It’s an odd time for celebrity endorsements. Famous people have been lending their names to products (and making extra dough) since advertising began, but a couple new, bizarre ones have been turning heads. First there was AMC’s expensive ads featuring Nicole Kidman beckoning people back to movie theaters. Now there’s Matt Damon shilling for one of the most questionable products in existence: cryptocurrency.
Matt Damon doing a crypto ad. Jesus Christ does he not have enough money already pic.twitter.com/mS3tUgJ6HT
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 3, 2022
The ad finds the actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter strolling through a white-walled lair-of-sorts that kind of looks like the teched-up version of the Batcave from Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. “History is filled with almosts,” Damon crows, “with those who almost adventured, who almost achieved, but ultimately for them it proves to be too much.” He then points to those who did the unthinkable: mountaineers, the Wright brothers, astronauts, and, uh, people about to make out in a nightclub.
What exactly is Damon selling? The ad saves that for the end: It’s for cypto.com.
Given that crypto has attracted thieves, that it can have troubling glitches that make people think they’re briefly trillionaires, people were primed to slam Damon for hopping on-board. Some dragged him for not only shilling for crypto but also comparing those involved with it with history’s greatest innovators.
saddest thing about Matt Damon's macho-baiting crypto pitch where the viewer must ACT NOW or he's a weak pussy is that this is a top 3 classic pitch all financial schemes have used to goad men into forking over their paltry savings. Nothing has changed in 150 years
— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) January 3, 2022
There isn’t enough yuck in the world to describe Matt Damon advertising a Ponzi scheme.
pic.twitter.com/np28O8mlHB— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) January 3, 2022
Matt Damon talking about let’s go into the future like didn’t you just stop saying the F word last year 😭😭 https://t.co/njXkfj70FK
— Shelagh Dolan (@shelaghdolan) January 3, 2022
This commercial where Matt Damon compares buying $5 in ElonAssCoin to the Wright Brothers inventing flight or astronauts exploring space really hypes me up pic.twitter.com/8fOzCc46K0
— John W. Rich (Wealthy) (@Cokedupoptions) December 31, 2021
This is the most dogshit thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. For sure Matt Damon, Landing on the moon is exactly like investing in a ponzi scheme. pic.twitter.com/6ELTM79Vdr
— matt (@TheCursedGoon) January 3, 2022
https://twitter.com/CogNerd/status/1477674285791531008
Others just made fun of him.
MATT DAMON [striding through a futuristic room]: History is filled with brave men who spent $378,000 on a cartoon ape
— Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertjasono) January 3, 2022
[matt damon strolls past a spanish galleon] are you going to put your life savings into the pretend computer dog money that you can’t spend or are you a pussy
— Ulysses S. Cocksman (@USCocksman) January 2, 2022
https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1477882251782156288
I can just not stop laughing that Matt Damon's pitch for crypto is "Be like a brave explorer, invest your life savings in crypto." This is the same pitch my buddy in 6th grade used to get me to dive from a railroad trestle into the river pic.twitter.com/pZpeSjEheE
— Todd in the Shadows (@ShadowTodd) December 27, 2021
What really sticks out to me in the Matt Damon “buy crypto now and be a cool explorer” ad is that he never actually went to Mars, that was just a character he played in a movie one time.
— Tom Reimann (@startthemachine) January 3, 2022
Others lamented that the future is nowhere close to as cool as people once thought it would be.
https://twitter.com/dinglexxl/status/1478043100920614916
On the other hand, at least Damon isn’t singing about the glories of NFTs. Yet.