Things are subjective when it comes to Art. It might be 'ugly' in your point of view but to others they are great. Proof? Check the price of those 1st Gen NFTs. They won't be paying that much for no reason. Maybe this assumption is simply because of the compaison with real life artworks but I think same thing goes with it. What increases the value of an artwork are who the artist is, concept, meaning, and more. Same thing is with NFTs; for example is with APE wherein many alike projects of the same concept followed.
To be honest, there are many things i will probably never understand about NFTs cos I couldnt understand the inspiration behind its ugliness. I think it was odd how the first generation NFTs, especially this ape club, were ugly as hell. Sure, the whole nft idea was bewildering really, but why was it all so ugly as well?
is there a hidden utility in ugliness or am i missing something?
NFTs are useless! So it really doesn't matter whether they look good or ugly. They are just the most useless thing ever happened in the world of cryptocurrency. I have noticed that the first generation NFTs were mostly pixel based images which got sold for million dollars to some unfortunate investors.
The entire NFT madness is pointless. So it is okay to not find any point at all!
But it is profitable to those people who invested on it, so I think it is not that useless. As long as it is being appreciated by some people in that industry, then that serves its purpose already. No one's forcing us to invest on it in the first place.