18 Aug 2023/39 min/Die With The Most Likes
MLow X Die With The Most Likes
Mark Wilson, the artist behind Die With The Most Likes, on compulsive creation, the ground beef obsession, keeping the corporate day job, and turning DM scammers into literature.
Die With The Most Likes is Mark Wilson, a Midwesterner with a nine to five at what he calls a big corporation where he creates digital waste for a living, spamming people who don't care. The art has always run underneath: he has made things for as long as he can remember and says he has to create or he feels like he is rotting from the inside out. For years that meant toiling in obscurity, trying to give away huge paintings for 20 dollars in a Chicago park, until his wife forced an iPad on him because their walls were caving in under his output, still roughly two dozen new pieces a week. His artist name comes from an early Procreate piece: old people on oxygen machines kept alive by younger people's pointless digital adoration, likes flowing through the tubes.
MLow digs into the signature obsession, and Wilson delivers a full theory of ground beef: an entire being ground into a pile, plastic wrapped and sold as pink spaghetti, humans as prized hogs fattening at their desks on passive content, waiting for the bolt gun from No Country for Old Men. It traces back to a high school next to a dog food factory, where the summer air was so thick it felt like eating a meal. His route into Web3 ran from a 200 dollar gas Foundation mint that went nowhere, through a stranger's DM, to early Hic et Nunc on Tezos, which he remembers as a beautiful psychedelic carnival with no curation where he could not even tell whether his work was selling. He still keeps the day job on purpose: it removes all pressure to sell and buys him total freedom over when and how he releases.
The conversation keeps landing on craft and community. He describes his style as an unbridled exploration of the absurd (others say Ralph Steadman meets Mike Judge), built on maybe 30,000 self taught hours after getting a C in high school art for an adequate house plant. He explains the 69 page book he made with Transient Labs by answering DM scammers with devastating fictional tragedies, some of whom wrote back with sympathy, and the county fair prize pieces redeemable from it, one of which MLow owns. He refuses AI for his own work because the pieces are too personal to let a machine skew them, while applauding what it opens for others. His stated ambition is deliberately anti institutional: art on gas station sex pills next to Ohio's Hell Is Real billboard, on a Mountain Dew wrapper, everywhere like a parasite, and forget the Louvre.
What this episode teaches
- Create whether or not anyone looks
Wilson's work was going to be made regardless of an audience; he made art for years with no market, no training and no wall space left. The success that eventually arrived changed his life precisely because the practice never depended on it.
- A day job can be creative freedom
He keeps the corporate nine to five deliberately: it pays the mortgage, removes the pressure to sell, and lets him choose exactly when and how to release work. He respects the artists who go all in, but comfort in the backdrop protects his process.
- Name yourself after your thesis
His artist name is the title of an early piece attacking pointless digital adoration. The name carries the entire critique, so every mint restates the worldview.
- Turn hostile inputs into material
He answered DM scammers each morning with intricately sad fictional stories, and some scammers broke character to sympathize. Eight months of that became a 69 page illustrated book minted with Transient Labs, with pieces redeemable from it.
- Guard the pipeline from head to viewer
His AI position is a boundary, not a culture war: he will not let a machine skew what must travel from his head to the viewer, while genuinely applauding that AI lets people without 30,000 hours create at all.
- Bridge digital sales into physical objects
His forward vision is story, painting and writing braided together, giving collectors a physical thing to hang that re triggers the emotion of the digital piece they bought. He rejects the digital only orthodoxy he sees rising.
- Talk to collectors about anything but sales
He counts collectors as friends, shoots the breeze about their neighborhoods and ground beef sightings, and has never once DMed anyone asking them to buy a piece.
- Aim for ubiquity, not institutions
His stated legacy goal skips the Louvre and MoMA for gas station pills, water slides, soda wrappers and a guest spot on Two and a Half Men in 2040: absurdist saturation as the honest form of immortality.
The conversation, topic by topic
MLow's process, on tape
The recording opens with MLow explaining his workflow: record the Meet, write the thread from it, chop 30 to 60 second clips for Twitter. He mentions the just completed 6529 interview about the Goose as the template.
Compulsion before career
Wilson says the most important thing about his process is that the work gets made whether anyone looks or not. He assumed he would die alone doing something he hated, with a sparsely attended funeral and a decrepit fruit tray; people actually buying his art still leaves him waking up perplexed and heartwarmed.
Digital waste by day
He still works a nine to five at a big corporation, creating what he calls digital waste, spamming people who don't care. He calls it a poetic demise that feeds the art's themes: mundanity, suffering, doing something you hate and waiting to die.
The name and the iPad
Die With The Most Likes was a piece made about eight years ago, among his first in Procreate: elderly people on oxygen machines kept alive by younger people's digital worship, likes flowing through the tubes. His wife pushed the iPad on him because the house was drowning in paintings; he struggles to throw work away because part of him lives in each piece.
