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

[00:00] Welcome to Dialectic Episode 31 with Gabe Whaley. [00:04] Gabe is the CEO and co-founder of Mischief. [00:08] Mischief is hard to pin down, depending on who you ask. It's a startup, a fashion brand, [00:13] Performance artist. [00:14] cultural commentator, [00:16] The virality machine. [00:17] There's probably a long list of other descriptions. Any given beholder might see them as too. [00:22] Over the years, they've become a category of their own, and people will often describe mischief for X when talking about spectacle marketing or the viral drops they're known for. [00:30] For nearly six years, they released a new drop every two weeks. A product, a website, an art piece, or something even weirder. [00:38] You may have come across Mischief by way of some of their most famous releases, stuff like The Big Red Boots, [00:43] The time they cut up a Damien Hirst print and sold it for parts... [00:47] At the time, they created 999 forgeries of a Warhol drawing, mixed them all together, and sold them all. [00:53] And the Jesus shoes, the Nike Air Maxes they filled with holy water back in 2019 that were probably the first time Mischief went supernova on the internet. [01:02] I've known Gabe for years, and Mischief and he are at an interesting turning point, I think. [01:07] It made it a particularly interesting time to sit down with him and reflect on where they've been, what they've learned, how they do what they do, and where they might be going. [01:16] I think any creative person and [01:18] Anyone who's interested in how the Internet is changing us, our attention, and what we value will find Gabe's philosophy at the very least thought-provoking. [01:26] He and the mischief team are keen to say that nothing is sacred, and they are definitely always finding new ways to be irreverent.

[01:34] And yet... [01:35] This conversation, [01:36] Meet it. [01:37] Even more clear to me how much they deeply care about the act of creativity and making sure to find new ways to stoke that flame and begin anew. [01:47] As always, if you enjoy this episode, please give it a rating and share it with a friend. Here's Gabe Whaley. [01:54] All right, Gabe Whaley, we made it. Oh, are we live? Yeah. All right, let's rock. Thanks for making time. Anytime. And hustling back from the doom land of Tribeca. I'm a menace on a city bike. Yeah, yeah, it's the beautiful thing about three quarters of the year in New York. Right, right. Winter comes and like everything is thrown off. No, I'll do it in the winter too. [02:16] I'm not from the East Coast, so it's a great struggle. Okay, we are going to start. [02:23] with a line from Sean Monaghan in the Made by Mischief book. [02:28] describing you guys he says to the venture capitalist mischief is a startup to the sneaker head mischief is a brand to the collector mischief produces art virality is the only mutually intelligible language understood by all three well that and money there's two things that this kind of brings to mind for me one is [02:51] the notion and it kind of comes up in every time you guys have to talk about this is that you're constantly playing with legibility and illegibility. And then the other is that maybe beyond spectacle, which is very obvious. I think the other thing that really stands out to me about you guys and your work is that you're playing with value, the idea of value and what we value and how we value the things we do, something that itself can be kind of legible or illegible. And so my first

[03:21] across all this stuff. And how do you think about legibility, both with regard to that idea and more broadly, this whole container, what this thing is? Real quick, can you clarify a little bit what you mean on legibility, illegibility? [03:34] Yeah, it's an idea that I've thought about a lot. One of my friends even brought up in the context of this podcast, as I was pretty early on, and she's like, you... [03:45] are currently kind of illegible, meaning like it's not totally clear what the thing's about and like who the guests are and what the pattern is. And her point was, [03:54] there will be a time for legibility. But right now, you're actually kind of in the oven. And to me, there are a few things, few things at the level of scale and cultural impact as mischief that are constantly dipping in and out of legibility. Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it, got it. Okay, so the... [04:12] I'll start with the legibility, illegibility, and then we can talk about value. The [04:18] The way that we've internally described our practice with regards to being legible or not is... [04:24] At least it used to be the black box. Why did the black? Well, what is the black box? The black box is this idea of we're not transparent. We do not tell people how we do things or why we do things. [04:37] Are we trying to hide anything? Not necessarily. It's because the mystery lends more to the imagination than reality ever could. [04:45] The second part to that, which is less thrilling, is that maybe we're kind of lazy. And it takes a lot of work to document and tell a story when why not create enough of a spark and put it in front of enough people so that they tell the story for you. And then they have conflicting stories which will oppose one another. Some will create factions. Different communities will form.

[05:15] more, they have consumed the idea, they have become the idea. And I think in a lot of Mischief's best work and most of the work that we've aspired to do is how do you create this handoff to an audience and let them run with it and turn it into something else, something else that is their own. [05:34] So I think there's an element of this black box. There's also this element of giving up control so that the meaning can be defined by that end audience, which selfishly is also a thrill to watch. Now, for the value part, I think... [05:52] Thank you. [05:54] When you look at a lot of our work, you see that we co-opt objects or systems that [06:01] to either define or comment on most people's daily lives, their relationships with objects, their relationships with technology, their relationships with people via technology. One thing that we've constantly said here is the only point of being a human is being able to eat, sleep, buck, and flex on your neighbor, which some people have counted me on, but I think is pretty true. I think that's like a universal truth. It's always been that, and it always [06:31] gives you a lot of good material uh especially like the tail end of that statement and i'm [06:38] The funny thing about mischief, and this is kind of what Sean was getting at, is we can put our tech startup hat on, we can put our footwear brand hat on, we can put our fine art hat on. We're really just a reflection of whatever is going on in any space at any given moment based on the project that we choose to do.

[07:00] I think a lot of the work regarding this idea of value, it comes out because we're not creating... [07:09] paintings that live in a white wall gallery. We're actually taking objects and systems, twisting them, contorting them, and putting them back into the systems that we're critiquing. And so they are real. There are real interactions. And in order to interact, you must give up time or money or both. And so the value equation starts there, and then it sort of takes a life of its own. Yeah, it's interesting to think about a kind of [07:36] almost sacrifice in the consumption of a mischief thing and sacrifice can mean a lot of no totally [07:44] i interviewed eugene way who i think you've met um earlier on on the show and one of the things he talked about is how sort of speculation is increasingly becoming kind of like more and more entrenched in what culture is especially for young people obviously in the case of sports betting and crypto and gambling but even like dating apps are like this sort of notion around [08:04] living is like, why bother doing anything that's going to slowly compound? I should just sort of like put it all in black. And I'm curious if you've thought about that at all to the extent that sort of plays into, it's an interesting cut on value at the very least in terms of how we value things. Interesting cut on value or just interesting statement on like the desperation that everyone's facing and just kind of how not, not even like bleak because we're past that. It's

[08:34] It doesn't matter. Like why not? And maybe some people are actually kind of having fun and getting some joy out of this and finding some community out around it, which is kind of cool, still bleak, but kind of cool. And, uh, [08:50] I think we've even seen elements of this play out through a lot of the projects that we've done where different communities will form around this and they are speculating and they're like, this might be worth a lot on the resale market. And I know there's a picture of a guy with a warehouse full of big red boots that he did not manage to unload. [09:20] like, oh my God, like I got my bots ready. I'm going to like get all these out. And they didn't know that we were going to unload a little bit. Um, and so some people really got left holding the bag and then all of his friends turned on him and said, which is so brutal. Um, but you guys, I mean, you guys have literally played into this, like speaking of sort of like people gamifying that you have the, the sock queen into the hat guy. Yeah. Yeah. That, that was so, that was so [09:50] time a long time ago where we were so full of ourselves, we said we would never make merch. And so we created a loophole for ourselves where we said, well, instead of selling merch, we'll sell a monopoly to the merchants. Someone else can sell the merch, which tells you a lot about our personality, I guess. And so we had this design of a mischief sock sort of in the style of Costco. I would argue very in the style of Costco. Extremely in the style of Costco, like straight up in the style of Costco. But instead of

[10:20] selling one pair of socks at a time, we bundled them into a pallet of, I think it was 1,000 socks for five grand. And the idea was whoever buys it first owns the supply. They control the market. Let's see what they do. This lady in Florida bought them actually before the drop release. Somehow she bought them. [10:40] I don't know. Something went wrong. We were like doing a test. Oh, it prematurely sold. Yeah, it did. Wow. I think I like... [10:45] 2 a.m the night before wow early days still had some kinks anyways she got it and we were like who is this person and it turned for the next week we started seeing this account show up on twitter on reddit the socks were showing up on ebay and stock x this lady was not internet native [11:06] Uh, but somehow she knew, and maybe it was from her son who was the one who told her to buy these. She knew enough to create a Reddit account, find the mischief subreddit, find other subreddits for like collectibles or hype or resell or whatever. She was sending her kid to school with the socks to sell the socks. And she, she ended up something like three X-ing her money over the next couple of weeks. It sort of seemed like it was actually like you couldn't have drawn it up better. [11:36] And then she started sending us these crazy emails of the dream she had last night where she was like a queen on a bed of socks and people were coming up to her to like give her offerings. And she was tossing socks to peasants. And that's when we were like, maybe we don't talk to her anymore. And then we actually found her and interviewed her for our magazine. Right. So the whole thing is actually a photo of her in the room with all the socks is pretty. So she was sending this those to us unprompted.

[12:06] a bed of socks in that position. But yeah, and that's the great thing about these projects is you don't know what's going to happen. Like the hat guy that you mentioned. So we did the same thing with hats. But it was a little bit after, right? So he had gotten the weakness. It might have been like two years later. It was like a good chunk of time. So there was prior work on the hat. Prior work, there was lore, there was a result, there was documentation of the result. And the dude with the hats could not do it. And also you could just kind of tell like a little [12:36] Thank you. [12:37] They were both thirsty and desperate, but there's like different flavors of it where some you can kind of embrace and be like, all right, this is a little chaotic. And then this one is just sort of like sad. Like you could tell she was having fun. She was a nut. This guy was like doing all the – I think he had a bot set up to like catch any tweet of mischief and reply to it saying, buy this hat. There are sort of different ways to be authentically a sellout. Yes. Or maybe just different ways to be a sellout. There's an art to it, to be honest. [13:07] And the guy did not nail it. He also wasn't being creative in the communities. I think he was just trying to like... [13:13] The equivalent of just standing outside saying, will you buy this hat? Will you buy this hat? Will you buy this hat? Somehow the lady actually nailed it. Yeah. She has no idea how good she was. [13:24] Okay. We're going to talk more about a lot of that, but I want to talk a little bit about sort of just culture today before we dive into mischiefs role. There's a... [13:32] A line you guys have, I think, from Lucas in the book, he says, no one talks about the future anymore. Instead, everything accelerates the present to a fever pitch, intensifying and weirding the horrid idiosyncrasies and dysfunctions of the current moment. There's a hole where the future used to be, and all that remains is the increasingly spicy present. I have no idea what that means.

[13:56] Well, there's another line I think Lucas said in some interview. [14:02] in on itself and sort of dislike. [14:05] recursion almost. No, totally. I actually, I do, I do know where he's coming from. Well, I guess my question is, obviously, you guys have talked about this a lot. So have a lot of other people. Slow cancellation of the future is not a totally new idea. [14:17] And I think like we all feel this. It's like, [14:19] Where is the new XYZ? I guess my question for you is... [14:24] How real is that really? And maybe to get specific, I'm curious for you to reflect on either... [14:29] 2014 ish when you really kind of first started the beginnings of what this was going to become with miscellaneous mischief or maybe as another benchmark 2019 when you guys formally started. Yeah. [14:40] Like, [14:41] You produced a lot of culture in the meantime. A lot has happened, but is the future really canceled? I don't think so, but it's harder to see. [14:50] And I think that's the big distinction. It's not as legible. It's definitely not as legible. And you won't see it unless you go looking for it. Because we're... [15:00] We're at a time where... [15:02] You're just surrounded by the wrong incentive structures and the wrong formats that are going to immediately blind you to seeing beyond your own phone, the palm of your hand, unfortunately. So back in 2014, that was a time where the news moved a lot less quickly. [15:19] And that was also the tail end of an era of the Internet where the Internet had been around just long enough for mass adoption, but it wasn't so mainstream yet. So it was still an era where people shared things because they were actually interesting.

