Note: not the pixel in question, but a very good forgery

Yesterday, a Sotheby’s auction for a single gray pixel ended with a winning bid of $1,355,555. I have some bad news for the buyer.

Dear etyoung,

You bought into the hype. You thought, “A single pixel? That has to be the most meta artwork in history. Backed by NFTs? Color me RGB. And also, in. Color me in.” You bid and won and I mean, who can blame you when faced with an artist’s statement like this:

The Pixel is a single pixel statement. It is created to validate.

The Pixel is a digitally native artwork visually represented by a single pixel (1x1). It is a token that signs the most basic unit of a digital image in a traditional global auction house. It is a tiny mark to carry digitally native art to a potential future history.

Those certainly are words.

Here’s the thing, though: you didn’t buy the most meta artwork in history. How do I know? Because I’m one of the creators of the most meta artworks in history, and I have no plans to sell it.

The creator of the gray pixel was pretty clever, but not that clever. Or, maybe just not old enough to know about the early Web. Because a gray pixel, while meta, is not that meta.

Our artwork? It’s also a single pixel, but it’s not a gray pixel. It’s not a pink pixel, blue pixel, or yellow pixel. In fact, it has no color at all because it’s a clear pixel. 100% transparent.

Oh, you haven’t heard of clear pixels? Maybe you’ve heard of spacer gifs? Same thing. See, in the old days, we used clear pixels—er, spacer gifs—to achieve pixel-perfect web pages. The beauty of a clear pixel is that you can make it any size you want with a little bit of HTML code, and it will push everything around just as you like. And, as I said, it’s clear—100% transparent—so no one will know your secret. (Well, unless they know basic HTML and can open Code Inspector.)

Anyway, I wouldn’t sell you my clear pixel. In fact, I wouldn’t sell it to anyone, not for a dollar or ten million.

Instead, I’m giving my clear pixel away for free to anyone who wants it—and I’m not the only one. Sure, my clear pixel isn’t unique, nor is it backed by NFTs. But it is invisible, and everyone knows invisibility is magic. Can your pixel say that? You can download our clear pixel for free below ↓

^^ A transparent pixel ^^

You don’t see it? Right—because it’s invisible. (Check the code if you’re still skeptical.)

You could have had an invisible pixel for free, but instead, you spent almost $1.4 million for a far less interesting gray pixel. Nice work. Your pixel is a one-off novelty. My pixel was one of the billions that literally helped shape the early Web. (Well, until CSS came along.)

Anyway, you could’ve bought microscopes for an entire school district, or fed a city’s homeless population for, what, a week? Instead, you got a gray pixel. I mean, who am I to judge? I’m just a cog in the capitalist drivetrain, and I’m not complaining.

Still, there has to be a tiny part of your brain that was tingling with doubt when you clicked on Sotheby’s Bid button, no? Thinking, what if this whole NFT thing turns out to be a sham? Wondering, “Will people be impressed by my gray pixel? And if so, how will I show it to them? Can I frame it?”

I’m sure you don’t worry about such things. Or maybe you’re just parking your money until you find something even more lucrative to invest in. Anyone with your kind of money is obviously incredibly intelligent.

The rest of us? We’re just pixel pushers. Clear pixel pushers.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published on our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.