Chillguy (CHILLGUY), one of the most active memes in the past few days, started sliding after evidence its main image was plagiarized. CHILLGUY slid from $0.19 to $0.17 after the news, extending its slide from mid-December.
Chillguy extended its losses, sliding from $0.19 to $0.17 within minutes. The price action followed a series of social media posts showing evidence that the main image of the meme was plagiarized from a booklet distributed in Thailand.
The original image was posted on Reddit, pointing to a single image of the booklet page. The lack of other images or additional information raised doubts about the authenticity of the evidence. Additionally, the versions of the pamphlet are conflicted.
Some claim the published image is from Thailand and was printed eight years ago, while others point to a publication in Vietnam six years ago. Overall, the controversy is creating additional social media hype around the token, where some hype up the plagiarism, while others believe the entire story is to create more FUD around the token.
Reverse image search shows this came from a Vietnamese book 6 years ago
The artist who claimed to have the rights to #chillguy is a fraud
Send the #OGchillguy pic.twitter.com/0aODGjVgAP
— DD (@onchainbookie) December 25, 2024
Previously, Chillguy was considered the original creation of cartoonist Phillip Banks. Banks himself was touchy about using the image, even intending legal action to protect his creation. Despite this, the image was widely used on TikTok and became the avatar of a whole collection of meme tokens.
Up to 30 versions of CHILLGUY or similar tickers exist, spreading on Ethereum, Solana, and Base. The main version was the one affected by the discovery of what social media considers plagiarism.
Is CHILLGUY still the original?
Some doubted the evidence of actual plagiarism, where claims were made that the character was taken from a Vietnamese leaflet created six years ago. Skeptics did not see additional evidence and suggested the image may be AI-generated or manipulated in some way.
Phillip Banks has posted an Instagram image suggesting the suspicions are unfounded and the plagiarism is based on a faked image. Banks has not communicated through X to explicitly refute the claims and rarely pays attention to the meme community.
The story was appealing enough that some of the large influencer accounts repeated the message of suspected plagiarism. Others found evidence that Banks denied all claims, while the image raised red flags of being AI-generated.
Others noted that the booklet is not actually years old, and may be printed after the creation of Chillguy. In fact, when showing the reverse image search, Google indexes the age of subreddits, and not the image itself, which may be more recently printed.
CHILLGUY controversy produces new meme token
According to the original claims of plagiarism, the booklet called the character ‘Relax Boy’. This is just the name that the meme market needed, immediately launching RELAXBOY on Solana. The token graduated to Raydium and is already in price discovery mode.
RELAXBOY was created based on the plagiarism claims, going through a boom and crash just hours after creation. | Source: DexScreener
RELAXBOY is just hours old and has already gone through a 700X rally, followed by a 67% crash. The new asset still has just $232K in locked liquidity, though the token is creating a social media movement. Just hours after the token’s launch, CHILLGUY whales bought in. For traders, the actual verification of the image is less important.
The spreading of images and rumors on TikTok shows the short video social app may also play a big role in the meme token market.
If RELAXBOY was not enough, the market also produced Just a Chill Dog (CHILLDOG), playing on the remixed illustration hype. The new asset is just as risky as RELAXBOY, though both tokens have seen intentions of creating social media movements and rising to a higher valuation.
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