[15:37] Over the last 10 years, the incentives have flipped where people don't share things because they're interesting anymore. They share things to fuel their vanity. So instead of me sharing a link to something that's cool now, I'll share a video of me talking about a link that's cool now. And I'm not even going to include the link. It's co-opted. You know what's funny is you're talking about, I think the first project, maybe the first project was the chat bubbles, but the Twitter thing you did, maybe it wasn't even a mischief project where you were giving bad advice intentionally. Yeah, yeah. That was even before the iPhone bubbles. Yeah. Yeah. [16:07] I don't know how intentional it was, but you were describing it. You said people started to comment on the product rather than engaging with it, which is like the seed of this idea. No, it was starting to happen, right? And we also picked up on those incentive structures, and we're like, okay, if you design an idea in a certain way, the media is likely to write an article about it. And then pretty quickly, we found out that clickbait was an emerging format. So [16:33] It was a match made in heaven. It was like media companies are incentivized to create clickbait. We can create projects that have an amazing clickbait layer, even if we will defend ourselves to the end saying that there are more layers to most of our projects, if not all of them. But there always is definitely like that sort of vanity driven clickbait line, right? You feed the beast and we co-opt media companies as a primary layer of distribution.

[17:03] 2019, 2020, media has really lost a lot of steam, but that's sort of the rise of the influencer and the content creator. And that's when you start to realize like, [17:14] Those groups are the new media companies. They have very similar incentive structures, but also video is the prevailing format now, and it's quick. And that lends itself really well to physical objects. And then that opened up this whole Pandora's box of where you can go with physical objects. And that's why, like, literally behind you, there's cereal, there's electronic devices, there are collectibles, there are shoes, there are swords. [17:44] Very specifically to objects that are amazing in person, back to the sort of their layers thing, but also jump off a screen. Totally. And even down to how it's packaged, how it's unboxed, how much information people have about it, what they can tell about it, how unique it is to them so they can tell a story or a lie about it that creates some friction. [18:07] Yeah. [18:08] Yeah, I don't remember what the original question was, but the way that information is discovered and shared has evolved so much over the past decade. Yes. [18:19] And I think the... [18:21] unfortunate incentives of [18:24] the time that we live in which is you are [18:27] you are competing with everyone on the planet to create more and more content to drive more and more views and get more and more engagement and get more and more followers that we're all stuck like looking at our own faces now um

[18:39] And that makes it really hard to see, like... [18:42] what's next yes or even to care about what's next but i think that is a golden opportunity because everyone is stuck looking like two inches ahead of them [18:54] A few people will have the discipline to look 10 years away from now. And I think that is like, that's the magic opportunity now. Whereas I think Mischief's magic opportunity 10 years ago was we kind of understood how to work the organic distribution levers of the internet when no one else did. But now that's table stakes. That doesn't matter. And the value of it is increasingly just... [19:15] Gross. [19:16] Yeah, I think you said this somewhere else. Virality used to be a skill, and now it's just shots on goal. Yeah, it's a numbers game. [19:25] That's kind of cool, too, right? Like there is good content that just comes out of nowhere. Yeah, yeah. TikTok, in many ways, is kind of the perfect version of this. It's like the true global talent show. Totally, totally. And, you know, kids are being creative. I think that's cool. And creativity is democratized. [19:42] And for folks like us, it forces us to have to reevaluate ourselves and also change our own game or... [19:52] or just call it quits and be like, oh, that was a cool era, right? It's the world changes. You got to change with it. Maybe on a related note, you said people create what their gods are telling them to create. Damn. I said that. I believe so. Oh, that's pretty cool. Um, I think that's a really interesting idea in a broad sense. I think you were specifically talking about TikTok and Instagram, but I guess my question would be to, to go back to the maybe broader idea. Like, are there other gods in this context? Is it really just like a few algorithms?

[20:22] Yeah, yeah, good question. [20:24] Thank you. [20:26] Hmm. [20:27] I think the algorithms are a very prevalent part of this. I think... [20:34] You are what you see. You are what you want to become. And unfortunately, I think. [20:39] There's not a good diversity of things to look at now, and that... [20:43] That I think is not great. [20:46] The other interesting thing, too, and this is something that I haven't fully fleshed out, but there are content creators across so many different disciplines. I was at a thing in L.A. this weekend for... [20:58] content creators somehow. And, uh, there was an electrician in the room who was a content creator. And, uh, [21:06] That sort of kind of maybe pulled me out of my own ass a little bit because I [21:11] he was looking at content creation as a compliment to his like primary trade, which is super interesting. And so, you know, I think we've all heard this thing about like kids used to grow up wanting to be like astronauts or firefighters or policemen or whatever. And now they just want to be content creators, but maybe there is like another layer of abstraction that could be coming where it's a way to document a skill or a trade because hopefully you're [21:38] The kids are going to want. [21:40] something that's unique and novel and interesting versus everything looking so the same. So I kind of believe it's going to balance out. And even though the algorithms are sort of like driving towards one thing, I do have faith in human beings getting bored and being able to spot out like a lot of sameness. And so in that sense, I'm cautiously optimistic. Yeah, it's interesting.

[22:04] there [22:05] There's almost a notion, like going back to what we were just talking about, like the viral era is kind of over. Like it is also worth remembering, like we're like 20 years into this and really like 10 years into this and it's still really new. It's so new. It's so new. Every everything is it's like beginning stages. Right. But it all comes down to the some of the things that I said earlier, which is it's all about eating, sleeping, fucking and flexing on your neighbor. [22:35] and share stories that resonate with them yeah [22:40] Like absolute truth like that that will always be the case. So now the question is, what are the formats? What are the distribution mechanisms? [22:48] I think an opportunity that more people should think about are the, we now have this opportunity to sort of zig while everyone else is zagging. If everyone is running towards quick, short form vertical videos, what can you do that's permanent, that's in the real world, that's like more tactile, more tangible? Or you can at least do a long two hour podcast with no video. Amazing. That's so counterculture. It's great. We had this riff of an idea earlier of using, [23:18] we were going to bring back Vine and use AI to extend the six second videos into long form 30 minute videos, which is you're already on that wavelength. So, yeah, maybe one last thing on this that I was thinking about what you're talking is. [23:34] I can't help but compare the sort of people create what their gods are telling them to and the like eat sleep.

[23:41] whatever your line is. Um, [23:45] Michelangelo like made the Sistine Chapel because of God, theoretically. Maybe it was also flexing and yeah, whatever. [23:53] I have to wonder if maybe that kind of nihilism is one reason... [23:59] Not to get too meta about what motivates you guys, but there is something... [24:04] it feels like there's something sort of like bigger or more meaningful that you're pursuing or like underpinning what you're pursuing. It seems to me that the people who, maybe a ridiculous example, but I always talk about if you compare Zuckerberg and Elon, say what you want about both, lots of criticism, lots of praise, whatever. I'm not sure what. [24:21] Zuck believes in, even though I think he's like much more responsible about a whole bunch of things. Elon, criticize him all you want. [24:27] definitely really believes in something i i would argue bigger than eating sleeping yeah yeah yeah and so yeah maybe whether it be capital g god or otherwise like that is one of the things missing yeah yeah i mean we see that in elon because of his uh swiftness to make irresponsible decisions right and and unashamedly so right the man has convictions and something that maybe we don't [24:57] Thank you. [24:58] I... [24:59] I hope there's more of that. I get to say, what do you will about Elon? And I'm not picking a side on that. I'm just saying, uh, [25:07] To create art, I think, is an inherently very selfish act. And I think it's an amazing thing if people can embrace that and lean into it a little bit more. Yeah, believe in something. Well, you got to believe in something, right? And that

[25:20] is [25:21] not that's not a thing that's talked about so much anymore because a lot of it is sort of audience driven community driven like what are you making for other people have you verified it with data have you done like user interviews or whatever right but to really make art don't let the crowd drag your vision down to like the lowest mean you know what i mean like take the chance and it could be [25:44] shit, but it could be great. And that is, I think, always worth it. You guys make a lot of decisions by data here at Mischief, I'm sure. There's actually a huge data wall, but you just plug your brain into that. We have data. We'll look at it and then we'll be like, nah. I think it's from Steve Jobs. There's some old line where he's talking about Google and he's just like, yeah, you can explain the difference between us and Google because they [26:14] Let's talk about Mischief a bit. Cool. In many ways, [26:17] you are in this perpetual conversation with culture. [26:20] which is why I think it was important to set that backdrop. And in many ways, it's sort of like, to use almost like a religious term, it's sort of like being in the world but not of the world. Like you're sort of able to see the water, but you're also like, you'll come down from the hill and like play in the mud with everybody, which is a really interesting tension. Lucas said a couple lines I liked. Absurd amplification of the present and reflecting back our time and just turning it up slightly. It's open-ended. What makes a good remix? [26:48] A good remix starts with good material. So you need a good starting point. And we use this term here, cultural ready-made, which is taking something that already exists and has a certain meaning in culture.

[27:01] You take it, you co-opt it, you appropriate it, you mix it up, turn it on its head and you put it right back. To break it down into very pragmatic moves, though, I think one of the interesting frameworks that have worked really well in Mischief is taking a move from a certain industry or a certain category and then applying it in a different one. And it just works so well because you solve that dose of novelty that everyone needs to have that sort of eureka moment. And then they talk about it and then they share it and they engage with it. [27:31] And typically, like we will co-op moves from worlds that don't really talk to one another. Like one great example is we made a TurboTax competitor in the form of an anime dating simulator. And I don't know if it was the most viral thing, but it was the number one game on Steam for two weeks. Wow. And 20,000 people did use it to file their taxes in the 2024 filing year. Oh my God. How many number one Steam games have you had? Because I think the chair of Steam was also number one. The two games that we've done have hit top of Steam for like a week or two. [28:01] whatever that means. I don't understand Steam at all. But that Tax7 3000 was a great example of taking a move from one space and applying it to another one and creating something that when you see it exist, you're like, [28:16] It kind of makes sense. It's sort of intuitive or obvious. Yeah, like I kind of get why this should exist. It makes sense, right? It's a free TurboTax competitor in the form of an anime dating simulator because when you do your taxes on TurboTax, you're essentially going through a questionnaire that mirrors questions that you would get on a first date.

[28:36] Thank you. [28:37] Anyways, it's was that idea or I guess maybe are most of the ideas kind of like that where it's like presumably that idea when you see it on paper. Maybe not. But when you see it on paper, you're like, oh, yeah, the good ones tend to be that way. And then there are totally other ideas where you're like, hmm, let's sit on it for a bit. Like, we're not sure. And typically the process is when you have an idea and we feel like it's good. We stow it away for many months and then we revisit it later. And then if it still hits for us, then we will start committing resources to doing it. [29:07] Maybe on that note. [29:09] You guys have talked about you're sort of like playing with the meta of the present, but not [29:14] What happened yesterday? Mm-hmm. [29:16] Put another way, you've said mischief doesn't win as a first mover. Maybe capturing part of that. How do you sort of operate in the... [29:25] conversation but outside of the current thing because in many ways it is a little paradoxical no totally and then sometimes it becomes a current thing and then we're i don't even know what my stance is on that but that's sort of an amazing case when it becomes the current thing right [29:42] I always said, like, and we've sort of had comparisons to Saturday Night Live where people are like, oh, you must have this writer's room that meets every day to talk about what happened yesterday. But I say, like, if you look at actually the roster of projects and works that we've put out, none of them respond to a current event that happened. And typically a lot of these things have some sense of not long tail value, but long tail comprehension.

[30:09] which is super important. And I think it's because it does use long-term narratives, long-term mechanisms, long-term tools that reflect the, [30:21] Generations is too long, and that doesn't apply anymore. But had Mischief existed decades ago, it could have applied then. Now, because time is shrinking and the future has accelerated to the present and all of that, that window is a lot smaller. And I think the meta is moving a lot more quickly. So it's... [30:40] That's a tricky one. Are you deliberately anticipating? [30:45] Not on like a what's happening tomorrow or next week sort of thing, but we are spending a lot of time thinking about, all right, now that the meta is moving so quickly now, right? Like what even is the meta right now? Yeah, it's red cream rice. Like who knows? So we actually have to do a lot of... [31:05] soul searching to figure out [31:09] What is that proper middle ground between the thing that gets us excited creatively and artistically? [31:16] Plus the thing that is pragmatic for us to be able to exist and maybe even thrive if we get it right. And that is extremely existential. And I would say mischief was kind of existential when I started experimenting 12 years ago. [31:37] It got a little more existential in 2019 when we formally got going. And then...

