> "It's definitely very expensive, but it's also like an investment," Mr Ma says.

This is a case study in post-purchase rationalizing.

This headline is so infuriatingly misleading. They didn't spend the money on the dress, they bought the image. The BBC should be above this clickbait.

What's the difference?

The difference is that the headline is designed to sound mysterious. It triggers your curiosity on which the article may be about. Was it a scam? Was the dress made out of some magic material that disappears after time? Is it even a real dress? You'll need to read the whole article to figure out what it was actually about.

If the title was something like 'Investor pays 7500 for clothing image', you wouldn't have to read the article.

This is known as clickbait and it is essentially 99% of marketing nowadays.

..and news headline writing, I’d say.

The Empress’ New Clothes

Interestingly enough, this is a pretty valid use for blockchain: tracking ownership of digital goods and giving scarcity and authenticity to items for which the marginal cost to copy is essentially zero.

Another example: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/23/much-pepe-sce...

Shocking that a purely digital Pepe trading card sold for nearly $40k USD (bought in PepeCash, of course).

Here's the company mentioned in the article: https://www.rareart.io/

What is actually being bought here? Is it a plan for a piece of clothing? Is it just a digital photograph? I’m confused.

Edit: oh it’s a dress that’s photoshopped onto someone

This is literally the plot to the Emperors New Clothes

It's a bit like Second Life but for Normies, no? I can't help but think that this is not going to be very popular -- the one off ten thousand dollar digital clothing. Though perhaps there's a large opportunity for programs that can easily paper-doll you with designer clothing for much smaller fees.

Snow Crash for Clothes.

Pay pennies for the Barbie/Ken models, pay through the nose for bespoke status symbols.