31: Gabe Whaley - Playing the Crowd & Outlasting the Hype

Gabe Whaley is co-founder and CEO of MSCHF (Instagram, Wikipedia), the art collective, fashion and footwear brand, startup, and fill-in-the-blank, famous for its viral products and cultural interventions.

A few notable works include Jesus Shoes (Nike Air Max filled with holy water), Severed Spots (a "decentralized" Damien Hirst print), Museum of Forgeries (One original Warhol and 999 perfect forgeries), and of course the Big Red Boot. This conversation was heavily influenced by MSCHF's recently released Made by MSCHF, a "textbook," through which the team peels back the curtain and shows us inside the black box that has produced more viral hits than one can count.

Gabe had a sheltered childhood and went to two years of army academy at West Point before eventually finding his way to New York City to intern at Buzzfeed around 2014. In his spare time, he started releasing weird internet projects under the name "Miscellaneous Mischief." After tasting virality a few times, he started collaborating with likeminded creatives and eventually formalized MSCHF in 2019.

I've known Gabe for many years (and even did a small collaboration with him from my seat at 100 Thieves). We sat down to reflect on the last 15 years and the arc of MSCHF, what made it special, and where one goes next when virality makes you feel nothing and the internet feels mature.

The conversation includes MSCHF's eye-of-the-beholder legibility, their obsession with value, the power of mystery, and how the product doesn't culminate with release, but after the audience has made it their own (in MSCHF parlance, "playing the crowd"). We also discuss the creative process behind the hit factory, how acting as a label rather than individuals changes their relationship to the work, whether the cultural future is actually canceled, how the internet has changed, and how real world experiences offer something to the creator and the consumer that digital life simply can't. We wrap-up by speed-running through many of MSCHF's internal values, from "always punch up," to "death is just as importance as birth," to perhaps its defining frame: "nothing is sacred."

I hope you are inspired toward play, originality, embracing discomfort, and having the courage to burn it all down and start anew.

Full transcript and all linked references: https://dialectic.fm/gabe-whaley

Timestamps

(0:00): Intro
(2:21): Value and Legibility
(13:24): Is the Future Canceled?
(20:00): We Create as a Result of What We Believe In
(26:11): What Makes a Good Remix
(29:08): How MSCHF Relates to the Current Thing and Evolves What Game it Plays
(38:31): Creating Something the Crowd Can Play
(44:59): Emphasis on Craft and Objects Rather than Creating "Lifestyle"
(47:27): Keeping Up in a World That Demands Constant Production
(53:11): Resisting The Internet's Scale and Lack of Friction
(1:03:15): Accidental World Building, Process, Creative Inputs, and Focus
(1:14:09): Creating as a Collective and Gabe's Role in Enabling the Team
(1:22:30): Trust, Shedding the Black Box, and Staying Original
(1:30:35): Applied MSCHF – Doors are Open
(1:34:21): Sarah Andelman, People Who are Still Excited, and Long Time Horizons
(1:41:52): Buzzfeed
(1:44:41): MSCHF Values

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