[31:42] Now it's just... [31:44] actually like the last year was insanely existential. When you say existential, you mean philosophically or you mean for the, for the existence of mischief? Philosophically. But that translates to the existence of mischief because you used to, [31:57] And part of it was, you know, we used to celebrate – [32:02] Well, not even really, but like there was a time where we would go viral and it felt amazing. Right. Yeah. And then... [32:09] believe it or not, after enough times, you feel nothing. The good thing is we always celebrated before anything went out. So that was like a good habit that we had, celebrate the act of creation, not the response. [32:21] But over time, like you're – [32:25] your excitement starts to wane the novelty goes down like the addiction to that drug starts to wear off and that's when you have to pull your head up and be like well where do i find that feeling again and where did it truly come from did it come from going viral did it come from learning new formats did it come from collaborating with good people like where was the actual source [32:55] We have to rediscover that because the world is so different. [32:59] Like everything's so different. [33:02] So, [33:02] It's interesting, too, because... [33:05] I don't know. There's lots of advice. Like, [33:07] It's like the classic Rick Rubin thing. It's like great for you, not for the audience. [33:11] And I've heard you talk about that. I'm sure you guys really do embody it. My experience of you is very much like,

[33:16] something close to an autotelic, like we're creating for ourselves. And yet, [33:21] for anyone, but maybe especially you guys. [33:24] So much of what you create is [33:26] As we'll talk about, like not... [33:27] done when it's [33:29] released. Yeah. Like it's actually in explicitly, if not implicitly kind of in conversation. And, and, and so that's a really fascinating question. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, [33:41] It's a fascinating thing to have to ponder, which is like, what is this? If I'm not really getting the dopamine from the external thing, the virality, but what are we trying to say? And also, by the way, it kind of needs to go viral to, I don't know, there's a quote I found somewhere, I think in Mauricio Cotillon's essay at the beginning of the book. He was quoting Sherry Levine, who I think was quoting Roland Barthes, but neither are there. [34:11] destination. Yeah. Which is like [34:14] Yes, it's about like I love to paint, but also how do you hold these things? 100%. It is a total mindfuck. [34:22] And, you know, [34:23] Look, we always saw virality as a means of distribution to achieve a critical mass that could carry certain types of concepts to completion. Right. That's that's all it ever was. There was also a lot of value in how powerful it made us look behind the black box. Yes. Right. Like people couldn't figure out, are they 200 people or is it like one guy? Yeah, it's a magician. Yeah, it was like that.

[34:49] We've been around long enough where I don't think the black box exists as much anymore, nor does it need to, because nothing lasts forever. We are fluid, just like the world is fluid. And so we are... [35:03] Certainly evaluating, like, what do we want from the work that we put out now? And what is the scale of the relationship with an audience that that work is going to have? [35:12] I actually believe that – [35:16] It will be very cool to spend the next three, five, maybe even ten years. [35:20] engaging with much smaller audiences. [35:23] It's going to take a lot of discipline, though, because, you know, we built this muscle for larger audiences. And what that came revenue came a business model, the ability to hire a team. [35:34] Yeah. [35:35] But like we said earlier, the virality has lost its sheen. Yes. It's not as interesting. And the staying power of anything that goes viral is also pretty rough. I mean, look at the little boo-boo guy now. He's like... [35:48] personal net worth is just tanked all of a sudden did it yeah no way yeah he's like six billion less rich now and no way investors are pissed because like the stock plummeted and i'm like damn i know exactly how that feels we did that with the big red boots except i sold all of mine [36:08] to that one guy um and like [36:11] I'm so not surprised, right? Like that's just what's going to happen. But you know, when the Lububu thing was happening, all the team and leadership investors were like, okay, how do we build Disneyland for Lububu? And like, how do you keep this going? But like the world just doesn't. The staying power of these things, it's not as sticky anymore. And I think you can only really get staying power if you focus on a relationship with a small group for as long as you can possibly hold on.

[36:41] And maybe, maybe you have a chance of something with like really... [36:46] significant staying power it's interesting to think about if you're playing the game of spectacle there's only sort of one path forward which is more or bigger yeah yeah yeah and mischief trapped ourselves in that own game like we've we built the game we designed a game and we've [37:03] We won it because we're a player of one. And then we essentially are trapped by the game unless we reinvent ourselves out of it. But to do that, we have to break a lot of our own rules, which I'm at peace with now. And I think it's very exciting, but it was hard to get there. It's interesting to think about when we brought up Elon, like, [37:24] This sort of having to sort of [37:27] play to a bigger and bigger spectacle is not only the case in [37:30] the art and culture world either like yeah i think it's a sort of rat race that everybody falls into it's just the invisible hand man like it's it's everywhere like mr beast has to keep doing it just the same way like exxon has to keep doing it like everyone has to keep growing and growing and growing but that's that's sort of the one of the existential questions of mischief which [37:52] on one hand is certainly an artist but on the other hand is absolutely a business and [37:57] do we want to grow broadly or do we want to go deep? Yeah. And go as deep as possible and sustain that as long as possible. [38:08] That's that's sort of the question. But also, I think the opportunity.

[38:14] I think there's also just something... [38:16] Almost everything that actually reaches extreme staying power and scale, it has to sort of – [38:23] start small enough that it can actually have room to compound. Yeah, exactly. There's a, um, [38:29] Something that you are, the only, the two people I know who are best at this are you and Peter McIndoe, who you recently met, who created Birds Aren't Real. Oh, yeah. I never knew his last name. Oh, there you go. And when I say best at, I guess I mean, it's not quite this, but there's an interview with David Bowie in, like, the 90s where he's talking about the internet. And they're like, this is just another technology thing. And he's like, no, no, no. Like, this is an alien life form. Like, the creator and the consumer of the content are going to be so into Patico. You guys have talked about this in different ways. [38:59] the finish line somewhere there's some mantra somewhere like buckle up this is no longer in our hands. [39:05] performance that makes the audience complete the work, not consume it. And to the point of what we were just talking about, this can happen in really big scale or really small scale. In Peter's case, I think it started with, I don't know, initially it was like taping up Barbies around Arkansas. So these things can start. But in many ways, what I would call the skill is sort of like, can you create some kindling [39:27] that is going to fan into flame yeah yeah [39:30] And in many ways, it's sort of like the most internet native way to create something interesting. I'm curious, like what maybe I think you guys have used the kind of all encompassing language of like, [39:43] creating something the crowd can play. And so I'm curious, regardless of scale, what goes into creating those types of instruments that,

[39:52] a person actually wants to sort of like take and run with and make their own versus just like consume and move on. Yeah, yeah, totally. A lot of it comes from a place of deception, which is kind of great. And for better or for worse, one of the early mantras of mischief was never fall into the trap of building for your community. Because we like quickly got this big, passionate kind of fan base. And naturally, a lot of the wisdom that's passed along from the [40:22] to your audience, listen to your fans, cultivate your community. And we were like, you know what, we're not going to do that because – [40:29] the first thing you'd have to do is start repeating things that worked well in the past. Right. And we're like, we're never going to do that. In fact, we're going to make things and you're either going to love it or if you hate it, we're going to tell you to shut up, love it, and then you're going to love it even more. And so that look, it could be wrong. I think it's unique for different people in different groups, but it was good for us. And somehow the audience [40:59] The first product that we put out with that kind of mentality was our Blur Collectible, which is essentially this – [41:08] brick-shaped hunk of plastic rubber that looks like a stack of cache that's been blurred out with the Blur tool on Photoshop. [41:17] We thought it was really funny to put that on a website with the checkout button that says pay to reveal.

[41:25] So it's like there's a $25 checkout button with a blurry stack of cash on it. But what the user and user doesn't realize is it is a. [41:35] perfect resolution photo of a real object. And we're like, this is going to be so funny, but also we're going to get so many chargebacks. We're definitely going to get a lot of angry emails. And so we like made sure we did this under a different LLC because we're going to get the chargebacks. So we didn't want that to affect mischief's ability as a merchant to handle like we did all the precautions knowing that this was probably going to fuck us, but it was going to be worth it because we had to like lay down the law. Guess what? It's one [42:05] market like people i think we made a thousand on that first run of the u.s dollar and people got it and they just ran with it they started making so many different videos of conspiracy theories and some people like broke broke theirs open and there were drugs in it some people ate theirs live some people like they they just came up with so much lore that we could have never predicted [42:35] that ended up becoming sort of like a franchise in and of itself. [42:38] ironically with no more meaning though, because the gig was up. So then it just became an object that looked cool, which is interesting and totally fine by the way. Kind of the half-life of most mischief objects, I would presume. [42:53] at least most of them that hit some kind of escape velocity. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's why this was interesting because it,

[42:59] It hit for... [43:02] it hit at the beginning because of the, the gotcha. And then you, [43:08] It carried itself on its own just because it was a cool-looking object, which is not really a... [43:15] business that mischief engages it. Interesting. But we ran with it. I was like, all right, it kind of works. And that [43:22] That actually has been seen in a lot of the things that we've done, which is interesting. So the Big Red Boot, for example. [43:29] Only made 300 pairs at the beginning. And when it really first started to pick up heat, it was in this sort of cool kids, avant-garde, like art design fashion crowd. That very like, if you know, you know, right? And then it started to really pick up steam and it started showing up on celebrities. Then it started to show up on content creators. And by that point, we figured out how to make like 20,000 pairs. So we sold a bunch of them. [43:59] Atoning for the sins of the Jesus shoes? Yeah, exactly. So all these content creators realized, oh, wait, this is a tool to get me more views and engagement. So the meaning of the object changed. Wow. I can go viral if I wear things. Yeah, exactly. It became a tool, right? Versus at the early stages, it was a cool kids flex for the cool art kids. Then it became a tool for the content creators. And so same object, completely different meaning, completely different values. [44:29] actually ironically goes through that cycle.

[44:31] Actually, or maybe culture in general. I think you're probably right. Yeah, we probably like compressed decades of fashion wisdom into one very hectic two week time span for myself. [44:44] It's funny, too. There's. [44:47] All of these things are an invitation to, [44:50] that the person willingly opts into. [44:52] But you... [44:54] Sort of subvert them on the way. They were kind of making fun of you. Right. But you still like it. That's okay. Maybe on that note and on the note of the boots, you make lots of objects, but you also make [45:05] fashion objects and things people can wear, which [45:08] not definitively, but to me at least feels a little different than something you can play or consume in part because yeah, of course there's going to be the, I can use this as a tool or status object, but like, [45:19] whether it's utility or... [45:21] like symbolism or even fantasy costume, like fashion is somewhat tied to identity. Yeah. 100%. I'm curious what. [45:30] How your approach changes, if at all, for things that people can actually wear and kind of put on themselves? Yeah, unfortunately, it didn't change much. And so we didn't go into the mindset of, all right, there's an identity to design against, which in the industry they call it the lifestyle. Yeah. And then you create content around that lifestyle to sell the things that you're depicting in that lifestyle. We totally did not do that. [46:00] out that clearly do not work for one specific lifestyle so the way that i would describe that is one part conceptual practice but many parts a design exercise which is sort of this other part of

[46:15] people might not realize but [46:18] we are some of the best designers in the world, like full stop, just across the board from like graphic branding, but also object design, material design, packaging design, web design. And, uh, [46:30] I think it gets lost how good we are at it because you're thinking about the concept and the response and everything. Many of these concepts are so loud. Exactly. They're so built to jump off the screen. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's something that's interesting that opens up. [46:45] And you can be more subtle if you're playing to a smaller audience. I think so, too. And I think there's... [46:50] you know, [46:52] Part of my existential crisis is coming down to this notion of the act of creation and craft as maybe the solution for the thing that we were always looking for. Maybe that was the source of that euphoric feeling we've had from the beginning because the virality and being able to control so much attention, that wore off. But we still get the high from the act of creation with new formats that we haven't touched yet. Mm-hmm. [47:20] We are also addicted to higher stakes and bigger ambition. So there, there is some risk there, but that's kind of what makes it fun. [47:30] I'm going to get a little heady for a minute. She officer, forgive me. There is a, [47:36] essay that came up a bunch as I was doing research that I think particularly is influential to your two creative directors. But [47:43] It's just a fascinating lens to look at mischief, which is this athletic aesthetics blog that or essay that Brad Trammell wrote all the way back in 2013. I would recommend people go read it. It's amazing. I want to read a couple of excerpts.

