Nihlism, Irony, and MSCHF
As technology advances and the internet grows, fewer and fewer people see the same things anymore. Social media has made it so that people can be on entirely different sides of the internet and never see the same thing as the person next to them. But you've 100% seen work from the Art collective MSCHF. Nike has sued them for the "Satan shoes" they released with Lil Nas X in 2021, which made a bunch of people buy a blurred stack of money, thinking it was a box with something inside only for people to find out it was just a giant eraser once they received it in 2020, and how could anyone forget the big red boots inspired by Astro boy that they released this year. So yeah, you've seen or heard of MSCHF before, but now you may wonder what their goal is. What do they aim to achieve from making all these outrageous items if they aren't just another fashion brand?
Made by Ex-Buzzfeed employee Gabriel Whaley, MSCHF is a group of Artists whose goal is to create Miscellaneous Mischief across the web. Around the time of the brand's original conception in 2016, they released work every two weeks, labeled "drops." These drops tend to be silly pranks, and at the time of writing this, the collective has had 94 drops, with the latest one being "The Free Movie," a crowd-pirated, frame-by-frame recreation of the Bee movie. Yes, the whole thing. This, however, isn't the best example of the brand's goal, which is to make us think and question the world around us by having genuinely unique experiences. A better example would be the Zuckwatch, a password website identical to Facebook that can be called a commentary on Data privacy. Some people would be confused about how something like Zuckwatch can be compared to something like the "free movie," but there is no connection. Whaley says that the lack of rhyme or reason with their drops is the whole thing. Everything the collective makes is made to get a rise out of people. With this being their unofficial mission statement, you can see this in all of their digital and physical projects.
MSCHF Super Baby Shoe
MSCHF AstroBoy Red Boot Campaign
The fans they've garnered eagerly wait for their drops so that they can be the first to buy (and resell) whatever parody product they've made at the time. Most of their drops are limited-run items. Why shoes, though? Whaley has gone on record saying, "The day we sell hoodies is the day I shut this down." That and their goal of staying relevant, shoes are the best way to do so. The market is not as oversaturated as it is for hoodies, and the designs they've come out with are good, too, making it even better. Their first shoe design was the "Jesus' shoe" in 2019, a white pair of Nike Air Max 97s filled with "actual" holy water. This wasn't an actual Nike collab. However, the shoes are still resold for 2000 dollars on apps like GOAT or Stock X. The response to these shoes got them to continue making more like the Satan shoes, the litigation-proof TAP3 sneakers, and more imitation Nike shoes, but products like the Gobstomper, the Big Red Boot, and the Wavy Baby are the real standouts from the collective.
Their ability to take the things we've come to know and twist them into mirrors, showing us the issues we have in our society and culture, is like an ironic breath of fresh air. It's nice knowing there are groups whose goals aren't just turning a profit but making attempts to get people thinking. MSCHF, at its core, is a group dedicated to pointing out the flaws in consumerism and society, not in a way that makes people sad but more to get people to realize how bad things are and laugh. Trolling the internet, sparking conversations, and, along the way, making subtle jabs at pop culture.
