Anyone who has interacted with the Remilia community will know they’ve created one of the most confusing and self-referential corners of the internet. The upcoming CULT token launch is no different.
Since the token was first announced there has been a pre-sale and tons of deep fried memes—but not much else. A Telegram channel is currently packed with 5,000 people spamming a slot machine emoji over and over. If you ask when the token is coming, you simply hear the answer, “don’t worry about it.”
So, what is going on?
Remilia Corporation is the project behind multiple major crypto and NFT communities. Its flagship product is the Milady Maker NFT collection and derivative projects like Remilio Baby. The corporation also oversees a quarterly magazine and its leader, Charlotte Fang, often publishes philosophical essays on culture and the internet.
On June 13, the Milady Cult Twitter account announced a pre-sale for an upcoming Ethereum token called CULT. This raised $20.53 million, according to the Milady site. The funds have since been moved to a multisig Gnosis wallet. This wallet currently holds $21.4 million, mostly Ethereum and Tether.
Now that five months have passed, some investors have started to get restless. Amidst the slot machines on Telegram, more than 290 messages have been sent alleging the pre-sale was fraudulent. “It’s 100% a scam, right?” One investor posted, “Fuck man I lost 3 ETH.”
“Yes the token is being released,” Chief of Staff at Remilia Corporation, Scorched Earth Policy, confirmed to Decrypt. “Beyond that I cannot elaborate why the delay. Except that we have good reasons for doing what we’re doing and everything is centered around making sure we do right by our community.”
But not everyone is so concerned. Instead, some community members believe the delay is all part of a psychological operation that will lead to Remilia World Order (RWO).
“I think the beauty of CULT is faith. Faith in uncertainty and relying on your beliefs. It’s as simple as not worrying and having confidence in your convictions,” pre-sale participant and self-defined Cult member Virtue told Decrypt. “I think it’s also a life lesson. You aren’t always in control in life, it’s okay to let go, it’s okay to be free.”
In September, community members started to believe that the token was finally on its way as the official Cult site showed that the token generation event (TGE) was “loading.” But by the end of the month, rumors spread that the entire token launch was cancelled—albeit, spurred on by a doctored screenshot of the site.
How did the community respond? Streams of “don’t worry about,” a plethora of “there is no refund, I love you,” and the occasional “did you just worry about it?” This sums up the absurdist hyper-irony Milady humor that dominates the community.
“I found it humorous when other people were getting upset about the TGE,” Virtue explained, “I was just making silly little memes on my phone without a care in the world and I think there’s beauty in that. Once the token comes out the memes will only be more plentiful.”
On Wednesday, Polymarket odds that the token would be released this year reached an all-time high at 90%. This was in-line with CULT’s new catchphrase sweeping Twitter of “maybe it’s time.”
As speculation grew, Fang took to Twitter to reject the token being considered a meme coin at all.
“It’s an ecosystem coin for an ecosystem that is by ideological design a self-organizing memetic engine, not wrapping just a meme or character but a revolutionary movement,” Fang said. “I think it exists as a genuinely new category, something like a metamemecoin or a memeplexcoin.”
Still, the token hasn’t launched and in the past two days Polymarket odds have fallen to 72%. The CULT awaits, the Remilia team promises it’s still preparing, and everyone is trying to not worry about it. Maybe it’s time?
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