The theory of ground beef
Asked what's with all the meat, he calls ground beef inherently comic: a whole being ground into a pile and sold as pink spaghetti to shove into your pie hole. Humans fare no better in his work: prized hogs at desks, fattening on content, waiting indifferently for the No Country for Old Men bolt gun.
The dog food factory
His high school sat next to a dog food factory with no air conditioning; in summer the air was so viscous it felt like a meal, and he sometimes imagined hearing the animals. His hometown's visceral mundanity still anchors the work.
The robot book
As a kid he filled a 50 page book with about a thousand robots doing menial chores, complete with order forms in the back. A math teacher found it and called it the most messed up thing he had ever seen, disturbed less by the robots than by the relentlessness. His mom still has his sketches; the scratchy style was there from the start, no training involved.
Foundation flop, Hic et Nunc carnival
A stranger DMed him after seeing his semi viral fake campaign post for comedian Eric Andre. He minted on Foundation when gas cost about 200 dollars and nothing happened; then he was pointed to Hic et Nunc on Tezos, tiny at the time, which he describes as a beautiful psychedelic carnival with no curation where he could not even tell if pieces were selling. He got better, sold out his Ethereum work, and never quit the day job.
Style and 30,000 hours
He calls his style an unbridled exploration of the absurd, a world where no one can tell what is serious, ridiculed or worshiped. Others say Ralph Steadman mixed with Cartoon Network; he leans King of the Hill and Mike Judge. He got a C in high school art (his house plant was called adequate) and estimates 30,000 basement hours of self teaching by any means, including YouTube tutorials.
Authors, artists, and meat paintings of the greats
He grew up near an RV Hall of Fame instead of an art museum and now paints meat versions of old masters he learned about on Twitter. Favorite authors: Irvine Welsh, Haruki Murakami, and Franz Kafka, whose short story The Cares of a Family Man changed his life in 2008. Favorite artists: Xerox, Alien Queen, Jake Fried, Joe Pease, Jake the Degen (a hungover joint painting session in New York), and Sarah Zucker.
Coldie and Max Osiris name him back
MLow relays that both Coldie and Max Osiris listed him among their favorite artists. Wilson is floored: he met Coldie at VeeCon and told him his work could come from no other imagination, and Max Osiris's meat themed Mona Lisas made him die laughing. Coldie also collects a bunch of his Tezos work.
The scammer book and the county fair prizes
MLow owns Seize the Meats Production number seven, which turns out to be a redeemable county fair prize from Wilson's Transient Labs book project: 69 illustrated pages of him replying to DM scammers with heartbreaking fictional stories, like an old man with dementia playing chess using his saliva. Some scammers apologized. Eight months of work, currently digital, with a physical edition and a reopened flea market planned.
AI, three grails, and the latest mint
He does not touch AI: too personal a pipeline to let a machine pervert it, though he thinks the access it gives others is awesome. His ten year holds: a ground beef looking skull piece (the artist's name is garbled in the transcript), a timeless Joe Pease, and a Sarah Zucker for her VHS analog style. His most recent piece was a private sale to Artifact of Noble Gallery: a man losing his memories in a Renaissance center, hand turning to schnitzel, pulverized into a characterless beige orb.
Friends, collectors, legacy
Alien Queen is his best friend; Xerox, Matt Kane and Ned Ryerson are close, plus the SuperRare crew, Defiance Works, Balance, Dmitri Cherniak and Coldie as collectors, though being Midwestern he tries to burden nobody. His favorite own pieces: How to Hold Your Child (his first Tezos sale, which he did not realize had sold), the scammer book (he gives the title roughly as Negotiation the Abyss), and A Good Meeting, which ran as a Times Square ad that made passersby visibly ill, his idea of money well spent. MLow closes by inviting him into a Transient Labs collaborative project.
In their words
“I have to create or else I feel like I'm rotting from the inside out.”
Die With The Most Likes“I create digital waste for a living. I'm more or less spamming people, which is a poetic demise, I suppose.”
Die With The Most Likes“It was this beautiful, fucked up psychedelic carnival of creative people. There's no curation, everything just slammed into your eyes at the same time.”
Die With The Most Likes“I don't want a machine manipulating my vision. I don't feel comfortable skewing what needs to be communicated from my head to the viewer.”
Die With The Most Likes“I want to have my art on gas station sex pills next to the Hell Is Real billboard in rural Ohio. I just want to be everywhere.”
Die With The Most Likes“Fuck the Louvre, fuck the MoMA. I want to be the guest star on an episode of Two and a Half Men in 2040.”
Die With The Most LikesCite this conversation
Die With The Most Likes in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Die With The Most Likes," The MLow Show, 18 Aug 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-08-18-mlow-x-die-with-the-most-likes.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.