[47:57] Versi says artists using social media have transformed the notion of a work from a series of isolated projects to a constant broadcast of one's artistic identity as recognizable, unique brand. That is... [48:09] What the artist once accomplished by making commodities that could stand independently from them is now accomplished through their ongoing self-commodification. And then this has reversed the traditional recipe that you need to create art to have an audience. Today's artist on the Internet needs to have an audience to create art. An asthete's audience, once assembled, becomes part of their medium. [48:33] The sort of metaphor that came to mind reading this is like traditional art or production or creativity is sort of like creating a special meal. And this is almost like an IV drip of just like steady nutrition or something. Yeah, for sure. Two other excerpts. To maintain the aerial view necessary for patterns to emerge, one must cultivate a disposition of indifference. To be indifferent is to believe that any one thing is as important as any other. [49:03] and a former high school friend's lunch in the same format with the same gravity. Obviously, it's very 2013, but so representative. And then finally, caring too much about any one item to the exclusion of the others readily available now seems to jeopardize the viewer's ability to understand the whole. [49:16] And the fascinating thing about this piece that hopefully is captured in those quotes is like... [49:22] this shift almost perfectly straddles this with like one foot in and one foot out like you're sort of

[49:27] playing this really deliberately and very deliberately subverting it. Yeah. I'm curious, like, [49:34] I mean, so much of what we were just spending the last 30 minutes talking about, but it's like this hyper online ephemeral, like nothing lasts. We ship new things every two weeks. Like you are the athlete, but then you're also playing with ideas that are way more substantial and permanent and maybe even where you're going now. That's kind of what we're trying to figure out is how do you not get trapped by your relationship with an audience? How do you maybe go to a place where the individual works can stand on their own? [50:04] stand on their own even if Mischief's name isn't on it the way we started. And I think that's actually the challenge that we've set forth for ourselves is don't fall into the trap now of what you might say Supreme did, which is... [50:20] Now it's just put the name everywhere and instead of a good idea necessarily, just put the logo on something in. [50:28] Call it a day, right? [50:29] whether you like their move or not, I think it's totally fine. But for us, I don't want us to fall in the trap of just writing on the name that we've cultivated over the last seven years. I would rather throw it away and create work that stands on its own. So how do we do that? Because then we're no longer trapped by the paradigm that Brad so accurately described and predicted like over 10 years ago, because it totally exists. And maybe it's most apt for people who remember the piece,

[50:59] content creator, but in some ways it's sort of like, does Supreme even need the shirts? Yeah. It's actually like drop the product entirely is the way things seem to be swinging. Yeah. [51:09] There's one other, uh, line from the mischief book. When making things at high frequency, people remember the first thing they saw, the best thing they have seen, and the most recent thing they saw best and last both benefit from volume. [51:23] How does, again, maybe you're moving away from it, but how does that articulation play into your strategy? [51:29] Well, it was really useful since 2019 because our business model was a cycle of reinvention. So we were always iterating the best and the last. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something always... [51:44] We knew that [51:46] Just anecdotally, we would meet a lot of people who discovered mischief through different points, right? So like they work in different industries or exist in different pockets or communities on the internet, and they all had different entry points. But then they would follow along and maybe realize that many things that they had seen on their feeds or in the news had also come from us. And some of those would be sort of like what they would rank as the best. [52:16] So, yeah. [52:17] Now they have a last, but we reinvent the last and maybe we also reinvent the best. And so that's sort of how we looked at our relationship with our audience. We adopted a model where we're just constantly iterating on the best and the last, which was cool.

[52:33] That'll still... [52:34] apply to where we're going is just going to be over a much longer time horizon. [52:40] you've built this entire thing off of biweekly drops. Yeah. Is that, that's done. Done. [52:46] Done. Wow. Instead of putting out maybe 40 to 50 new things a year, we might do three, maybe five. And you might not even know they were us. Like, that's the truth. They will... [53:00] Be a lot more high stakes and a lot more ambitious. [53:03] yeah so ego death to to reinvent i'm excited [53:11] Another topic that maybe verges into that, but maybe not, [53:15] First from Noah Smith, a very viral tweet. Fifteen years ago, the Internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the Internet. You guys have obviously played in this realm. Big Art Boots maybe being a quintessential example of sort of like the merging of the hyper real anime video game land. My friend Trevor McFedry, who made Lil Micaela, you probably know Trevor. He talks about like the New York City as like a sound stage for the Internet today. And then finally, Sean Monaghan again. This is the rubric under which I understand mischief. [53:45] art of taking the internet and making it into real life. [53:49] Does the internet feel... [53:52] Like internet culture, I almost wonder if it's like a redundant phrase. Yeah, yeah. But like do things feel as built around internet culture anymore? Or maybe part of what this new direction you're suggesting is like –

[54:05] turning that off a little bit? Is internet culture even a helpful frame? Is it just everything? [54:09] No, I mean, I think, you know, the internet... [54:13] And I didn't come online until 2011, 2012. So this is kind of bonkers to even extrapolate on. But it seemed like the Internet was this place where like real subcultures could kind of spring from nowhere or you could find a subculture that worked for you. And it was sort of like this beautiful secret that you had with strangers. Yeah, niche at scale in a way. Yeah, yeah. [54:36] And now that doesn't exist online, right? All that exists. Or it's hard to find. Or it's in some weird discord or whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So the internet is... [54:48] Thank you. [54:49] yeah like what what what is internet culture now it's it's hard to tell but [54:54] I think the advances in technology over the last 10 years gave people, [55:00] almost way too much scale and access to these niche communities and [55:05] that makes them a little bit less interesting and a little bit less cool, right? Like you need some friction. It needs to be a little bit hard to find, a little bit hard to penetrate, hard to stay in, hard to be in. But when you find it and when it's good, it really matters. It's not really... [55:21] Is it an internet? [55:22] subculture or offline subculture. It's just like... [55:26] can the subculture exist and can it last and maybe does it have the time to kind of cultivate in the oven that's i think that's the biggest thing right like can new subcultures actually arise and and stick around right like there were the dada's movements and the punk movements right like there used to be scenes i don't know if scenes exist anymore and if they do they're probably not on the

[55:52] Or at the very least, they're going to be really hard to find. Maybe they figured it out. Yeah. Maybe on that final note. [55:58] You've said, when you see the herd running so fast, it usually means they're running toward the end of a cliff. You've talked about kind of creating a game where you're the only player. And then more recently, you said, what is the opportunity when everyone else is doing the same thing? And you suggested and sort of teased that. [56:15] I think the list was permanence, the real world, elevated craft, and secrets. Dang, I said all that. That's great. [56:22] Again, going back to what we were just talking about, maybe the point is that you're not going to share much, but can you tease us or can you at least talk about – maybe the best question would be can you talk about what that might look like or a game of only one looks like in a world of abundance? Yeah, totally. Yeah. [56:39] Like, practically speaking, we're not going to like the most logical trap would be shelf life of virality has shortened attention spans are shorter. [56:52] increase drop production from once every two weeks to once a week. You know what I mean? Like that, that would have been the natural move, right? And also build a, [57:01] clipping team to create, uh, to bring in a content creator who makes a video of the thing that you do and then clip it up and then push it off via like dark social race. That's, that's what the practical move would have been. And I reject that move. So instead all I'll say is we have a theme parks division now. [57:21] And that hopefully tells you nothing and everything at the same time.

[57:29] I wonder if... [57:30] It's funny, I have a question somewhere in here about, honestly, the next thing I want to talk about around world building and... [57:39] When I think about world building, maybe most quintessentially, I think about Disney. Mm-hmm. [57:44] And I almost wonder, like, [57:46] For Walt, it was literally, Walt's world building was quite literally, I'm going to take this thing that I have created across this constellation of stuff and make a physical place that you can visit. Yeah, I almost wonder if, like, here we are lamenting where everything's going. It's just, the pendulum just swings. It totally is, right? The kids are going to party again, and people are going to hang out in... [58:09] I don't know, seek physical thrills, you know. [58:13] What makes place... [58:15] special to you still trying to figure that out but i'll tell you where i had that realization that it was important [58:24] uh earlier i think it was this year we had a gallery exhibition in tokyo [58:30] which cool mom like we're in tokyo that's great and [58:34] We had this opening where all the locals were invited, so the cool Tokyo art kids, the scenesters, all of that. [58:42] Two observations: at the opening, great crowd, thousands of people, there was a line, whatever, all that stuff. [58:52] What I really love about the crowd that I've seen at any mischief in-person event is you have such a range of people, actually. So...

[59:01] pretty even split across guys and girls you've got some cool kids you've got some nerds you've got [59:08] the tech guys you've got law professors you have families you have the kids who stand outside of supreme and looking to resell stuff you've got everyone but actually the vibe is still amazing because it's [59:22] clear that the common thread through all of those people is that [59:27] they all esteem this idea of creativity as a personal value to aspire for. That is the common thread, right? And so... [59:37] Even if [59:38] max that about something to leave in by the way go back to the top of the conversation yeah exactly like creativity as a value to aspire towards i think is a real thing and will continue to be a real thing so let's say you know maybe we had two three even if max 5 000 people that's nothing on the internet right yes but it felt very significant funny thing from the same show there was a video on tiktok of one of the pieces that ended up getting 30 million views and someone said that [1:00:08] thought. [1:00:09] Nothing. And I can't really tell you why, but the crowd of whatever 2000, 3000 people felt so much more significant than a video of my piece getting 30 million views. Like, who cares? I don't know. [1:00:24] In a way, it would be better if it never even made it on social media. [1:00:28] Like, just let these 3,000 people cherish this forever. That would be great. And I think that's what we've been working on, rewiring ourselves here internally to...

[1:00:38] reflect on our own work and our own path forward. [1:00:43] I also have to admit, or I would observe... [1:00:46] whether you like it or not, there is something kind of beautiful in the notion that [1:00:51] I have to imagine part of what made that thing go viral was that it came out of something actually real. [1:00:56] Yeah, for sure. It absolutely did. And it was literally just a video. We had this cubicle, like an office cubicle that you would see in like a typical corporate building, complete with a desk, Windows XP, computer, printers, stuff all over the desk. [1:01:26] so that it's just constantly raining on the cubicle. At the bottom of the cubicle, we're collecting the water and pumping it back into the system. So it's a perpetual rain cubicle. [1:01:36] And... [1:01:37] Yeah, it did make a good image that would perform on social media. And it sort of ended up becoming a meme where people are like, this is me today at work or something like that, which was not what we had in mind. We just like the visual and the artistry of it. But... [1:01:51] Yeah, good things will continue to help people get the views online. And it wasn't even our TikTok account. Right. Yeah, the other thing that calls to mind is just like, I always say the best parties, a party sort of is inversely correlated with the quality with how hard it is to get there. Or it's correlated, I should say. Like the reason Burning Man works is just super hard to get there. Yeah, the friction is valuable. Yes. Yeah, it's really valuable and self-selecting.

