’s blockchain.
And yes, there’s a disclaimer on the prints calling them “100% pure GMO-free, organic dogshit originating from a medium adult dog anus”. I never envisioned writing that on a tech blog, but there you go.
Tech Bro Performance Art
Each dog-bot is a commercial quadruped platform loaded with sensors, cameras, and a compact dye-sublimation printer. They’re capturing real-time images of Art Basel attendees and converting them into stylized, AI-processed prints. These are then tied to NFTs, “memories” which are stored on-chain.
For $100,000 apiece (except Bezos, who apparently costs extra or is priceless, depending on your level of late-stage capitalism disillusionment), you too could own one of these artistic surveillance-dogs. Unsurprisingly, they sold out instantly. You can’t make this up.
Surveillance With a QR Code
Beeple claims the whole thing is a statement about algorithmic control, which makes sense I guess? Probably, I don’t know because I’m clearly not the target market for this stuff.
Regular Animals is probably the most honest reflection of 2025 so far. a curated hallucination of reality, served up by robots wearing the faces of men who already control your online life.
Silicon-Faced Dogbots are The Natural Evolution of Tech
The line between parody and product has now officially disintegrated. It’s not just that Beeple made a robot with Elon Musk’s face. It’s that people saw it, nodded, and went, “Yeah, I’ll take one”.
Honestly, I’ve worked for tech leads who would have tried to get this into a sprint. I’ve seen features built because someone’s friend on Twitter said it would be cool. This is just that impulse with more silicone and less dignity.”
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for someone to review my pull request from Tuesday. I need to get it in, come on guys.
Image: Art Basel
This is Where We’re Headed
If the NFT boom taught us anything, it’s that the absurd will always find funding. Beeple knows this. Regular Animals is both a self-own and a cynical flex. It’s the digital equivalent of Banksy shredding his own work, only with more dog poop and less subtlety.
And while we’re at it, can someone explain why all the good satire is being built by millionaires? I guess it’s easier to make fun of late-stage tech capitalism when you’re profiting from it.
Conclusion
We’ve been Snapped, Tokenized, and Excreted by the industry.
The next time a recruiter tells you their company doesn’t use AI, send them this article and ask how long until your stand-up is replaced with a four-legged Warhol-Bot that critiques your commit history and poops out NFTs of your facial expressions.
It’s not the dystopia we were promised. It’s weirder. And Beeple’s already made money off it.
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper.
The Secret Developer has never created art that required a printer up an animatronic dog’s backside. Not yet anyway, next week’s planning could involve anything.