Orlando Museum of Art social media hacked to promote 'meme coin whale pumps'

Orlando Museum of Art, no stranger to mishaps and mess-ups in the past year or so, appears to be the victim of a social media hack. 

Wednesday night, the official Orlando Museum of Art Instagram page posted a video promoting a new crypto coin, and the URL in their profile was changed from omart.org to "t.me/s/MemeCoin_Whale_Pumps."

The museum's Facebook page and website were unaffected at time of publication.

"I don't know how this is even legal but there's a large group on Telegram pumping meme coins every single week," advises a person wearing a backwards baseball cap, rocking slightly while pointing over his head to a backdrop of social media comments and screenshots.

While taking financial advice from a video shot up a stranger's nostrils is always a great idea — and probably as safe a bet as any Wall Street stonk play these days — we aren't entirely convinced this isn't somehow connected to the museum's Florida Prize Exhibition, opening this Friday.


A commentary on crypto mining accelerating global warming? Maybe an unpacking of the way NFTs cratered the art market (sort of like the way forged art creates an inherent instability in art as an investment)?

Comments on the video, which was joined this morning by a grid post of an NFT-like image of Pepe the Frog sitting on a boring whale icon, range from "omg" to "SMDH" to "guys, this is just a new style of performance art."

If it is a clever conceptual piece, maybe they'll change the "A" in OMA to G, because OMG has this been a bad run. We've contacted various members of the OMA team for comment and will update this story with their response.

UPDATE: Within minutes of publication, the video was scrubbed from OMA's feed. A museum spokesperson responded to our query, saying their digital team is working with Meta to resolve the situation.

This is a developing story.

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