[1:02:21] example, this is this guy, CT, and then he talked, he's a paper from a few years ago called How Twitter Gamifies Communication. And one of the things he observes is when you post a tweet and it gets 100 likes, it [1:02:33] you have no idea what each of those likes contains. It could mean 100 people thought it was like, [1:02:39] incrementally interesting, it can mean 100 people loved it. And you compare that to a teacher in front of a classroom who says something and 29 students eyes glaze over and one student's eyes light up. And all that's contained in that, it's the equivalent of your 30 million versus the 5,000. Yeah, yeah, totally. I would go to bat for that one kid any day now. Yeah. I mean, perhaps what we needed to, maybe the less cynical take was we need to burn ourselves [1:03:09] realize what we had in front of us. I think it will happen. I have faith. One last note, at least adjacent to this, would be, I brought up world building. I think all of so many of the things I love [1:03:22] I would put in that bucket of world building, whether they're brands or IP or people like I would argue maybe the thing that is most impressive about Taylor Swift is her world building. [1:03:31] And the way that it's something sort of to participate in. And part of that's the physical part of it. Part of it's she's so present in like whether you want to be cynical about that or not. You think about the Disney example, the classic Disney, like the diagram Walt drew. And I think people conflate that often with like branding and marketing and storytelling.

[1:03:52] Part of it is one part of it, but I'm curious, and maybe you don't, you guys don't even think about it this way, but I'm curious. [1:03:56] to what extent you have anything in your mind when you think about world building and what goes into trying to do that well i think we accidentally started doing it and retroactively i'll say [1:04:06] Thank you. [1:04:07] our approach was [1:04:10] Thank you. [1:04:10] in opposition to the folks who are like, you know, branding, marketing, like, you know, create your campaign, do your out of home, show up on social, whatever world building, like that's totally a style of world building. What we ended up doing in hindsight was we just relentlessly created new cultural output that was valuable to people, whether they spent their time on it or if they spent money on it. And by doing that enough times consistently enough across [1:04:40] monopolize a feeling that I think mischief actually owns. And that's the world that we have. That's the world that we created. But we totally did not mean to do that. Well, I was going to say, one of the things you have in the book is like all these values. And one of them is like, almost like deliberately avoiding being cohesive. We're not a brand. We're [1:05:01] There is some through line. There's some I know it when I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel it when I see it. And that only came from just being really relentlessly consistent over a long period of time. Consistent in what way? [1:05:14] consistent in like every couple weeks there's something new just literally consistent yeah literally consistent right and you know the the output not on some mood board no no it just it just had to be you know

[1:05:26] consistent in a timely manner. And fortunately, most things that we put out had the same sort of emotional quality. I wouldn't say everything did, but like most of it did. Yes. In the same way, perhaps to extrapolate content that comes out of a physical thing or physical experience that people really resonate with, I have to imagine contains whether it's [1:05:47] sort of, [1:05:48] trivial or utilitarian or it's something more mystical. It's the quality without a name. Whatever that is, it is sort of [1:05:56] It's runoff from – and in the case of mischiefs creativity, like is it possible that the feeling is just something that happens in this room, in this building that like gets packaged in there? Yeah, totally. I think so actually because I've often described to people when I'm asked – [1:06:13] Like, how do you... [1:06:16] what's the process? Like, how do you come up with these ideas? And, you know, is there a framework? Like, what's the magic bullet here? And I tell people it's actually like an internal shared language, not too dissimilar from, let's say you go to a jazz club and at the end of the show, anybody can go up and just start jamming together. And so you get a bass player, a pianist, a saxophonist, and a drummer who have never met before, but they're starting to play and it [1:06:46] sounds good, right? They have a shared language and they have mediums that they know how to make work together. And we're the same. It's not an incredibly new thing or a novel approach. We just happen to have a group of people who speak the same language.

[1:07:02] and have access to resources. Which goes a long way. Lots of slaving away by game. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned process. [1:07:11] And you guys have talked about this in a few different places where you have like maybe in a way that would surprise people a very rigorous and sort of almost boring process around creativity. And like weekly or excuse me, daily, I think, scheduled brainstorms. It rhymes with so many creative people, maybe especially Jerry Seinfeld. He talks about like you lock yourself in the room like every day. It's a total drag. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Jerry even says he says, find the struggle you can tolerate. Yeah. We call it the dark place. You got to go there. [1:07:41] Maybe a slightly more optimistic question, but maybe that's part of the answer is, [1:07:45] What has it been like maybe personally for you to – [1:07:50] train the creative muscle to like actually feel that muscle and maybe it's in the context of brainstorming maybe it's more broad but what does that feel like yeah yeah it's it's a constant hunt for new inputs yeah and like that that's really what it is it's it's new inputs new insights [1:08:07] And then, you know, we have this shared language that we speak here. So the ideas will come, but you need the inputs. So that is probably the most dynamic. [1:08:18] part of mischief actually which is there is someone whose full-time job is to essentially create the equivalent of a collegiate curriculum they curate all these topics those are the inputs in fact

[1:08:32] These are all that's behind us is a board of just like a bunch of random words on a whiteboard. That's from the topic mining that was happening a couple of weeks ago. Curriculum building said topic mining. Yeah. So it's just like and, you know, a lot of them have nothing to do with one another. There's toilets. There's Eva Frank, Eva and Franco mats, which are some interesting artists in Canada that it seems like we have a lot of a lot in common with. [1:09:02] Like it can really go anywhere. Right. [1:09:05] The inputs are super important. Part of the value of being in New York is the inputs are very diverse, too. A big thing here is we love public transportation. It's really important that people ride the subway because you free inputs. It's so important. It's a demanded or it's a required conflict with the other. It's it's so critical, like it creates tension. And out of that tension comes like new ideas, new perspectives. [1:09:35] that big vision and mold it into something that can be real? And then how do you create the strategy to put it out into the real world? And we built a process around that too, but I'd say it comes a lot down to the inputs, [1:09:49] for this group that has that shared sort of spoken subversive language. [1:09:55] Probably doesn't apply to most of the group, if I have to imagine. You, perhaps uniquely, grew up without a lot of inputs.

[1:10:02] Talk about building a muscle. Maybe it helps to have a smart person here who brings you inputs, but has there been anything active around your... [1:10:14] how you immerse yourself, how you find things, where you find interesting inputs? I mean, that's why I love being in New York, because I have access to so many different worlds. And you can sort of match... [1:10:27] the categories that mischief has a presence in to my own sort of [1:10:31] thirst to acclimate to the world that I've entered. And that's why, you know, we've [1:10:38] We entered the footwear space and the fashion space and the fine art space and the tech space and raise venture capital. We took a very sort of flat line approach to work. [1:10:48] every element of culture. And now that we've [1:10:52] exposed ourselves to those worlds and we've kind of co-opted them and maybe even infiltrated them. We're looking at other worlds that we haven't touched yet. We have done nothing in the world of real estate, hospitality. We have done no TV or video. We have not touched AI in recent, like the last four years. We've never done anything in crypto. Maybe now's a good time to do something in crypto because the herd already ran off the cliff. And there's another, I think there's another, we'll see. [1:11:22] The current administration really loves crypto, so we'll see if that's the peak. I'll go back and focus on real estate or something. You're aging into a few of those, which is fun. Yeah, yeah. And probably with your audience. Yep.

[1:11:34] Maybe it relates to what you just said. We talked about using time as a filter. There's a classic idea that focus isn't saying no [1:11:41] to bad ideas and saying no to good ideas. [1:11:43] Yeah, how do you do that? Especially in a... [1:11:47] I don't know if it's decision by committee, but it's certainly idea by committee. Yeah. [1:11:52] Yeah. It, there's no crystal clear, concrete answer to that. To be honest, it's, [1:11:59] kind of time and place like what makes sense right now but also what do i anticipate will make sense uh in the long term and i'm [1:12:09] I think a lot of it got a lot simpler as soon as we narrowed in on what still gives us that feeling of euphoria. And not having something every two weeks probably helps, too. That was a beast. I mean, it worked, but that was brutal. It is funny just picking up on it worked. [1:12:27] I really think... [1:12:28] doing something every day or every week or whatever for a while is almost a guaranteed way for something to happen. Yeah. Which is, it's such a sorry truth, but like, it works. We were sort of hedging our bets. We were like, we know mischief. [1:12:42] Back in 2019, we know mischief is something that's really hard to define and put in words. We know the output is also really hard to describe and it's difficult for people to comprehend. We're going to brute force this category and maybe shift this Overton window to a new type of subversive, interactive, experiential approach.

[1:13:04] storytelling that's fueled by capitalistic mechanisms and the way people discover and share information online. No one still succinctly defined a category for our type of output, but it's [1:13:16] it totally does kind of exist and there are examples of other players trying to use some of these moves and that's cool it would be cool i mean the the drops thing like maybe it came and went but like that was you totally that was us accelerating what was already starting to happen but what we picked up on like that was sort of an emerging meta yes and we're like okay if we can take that move and co-opt it and use it on other categories [1:13:43] that'll be pretty groundbreaking. That'll be kind of people will stop and they'll just be like, what? And now everybody... [1:13:50] Like everybody wants to do it. Have you given up on the meta? Or is the new stuff? I just don't really know what it is. [1:13:57] don't really know what it is and maybe maybe it doesn't matter anymore you know maybe you have to see past it yeah if things are moving fast enough maybe there is there's just a it's hard to tell [1:14:08] We live in the age of the individual. We talked about that a bit. There are very, very few collectives or brands or things. You've even compared Mischief to a band. There are very few bands, lots of soul artists. Mauricio Cattalan in that essay I referenced earlier, he talks about Mischief's lack of authorship as lack of definite paternity, which is an amazing one. [1:14:32] Yeah. [1:14:33] There are...

[1:14:34] Examples of this, certainly, but even most bands, Lennon-McCartney was rare. [1:14:39] And something else. [1:14:41] even more zoomed out. It's just everything was done by mischief is even rarer. How does that or how has that changed your relationship to the work? [1:14:48] Thank you. [1:14:50] The great thing about being the, what did Maurizio say, the indeterminate parent? Lack of definite paternity. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the great thing about... By the way, this is the banana guy. I know. Like for the... Yeah, I know you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is the artist who taped the banana. I should have said that earlier. Who actually has an incredibly long and rich track record of making really good subversive art pieces. One of his earlier pieces, I believe, was that he taped a person to a wall. Probably. [1:15:20] Anyway, the great thing about mischief being – [1:15:25] The the owner of the works and not like me as an individual or anyone else here individuals, we you remove a lot of ego from this whole process and it keeps the culture here intact that it can survive. [1:15:40] much longer than most places probably should have when you start to get the amount of attention that you're getting like us. [1:15:47] So it was actually unintentionally [1:15:50] almost like a protection agent to keep us intact from losing our own minds, versus the alternative is you start to get [1:16:00] high on like your own fame right this one really blew up it was created by so-and-so and you get you get you get high on the access you get right like what happens in any band when they become really hot all of a sudden you're like turning on your family you break up with your girlfriend like go chase someone who was like a groupie you start being bad with your money like all these things totally could have happened

[1:16:24] And they break up. The team breaks up. And then the team breaks up, right? So mischief being this sort of... [1:16:30] kind of faceless, maybe not so faceless anymore, entity protected us from that. [1:16:36] And in our heads, and maybe we're kind of full of ourselves, we like to think that maybe... [1:16:43] the mischief experiment can survive beyond any of us. And that is kind of the dream, right? That maybe one day I'm no longer part of it or I like I die, right? Like that's the natural course of things. [1:16:57] Could it still exist? [1:17:00] That's cool. That's pretty cool. The other [1:17:03] answer to this question is, uh, [1:17:06] By not having an individual be any author of this, I don't have to do all the press interviews. [1:17:13] Again, laziness is the root of a lot of our inspiration. [1:17:19] Years ago, we had dinner [1:17:21] This was a while ago. It was probably four years ago, three, four years ago. And I think you were in a particularly... [1:17:26] like tired or cynical period perhaps, but you admitted that you were spending a lot less time on the creative side, if any at all, at least at that time. And you talked about how sort of your, your main or singular goal is creating this like space for creative people that like, [1:17:41] would preserve that. [1:17:43] Preserve the earnestness of us. [1:17:46] and optimism and hope and all these things. [1:17:49] You guys have also used language in several places around... [1:17:52] play as a sort of underpinning of what happens here. How does that get fostered? You're several years later, you've continued to make it happen. I know, I know. I had to work on my resting bitch face. I mean, and when we had dinner, that must have been...

[1:18:10] Endemic or maybe tail end. 2021 or 2022. Yeah, yeah. [1:18:15] Yeah, at that point, it was sort of like, on one hand... [1:18:19] you are like the current thing but on the other hand it's a fight for resources things are going wrong banks are shutting down uh our ships with our cargo from china are getting fired on by rebels in yemen like what the fuck is going on nothing we just want to make a stupid turbo tax anime dating simulator right um [1:18:44] Yeah, it's [1:18:45] There is sort of this, I guess, internal like Jekyll hide thing that I still deal with, which is on one hand, relentlessly and ruthlessly fight for resources for the group here and then protect them from all of that bullshit. [1:19:01] But then the other part is, how do you continue to curate the right people to think about the world in the way that [1:19:09] works for this group. How do you keep bringing on the right inputs? How do you keep it from being stale? [1:19:16] How do you find the thing that can give us that Eureka feeling again? Yeah. Because – [1:19:21] a lot of the folks here have been here for years now and uh been around the virality block probably totally wore off right so how do you reinvent that so i think a big part of it is just [1:19:34] And this doesn't sound so humble to say, but like a massive dose of humility and being like, it's okay to change.

[1:19:41] Right. [1:19:42] Just because this worked so well for a moment in time doesn't mean that it... [1:19:46] should continue working. And rationally speaking, that makes a lot of sense, but it's harder to do when you built it. And it is sort of who you are, and it's everything that you've got. So it continues to be tricky, but I've also found that... [1:20:03] Personally, I love [1:20:05] Thank you. [1:20:06] Like maybe my art is the business side, which is carving out hidden opportunities and like unforeseen resources. [1:20:16] to combine in novel ways. [1:20:18] to then give this group the opportunity to make something completely unprecedented. And that part, I'm starting to lean in on a lot more, which is actually pretty fun. Also, just the opportunity to give a creative person runway. Yeah. Or open pasture. Let them rip. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know, I have a board meeting tomorrow. I'll get chewed out for like an hour. And these guys will have- You're the meme of the guy with the arrows. Yeah, exactly. They'll have no idea. [1:20:48] to be fine. [1:20:49] It's interesting. You were talking with Scott Norton on an interview, and you brought up how doing that museum project in Korea – [1:20:59] talking about new inspirations, like, [1:21:01] I think you had reflected that maybe especially in contrast to New York, which is like the most cynical place ever. Like New York is Woody Allen. [1:21:08] They both in that event and maybe culturally in Korea, they have more earnestness around commerce and creativity mixing. That's crazy. And it's interesting how even something like that can kind of rejuvenate.

[1:21:20] this the or heal some of the cynicism oh it totally did right because you know [1:21:25] Prior to that, it's like, oh, you're going to sell out by making too much inventory or you're going to do this collab like a sellout or like you're doing too much stuff. You made a shoot with Jimmy Fallon. Yeah, exactly. Like you're a sellout. I'm like, oh, fuck, you're probably right. Why did I do that? He called. Of course we're going to do it. But then you go to Korea and it's just – [1:21:45] like unbridled enthusiasm for creativity in whatever form and i was like oh that feels pretty good okay i remember that feeling ah let me go back to that and ironically it's it's the kids who like [1:21:59] brought that back to me and reminded me about that yeah so i came back from korea thinking [1:22:04] So [1:22:05] all right, let's channel that again. Let's not think so hard and let's just make the things that we want to make. Let's not listen to the critics or whoever, the original fans who say we have turned on them or whatever. The first time that's ever happened. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that was very eye-opening. I'm really glad that happened. Yeah, yeah. [1:22:30] What does trust mean in the context of mischief in your audience, if at all? [1:22:35] Good question. I don't know. We're probably reinventing that as we speak. [1:22:43] I think there was definitely a case of most people knew that when we put something out, it would be... [1:22:50] generally worth their time and/or money.

[1:22:53] There's definitely a group of people who definitely trusted that it would make them money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a while, we listened to that a lot because the secondary market is a drug. And when you don't. We have this in 100 Thieves, same thing. Yeah. And the thing is, we didn't know about that world. [1:23:10] like we fell into that world by accident it's like wait what is going on what are these discord groups and what are what's a cook group and what are these bots like what what how well and it's really interesting canvas for all of the second order interesting audience stuff you guys like to do anyway so we quickly like learned about these mechanisms how do we play with that which was also very fun [1:23:34] But yeah, maybe at the end of the day, my answer would be... [1:23:40] It doesn't matter if there's trust or not, because we're going to go in a direction where the work has to just speak for itself, whether our name is on it or not. [1:23:50] It's kind of a, yeah. [1:23:53] Big reinvention. [1:23:55] Not something we haven't talked about at all, but... [1:23:58] You just did this made by mischief book. And I think a lot of what we've been discussing is sort of like retrospective and reflecting on this. Actually, there's there's one more Tremel quote from the from that athletic piece. He says, athletes self-editing is now outsourced to the audience who carefully pick over the barrage of content with unprecedented zeal. Their eagerness to assess and evaluate artists work lies somewhere between being volunteer market researchers and a wish to bend artists to their will and democratize their art.

[1:24:26] Again, so much of this is, I think, less relevant as you move into a new phase, but [1:24:31] You also have done a... [1:24:33] you're with Periton, you've done multiple galleries, you've done the museum installation, you've [1:24:39] Now the book. [1:24:41] to some degree you're clearly interested in looking back and not only um and narrativizing it to some degree um [1:24:49] Yeah, I'm curious how you like, is that like, we'll do this every once in a while and otherwise sort of not bother like, [1:24:57] Clearly some of it is up to the audience to interpret it, but I, yeah, I'm curious what it, [1:25:00] what your current relationship to sort of that context adding and reversal. It also started in Korea, which was, you know, the kids came up. [1:25:10] And they were excited. And the reason they were excited is because they could now see a vision of the future for people. [1:25:17] someone like them, where creativity can maybe lead to a lifestyle or a career path that isn't restrained by [1:25:29] the current jobs that exist in industry. Yeah. And, and, [1:25:33] That was a very interesting feeling. And also it's not in some black box as much. No, exactly. And so actually from Korea, we shed the black box. [1:25:42] And that's where the book came from. That's where we have school groups come through here all the time. We're teaching a course at SCAD now. We do more like community events now. It's just, the other part is like,

[1:25:56] a black box is not that interesting forever yeah look at banksy like eventually it becomes a meme unless you evolve it right and part of it is just acknowledging like we've been around for a minute [1:26:10] Over half a decade. [1:26:12] and perhaps the most defining half decade of our lives. [1:26:17] Also, we're not these punk rock kids anymore. I'm 35. My COO just had a kid. We were all in our 20s with no money and nothing to lose when we started this. And now it's like, okay, acknowledge our context, acknowledge our place within our context. [1:26:34] And also just thinking, [1:26:38] we don't have to be so precious about the way that things used to be. We can take a more fluid approach to this. And so the black box is basically just gone. Like the doors are open. [1:26:50] You... [1:26:50] Send us a message and if it's good, we respond. [1:26:54] it's all it's all open right the book is it's a textbook yeah it's a resource right it's not a picture book it's uh it's a here is how we did this like down to the science right and then here's like it's almost case studies they are case studies they're just case studies and then there's an index of every single thing that we've ever done organized by different categories and other um criteria so that [1:27:18] And the Korea trip was a pivotal moment that lent itself to the book, that lent itself to opening up the doors more. And I think, again, that puts us in a place where we have no choice but to let the work speak for itself because the black box is not going to do us any favors anymore. It's really putting our money where our mouth is. Yeah. No more tricks. Right. Yeah. No more games. The work just will have to be so good. Yeah.

[1:27:45] Wow. [1:27:46] And we'll die on that sword. Like if it's not good, that's not good. I also have to admit, or I should say point out... [1:27:54] A great magician tactic is to put everything in plain sight. Wink, wink. There you go. [1:28:01] Maybe this is just part of a highly calculated PR tour. [1:28:05] on a super broad philosophical level. You talked about kind of a halfway mark when you left West Point. [1:28:13] choosing this sort of undefined path. [1:28:16] Maybe in especially stark contrast to a group of people who are quite literally choosing war over uncertainty. [1:28:24] Another line from you, I think comfort and predictability are antithetical to everything we do and believe in. Oh, interesting. [1:28:33] Yeah, maybe layered on. [1:28:35] what we were just talking about. [1:28:38] you've had a lot of opportunity to get comfortable. And maybe you have in certain ways, and that's fine. But how do you stay original? [1:28:44] Well, the great thing is the world keeps changing and making us more uncomfortable. So it's kind of working out for us. But I think the other part is not choosing to go out of our way to seek comfort, right? Like making sure our incentives aren't set up in a way where we're just seeking predictability, dependability, rinsing and repeating. And we, by the way, we've made all [1:29:14] it's like, uh, all right, heads up. Like,

[1:29:18] Eyes are clear. Let's do things that we don't know what the outcome is. Let's do things that we don't know. Honestly, maybe the two weeks drops was comfortable in some weird, insane sense. It didn't become comfortable. It started super uncomfortable, right? But then it became comfortable for us. It also probably became comfortable for other people, right? Like, there was a novelty in just how relentlessly consistent we are, but then [1:29:44] It's in the word. It was just consistent. [1:29:47] Right. So that... [1:29:49] also in hindsight was not destined to last forever yeah do you ever get tired of novelty [1:29:57] No, no. And we're constantly still looking for it. But it's it's just manifesting more in. [1:30:05] bigger formats, like, [1:30:08] different challenges. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Which I think is, [1:30:13] normal, right? Like I think... [1:30:16] Anyone in any line of work or lifestyle is looking for things that stimulate them. [1:30:22] That's like why you get up in the morning, theoretically, where we're doing the same thing just in our own way. [1:30:27] Thank you. [1:30:28] Yeah, it's funny how novelty, what novelty means can change a lot over time. Yeah, also that. Almost definitionally, it's easy to forget that. Exactly. You guys launched... [1:30:36] Applied mischief or at least announced it. Yep. [1:30:39] which I think is sort of, obviously, on some level, like, [1:30:43] a revenue driver and a consulting thing, but also an opportunity for maybe more scale or media or whatever. I think you talked about it a little bit earlier this year, but anything...

[1:30:51] to talk about or share on that note, or is it still under refs? [1:30:54] It's honestly nothing crazy. And it kind of falls in line with the thinking behind the book and teaching the class. It's just like doors are open. There's a team here that's really good at a particular thing that I think a lot of people want. So... [1:31:11] For the right people, we will do work with them. What's the right people mean? [1:31:17] So it's definitely not category specific. It could really be any category. I think it's just people with a very similar sensibility who might already speak the same language we do or have the ability to learn how to speak the language that we do. [1:31:30] I would also say applied mischief is, [1:31:33] solves a few [1:31:36] internal, not problems, but it does a couple of things for me. One is, [1:31:42] It... [1:31:44] There was such a robust operation built around that two-week release cycle here that can now be reapplied to external partners. The other part is by opening up the doors to external partners, we're given more material that maybe we couldn't have as efficiently gotten on our own. [1:32:02] Or legally. Or legally. And now we have... [1:32:07] enough clout and leverage and name and track record [1:32:12] to be able to maybe push boundaries with permission, which is cool, right? A lot of people think mischief was always about sticking it to the man and punching at all corporations, good or bad. Sort of in the title, but the name actually. But it wasn't. It was about using them as material to make new output. That's the most important takeaway here. Adversarial, it's a mechanism, but that wasn't our reason for being.

[1:32:39] And so applied mischief. [1:32:41] Thank you. [1:32:42] again, it creates the opportunity to give new material [1:32:46] new inputs and new material to the team. And that's a good thing. While they also can [1:32:53] Like that applied mischief team can service the internal other enterprises that we're running, like the theme parks division that I'm being so cagey about. [1:33:06] sort of concretized a number of more coherent and legible product verticals, shoes, handbags, stuff like that. [1:33:15] And I don't know if you've used this language, but... [1:33:17] There are aspects of this that resemble like the... [1:33:21] the sort of like European fashion house idea. I'm curious to what extent that's resonant, if at all, with parts of the business. Yeah, yeah. It is starting to feel like that. It's starting to feel like a house of creative enterprises with a shared back office that is not just finance, HR legal, but also a creative back office, which is applied mischief. [1:33:44] And so that... [1:33:45] is now a back office that's also revenue generating which is very useful and that gives us the opportunity to double down on categories that we've gone deep in that are meaningful so we do have a successful handbag business we do have a fine art practice with the blue chip gallery [1:34:02] Thank you. [1:34:03] And we have a few other sort of verticals that I can't talk too much about yet, but [1:34:08] when you zoom out maybe in like...

[1:34:11] three or five years it actually will look more just like a house. [1:34:16] which is cool. It'll look like Allison, still different from Allison, based on the outputs. [1:34:22] What have you learned from Sarah Andelman? [1:34:25] Wow, that is a great question. [1:34:28] it's funny because she is such an amazing person and, uh, [1:34:34] I'm not usually so sincere. But the thing about Sarah is... [1:34:40] And I never knew about Colette, by the way. Okay. Never heard of it until I was introduced to her. Right. And then they were like, oh, she's a legend. You got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, what's that? Which is so embarrassing. But you were probably like... [1:34:55] Maybe you're out of West Point, but you were. Yeah, there's no way I could have known. Like, why would I know? It's kind of a deep cut. Yeah, it's it's it definitely is. So. [1:35:05] I met her, and she's like this... [1:35:10] cute French lady who... [1:35:12] kind of dresses kind of quirky and seems to know everyone and everyone seems to know her and adore her. [1:35:21] But she is so excited by sort of like our brand of novelty, like objects and, you know, creative experiences and creative takes on not just the fashion space, but like any space in general. [1:35:36] And it's actually so inspiring because... [1:35:40] She was the top of the game for...

[1:35:44] who knows, like decades probably. [1:35:47] It was her and her mom, right? It was her and her mom. And then shut it down, moved on, but continues to engage and be excited. And I think actually, I draw a lot of inspiration and parallels to that moment of me in Korea, sort of acknowledging like, all right, I want to continue to engage and maybe like go deeper in a community and still be a part of this and like [1:36:10] give back to it. Sarah Andelman changed Mischief's whole trajectory by being the person who introduced us to Emanuel Perrotton. Prior to that, she had only ever made one introduction between an artist and Emanuel Perrotton before. That was two decades prior. That artist was Brian Donnelly. [1:36:28] That's a cause. [1:36:30] Oh, my gosh. And the reason that she did it was because I came to her and I said, we have this idea for an ATM machine with a leaderboard that ranks people based on how much money is in their bank account. But we really want to get it into Art Basel. I have no idea how. No, I was like, I keep calling them and they keep saying, you need to be part of a gallery. And she was like... [1:36:54] Maybe you should meet Emmanuel. Who's a pretty, like, I don't know that world well, and I suspect most listeners don't either, but he's pretty... [1:37:02] serious top five okay probably number five but he's up there he i'm still learning about this world too but basically since i don't know 60s 70s there are a handful of art world power brokers who controlled the movement of money between the ultra wealthy into this asset class of like

[1:37:32] is one of those people. Talk about different layers and metas and oh my gosh. There's so much to unpack with that world. But Emmanuel is one of those people, but as big and powerful as Emmanuel is, it's like a global gallery with spaces all over the world, in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and also the United States. He... [1:37:51] kind of like Sarah. [1:37:52] continues to be excited. And that's why it worked out so well. He was like, yeah, I'll do the ATM machine and let's do a group show or let's do like a solo show. And then we did another solo show. And now our work is starting to show up in museums, which is amazing because that's permanent. [1:38:12] So all of mischief up until now was built on ephemerality, but now some of it's going to be part of a permanent collection and very reputable museums. Yeah. [1:38:22] In the past, that might have been seen as like... [1:38:25] selling out like now you're a part of the institutions but i think uh [1:38:30] permanent documentation of things that we've done in the past that other people can access, [1:38:35] is very cool. [1:38:37] So we are pro all of that happening. It's cool to notice this pattern. [1:38:42] across both the people and just broadly of people who are still excited yeah i always tell the story eldon john came to usc when i was in school and like it was cool he performed whatever he's kind of old but it was still cool to see him and but the the highlight of the whole thing was he was talking about lord this is like 2012 and he's like guys it's amazing there's this young artist and she sings about getting on a plane for the first time and he was it was that was the part that he got most excited about that that is incredible and i think what i take away from that and i've

[1:39:12] about this in the last like 18 months is that now that i'm 35 and we're entering the second half of the decade [1:39:21] I'm thinking more in 10-year, 20-year increments. Up until this point, I was really thinking year by year. But now, I've been in New York City for a decade. I've been doing mischief for over a decade. Now I'm really... [1:39:34] acknowledging that it is a long-term game. [1:39:37] Like this is a long haul. And I'm really inspired by people who have already done [1:39:44] had success multiple scales larger than my own, and they're still excited. [1:39:50] That's amazing, right? And so I hope to be entering my 40s and my 50s. [1:39:56] Still excited and not too high on my own supply, if that makes sense. [1:40:03] It's a sort of... [1:40:05] There's a lightness to it, but there's also a sort of settling into yourself. Yeah, for sure. Which also is sort of like why you see the most disruption coming from young people, because they're not settled yet. They're angsty and they're willing to experiment and take risks. They have nothing to lose. But it's also rare that they do things that are as substantial. [1:40:25] Also true. Like, um, [1:40:28] Yeah, man, it is really interesting to think about like, [1:40:32] The longest time horizon you even hear people talking about is five or 10 years. Yeah. And like, what could you do if you, I was just up near Woodstock in New York and I went to this like quarry that this guy made. It's called Opus 40, I think. And he spent 40 years like digging out this limestone quarry. And you're just like, like what even opens up when you, even if you just say like, let's not think on a one year time horizon, let's think on a five year time horizon. Like what, what now is in play? Yeah. Yeah.

[1:41:02] It changes the whole game, right? It changes the type of relationships you choose to have. [1:41:09] It changes the way you invest your time and your resources now. Like, are you working on the current thing or are you working on the next thing? Right. It changes a lot for me. It also gives me a sense of security. [1:41:22] Because now I invest in relationships that I count on having for the next two decades, if not more. Yeah. Which is... [1:41:31] comforting. But then I also... And also a little, there's a little bit of freedom through that kind of commitment. There is, right? It's, you know, there... [1:41:40] It makes your world bigger, right? And now I'm in the headspace of how can I do things now that make my world bigger? And there's a sense of longevity in that statement as well. [1:41:51] It's really cool. One other miscellaneous question I had that is hilarious to ask and follow up to that is – [1:41:58] I think our mutual friend, Blake Robbins, he said you have this take on BuzzFeed that it was actually like the right strategy. [1:42:05] And that it was like in the wrong economic environment. Maybe, maybe I miss misunderstood him. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Or maybe you have a separate reaction, but I'm curious for either of them. [1:42:15] Oh man. How long did you work there by the way? [1:42:17] I was an intern for a year. Okay. Yeah. While secretly doing mission projects. Yes, exactly. [1:42:25] I mean, I don't remember saying that necessarily, but I know that if you look back at Jonah Peretti's story,

[1:42:33] history. He actually is one of our predecessors. I saw the Nike email. Yeah, yeah. He was doing like very interesting sort of culture jamming objects or moments that he [1:42:47] could be distributed through... [1:42:50] virality but true virality back then like shares. Right. Back then it had to be so good that you couldn't help but share it with [1:43:00] five to ten other people. And that's when real viral, actual viral things happened. And so I understand what he was going for, which was – [1:43:10] How can you create a platform for this? How can you build a business around this, which essentially is taking this notion of a mechanism of how people discover and consume content and then also take advantage of the ways that people also share it? [1:43:26] And that led to, you know, the listicles, right? [1:43:30] Amazing format, Dad. Yeah, the medium is the message. Just like... [1:43:34] It was so easy to create and so natural to share. [1:43:39] But what happens when there's too many listicles? It doesn't matter anymore. And then also like you lose control of your distribution with all the platform, like all of these things I totally understand because we experienced on probably a smaller scale, but we totally experienced them. [1:43:54] He's doing now. He's still running it. Really? BuzzFeed still exists. And I hope he figures it out. I really do because he's done the long, like he's, he's dug in. Right. You know what I mean? Maybe there's a collaboration there someday. I would be so jazzed to work with him personally. I don't think Mischief and BuzzFeed makes sense, but it's also the thing of,

[1:44:17] He chose the... [1:44:20] business model of the day, which was media and advertising. [1:44:25] And [1:44:25] We just never chose a business model. So we are not stuck. It doesn't mean we're secure, but we're not stuck. You know what I mean? We still have options. You can't pin me down. I will never. Right, right. Okay, as we wrap up, I have a... [1:44:42] list of things I pulled out of the, in the beginning of the mischief book, you have like, and I don't know if they're even in the handbook, but you have all these like one liners and ideas that I think Lucas and the other Kevin wrote down. And I would love to like speed run just like a, if you don't have a reaction, you don't have a reaction. These are probably from our employee handbook. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. [1:45:04] But it's my favorite thing in the book, and it's just accompanied with some amazing visuals. Importance of an adversary. We talked about this a little bit, but if you don't have an antagonist, do you have a point? And always punch something, never punch down. Yeah, yeah. Continues to be true to this day. [1:45:18] Super important. I love the always punch something, never punch down is a really good frame. But sometimes punch sideways. Like it can happen. That's okay. That's where you learn. That's where you uncover new territory. Have you ever punched sideways and then realized after you were totally punching down? [1:45:33] I mean, probably. I don't remember. Probably. You live and learn. Mischief ensures its ideas are not pre-constrained by execution. [1:45:43] Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, continues to be true. We have to do a lot of work when we have an idea to make sure that

[1:45:54] the production mindset doesn't get in the way. [1:45:58] Because... [1:45:59] Honestly, what we've learned is if you want it bad enough... [1:46:02] there is a way to make it happen. There just is, right? Now, eventually you have to figure out, am I going to cross that line? But there is a way. And good ideas are often limited before they're fully even formed by the production saying no, right? Like, give yourself the chance to like, break some eggs and make some people uncomfortable because the idea is fluid. Like the ideas are never done until they're out the door. At least give yourself the chance to like, let them see [1:46:31] Death is just as important as birth. And then mischief has a plan to burn it all down. If you don't feel the liberty to burn it all down, are you really free? And finally, my favorite, we can't cease what we're no longer doing. We can't desist from nothing. [1:46:46] oh my god these are so great and they continue to be true they continue to be incredibly valuable you know the death thing is actually really interesting because on one hand [1:47:03] Typically when we're thinking about an idea – [1:47:07] And when anyone thinks about an idea, they're like, okay, what is it? What is its form factor? And how does it enter the world? But no one ever talks about how does it exit the world? And for a lot of ideas that we've put out, there usually was a exit strategy. There was a death strategy, right? The most obvious one being like a lawsuit, right? But there are other ones too, like our PT cruiser with the 5,000 keys. The death strategy actually is just the crowd will figure it out, right?

[1:47:37] later in Truckee, California, whatever. But on a more like macro existential level is, yeah, what is the depth of mischief and how do we make sure we're not afraid to go there? [1:47:49] Whether we go there or not, the... [1:47:52] The courage to go there actually allows us [1:47:55] to go into this next phase yes you know what i mean like the being okay with it all going away [1:48:03] honestly the coolest thing that mischief could do right now is just like disappear for 10 years and then come back that would be amazing i can't afford to do that yeah that's too comfortable don't make future trash [1:48:16] We said that? That's in the book. We have made so much trash. [1:48:21] Mm-hmm. [1:48:21] Oh, interesting. Don't make future trash. [1:48:25] I don't even know what that means. [1:48:27] maybe something to come back to. [1:48:30] Not a pithy line, but I love this mischief as a practice and as an entity manifest the ambition for creative work slash a creative entity to wield tangible communication power competitive with the cultural power held by global companies, celebrities and media entities. That that is the whole reason that mischief exists. [1:48:49] We realized that because of the Internet and because of the distribution mechanisms allowed to us, [1:48:56] that an idea can have the same competing power as Kim Kardashian or – [1:49:03] the United States government or Lockheed Martin, right? Like we live at a time where that sort of- Playing field is level. Exactly, right? And you see that with like content creators and cable news network, right? Same thing, the playing field is level.

[1:49:19] So it's such an opportunity to be able to apply all of those tools that are typically only afforded to global corporations and celebrities to ideas. And. [1:49:30] you [1:49:31] Just for the sake of the idea, too. No other ulterior motive. Like, maybe, sure, it makes money, but not enough to be significant. It's just... [1:49:40] Making the money for a lot of these concepts is just the culmination of the concept coming to life. [1:49:46] Yeah, we're still just kids playing with tools that we don't quite know how they work. It captures something interesting, though, which is you're sort of both taking yourself seriously enough for this to be possible and not taking yourself too seriously. Yeah, that part's really fucked up. Again, it's that Jekyll-Hyde thing of like, you know, I have to wake up and have a board meeting tomorrow, but then come in and brainstorm whoever knows whatever we're brainstorming. Go to the dark place? Is that what you called it? That's hilarious. That is... [1:50:13] You don't go there often, but when you're working on a problem, you have to really kind of [1:50:21] go there. Yeah. Which is rough, but it works. [1:50:26] We are not pranksters. We are not making stunts. A stunt has attention as its end goal, while a prank has no goal beyond fooling someone else. And then humor is a tool to get people to engage with a point of view. Yeah, I mean, humor is such an amazing tool because... [1:50:45] But our brand of humor is really, it's in the eye of the beholder. And that creates attention because some people might not find it so funny, right? Like the Jesus shoes, a lot of people found funny. A lot of people were brutally offended. Probably a lot of people liked the Jesus shoes and really didn't like the Satan shoes, by the way.

[1:51:06] humor was to wedge that, like, [1:51:08] created the opportunity for those things to exist, but obviously it's so subjective and that [1:51:14] created a really valuable tension that ended up being additional layers of distribution for us, which is great. [1:51:19] For pranks and stunts, yeah, those... [1:51:24] My take on that, whenever we qualify an idea at mischief, we say, it's got to slap in one sentence. It's got to slap harder in three. [1:51:33] Pranks and stunts are typically one. [1:51:37] Ours... [1:51:38] are usually... [1:51:40] Three if not two very rarely one if ever a lot of people there any that are five or ten? [1:51:48] That only happens when the crowd takes it and turns into something else. Like the big red boot ended up becoming that, even though for us we're like, [1:51:55] you can't write a manifesto around this. It's just like a cool looking thing. Yeah. It might even be one. Yeah. No, honestly. Right. We were like, it's an interesting looking thing, but then it just, [1:52:06] became so many other layers. That one is a five-liner if you really, really dive into it. It's interesting. I mean, I wonder if there's a lesson there that like... [1:52:16] Can the modern world even tolerate a multi-order thing or like if you're really going to have it go the distance? It sort of needs to be intrinsically pretty simple. [1:52:27] Yes, for any sense of meaningful scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately. [1:52:32] If you are 100% credulous, everything ever made is art. If you are 100% cynical, everything ever made is advertising.

[1:52:41] That's a banger. And my response is yes. All the above. [1:52:47] This is hilarious. Mischief attacks golf as a way to attack all the nebulous concepts attached to it. And then sample the thing that signifies culture larger than itself. For example, golf. And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff just about how much you guys hate golf. [1:53:02] oh my gosh it's so so look there's definitely a three-line explanation to the golf but i actually prefer to live in the world of the one-line explanation which is just golf sucks and i leave it at that and it's so it's so much funnier to me that way sure it's like wasted natural resources it takes up space it's an activity reserved for the elite whatever all of those things are true but it's just way funnier to just dunk on golf for no apparent reason [1:53:32] No, this is just this is our nerdy revenge from being shoved in the lockers in high school. Yeah, you Brooklyn losers would hate golf. Now we're going to pick on golf. [1:53:42] pickleball will be next i think pickleball is plenty picked on if you build it they will come bad versus build it where they are good and then a sub point of this is using quote unquote real infrastructure steals authenticity authority and credibility yeah yeah [1:54:00] I mean, the simplest way to look at that is, [1:54:02] Thank you. [1:54:04] In the early days, we rejected this idea of creating art that should only live in a white wall gallery because, one, the context there doesn't really exist. And it's this other notion of like you're assuming that people will just come to you when the opportunity is to like –

[1:54:22] Go to them. [1:54:23] We... [1:54:24] are so obsessed with this sort of Trojan horse practice of, uh, [1:54:30] Hiding in disguise of the cultural ready-mades and then reinserting them back into the systems that we are critiquing from the start. Yes, and the people who are buying it are probably part of – they're sort of the butt of the joke. [1:54:41] I wouldn't say butt of the joke, but they are part of the performance. Right. And whether they're the butt of the joke or not is actually up to them. Right. Right. Talking to one another. For us, we are. Are you thinking butt of us? Yeah. We are an indifferent arbiter. Right. Like you are what you are. Sometimes it goes the other way. I was reading about the baby shoes. [1:55:02] Like, [1:55:03] Which were clearly, yeah, just trying to do one thing. And then they were like beloved by this like adult baby fetish. Oh, yeah, that was so weird. So that was like a design exercise in playing with this idea of scale. Like baby shoes are sort of like weird proportions. What if you make it bigger? How weird does that look in photos? So we're like, let's make sort of like this playful kid's shoe. And man, we have a very passionate fan base of furries and adult diapers. [1:55:33] That's another version of the second order not being designed. No, totally. And also... [1:55:38] Fantastic. It's great. Like the fact that the people in the theoretical mischief house party or the mischief high school cafeteria. Right. Really. Yeah. World building, by the way, everyone. Right. Right.

[1:55:55] Mmm. [1:55:56] We don't quote, we don't make fiction. Getting people to act on quote unquote real systems is more powerful than getting them to act on constructed ones. [1:56:06] Yeah. I mean, that, that simply just lends itself to us making real things, right? It's one thing to create, and I'm not talking ill of any of these formats, but a lot of, [1:56:20] art or storytelling comes through the formats of a painting or a song or a poem or a film or a television show or whatever. These are... [1:56:30] One-dimensional... [1:56:32] communication pathways versus also i have an idea in my head about what a film's supposed to be yeah exactly right and yeah and so and also the context is missing from from those experiences [1:56:45] Those are all great formats, and people have done really good jobs with them. The opportunity that we saw was, let's just do the thing. Let's just make it real. Let's seize the means of production and put it into the market and see what happens. There's some lines on this. Make work that doesn't wink and doesn't blink. Don't give people an easy out to take it less seriously. [1:57:09] Soylent could have been a speculative artwork. Instead, it's real. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And you know what? [1:57:15] long to come around on that Soylent wine because the guys had been saying that for years ever since I first met them. [1:57:21] They're right. Like you could have done it like a small batch or an artist could have like lived off of it as a performance for 20 years and documented everything and like had a video and then done a gallery show of like, I lived off of this powder. So they just made it and they sold it. It was a business. It was a company. They put it out into the real world. And that's kind of rad. That's cool. What, regardless of whether or not it was successful.

[1:57:47] They did the thing. And that's an aspiration that we continue to harness in a big way, like do the thing. [1:57:56] Soft bank we work even to slide is speculative fiction. [1:58:01] Same thread, obviously. It's just a great slide. It comes up so much around here. I don't know why, but part of it is also just like, [1:58:10] If that's how the rest of the world operates, we're not even being crazy. Wow. Wow. Yeah. The bar is so high. Masa. I know. The goat. [1:58:22] Just a couple more. Knockoffs are reposted by the market. Real and fake are made in the same factory. Yeah. Kind of self-explanatory. I mean, all true, right? And so we think knockoffs are cool. As long as it's acknowledged as a knockoff. [1:58:40] And then claiming that it's an original from them, not so much. This is why actually we had to be okay with the idea of people creating NFTs of our works and making money off of them. Because they weren't trying to pass it off as an original. They were just creating NFTs. They were remixing the format that we did. And in that sense, it was kosher. [1:59:03] Well, yeah, and in many ways, the Hirsch thing is like as close as you can get to blurring that line anyway. Yeah, exactly. And then the real and fake are made in the same factors. It's just a true insight, which is very funny. [1:59:15] And so instead of like fighting these dynamics, maybe you can use them as material. And that's

[1:59:20] That's another place that we got a lot of excitement from. [1:59:24] Don't invent constraints for yourself when you don't need to. [1:59:29] I feel like we're in a position where we need to. So I am in bed. But it kind of goes back to the production question earlier. Like, how can you avoid creating unnecessary roadblocks for yourself to see where an idea might go? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because everything is so fluid and so dynamic. Yes. I talk about this in a much lower stakes, but like plant the seed. Don't like look at the seed in your hand. Yeah, exactly. Right. And you don't know what kind of seed it is. Yes. It could become so many different things. [1:59:59] You just got to let it ride. [2:00:01] Mischief doesn't make content. Mischief operates off-platform. [2:00:06] Yeah, I mean, it continues to be true. [2:00:10] We never invested in making content for the platforms. Like we do have an Instagram. We rarely post on it. And it took a while. And it took a long time to even get to that point. We, I think we have the TikTok handle, but I don't know. I don't even have TikTok on my phone. Maybe that's the novelty. Maybe it's Gabe's TikTok. I know, I know. We have a Twitter account. We don't really use it. I don't think we even have an audience on Twitter, not at least on our handle. [2:00:40] kind of what Brad Trammell was talking about, which is all of a sudden it's not about like the individual works you're putting out. It's about the relationship between the audience and the content that you make about your works. And we were like, let's never fall into that trap because when you fall into that trap, you're going to start changing the works to like better fit the format and that's not going to go anywhere. So we continue to make things that are very explicitly off platform. The great thing is that,

[2:01:08] because of the world that we live in and the internet ecosystem that we're a part of, [2:01:12] other people make the content for us. So, [2:01:15] It works out. Maybe there's a real world lesson in the fact that the real world is definitively off platform. Yes. One last one. Make it shitty. Aesthetic populism communicates effectively. Funny to think about in the context of the conversation earlier about craft, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because when Kevin and Lucas first started building the design team here, somehow we stumbled across amazingly talented, just truly brilliant designers. Not many of them. There's just [2:01:45] of them here but uh i remember in their some of their first work at mischief they were so confused and even frustrated with kevin and lucas because kevin and lucas would say it's it's really good [2:01:59] make it shittier. Like, good design will forever just be good design and no one will remember it. But shitty design, maybe people actually remember that. So it comes down to this thing that we talked a bit about earlier too, which is, [2:02:15] That herd might be running and maybe they are running towards the end of a cliff. Maybe they're not, but there could be value in just going in the opposite direction. And then maybe... [2:02:25] that herd will look up and [2:02:27] be like, where is that person? And then they're going to start following you, right? And then you run with them a little bit, see what they're doing, and then you reverse directions again. They're just following you around. I mean, yeah, in a way, this whole mischief experiment is an incredibly Sisyphean struggle of just zigzagging around. Yeah, you can't catch me. And at a certain point, you have to ask, like,

[2:02:51] Is there her chasing me or am I chasing me? Ah, there you go. One last question. [2:02:57] Those ideas I just listed, many of them are in some way like mischief values. Totally. You guys are also very pragmatic. I think you're very opportunistic. It's hard to pin down. It's not super legible, but you are principled in some set of ways. [2:03:11] And in many ways, those values like are this flexible frame for the people here, past and future to like look through and work with. [2:03:19] You also say nothing is sacred. [2:03:20] That's like one of the big values in the book. And then one of the other phrases in that book is change anything that stops being helpful. [2:03:28] So my question is, is anything sacred? [2:03:33] No. Nothing is sacred. It's a mindset. It's a lifestyle. You have to just be ready to go anywhere. Pull yourself back if you go too far, but be prepared to go there. Safe space. [2:03:48] Thanks Gabe, this was great Awesome