Mark Wilson AKA diewiththemostlikes Artist Feature | NFT CULTURE | NFTs & Crypto Art

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*Dis­claimer: This arti­cle con­tains cen­sored adult lan­guage, adult con­tent, and a lot of ref­er­ences to meat.*


The only way I can ade­quate­ly explain this is by writ­ing it as though it is a LinkedIn biog­ra­phy, which is also iden­ti­cal to this cou­pled with endorse­ments for giv­ing up, sag­ging skin and the logins to a shared pre­mi­um pornog­ra­phy sub­scrip­tion. diewith­the­most­likes is a f*ckable ener­gy drink float­ing in a neglect­ed reten­tion pond out­side of a strip mall in a home­town you’ll nev­er leave. Cre­ate noth­ing. Con­sume every­thing.” ‑Mark Wil­son about his art

he saved us
he saved us

Die With The Most Likes aka Toadswiback aka Mark Wil­son is a debauch­er­ous jug­ger­naut emerg­ing with­in the cryp­to art scene. When first encoun­ter­ing his work, the imme­di­ate reac­tion is to dis­miss it as anoth­er edgelord cap­i­tal­iz­ing on shock, but as one unpacks the sen­ti­ments and ethos behind the drip­ping visu­als, there is an unfath­omable depth of self reflec­tion and criticism/celebration of peak Mid-Amer­i­can con­sumerist cul­ture stuffed in an irrev­er­ent cult of raw meat. 

Since his first mint on the Tezos blockchain in March 2021, he has drilled his way into grow­ing suc­cess through stream of con­scious­ness writ­ings and art­work that is styl­is­ti­cal­ly Chris Simp­sons Artist meets Mike Judge. His work has been exhib­it­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly, fea­tured on KnownO­ri­gin and Super­Rare and his lat­est brain­child is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Muse­um of Cryp­to Art to cre­ate a dig­i­tal art exhi­bi­tion. I’m grate­ful for Toad, anoth­er super fan of Garfield, for agree­ing to an inter­view with me. 


How did you get started as an artist?

I’ve nev­er had a say in the mat­ter as far as I can remem­ber, I find cre­ation as a neces­si­ty and a mech­a­nism to wade pre­car­i­ous­ly in and out of the waters of agree­able mad­ness. Cre­ations absent of inten­tion fuel our entire artis­tic move­ment. Con­struct­ed as mir­rors for observers to snort their pre­ferred dis­tor­tion and reflect on the unbear­able drip and inevitable nose bleed.  I don’t have a lot of inspi­ra­tions because there were recre­ation­al vehi­cle muse­ums instead of art muse­ums where I grew up, though there were beau­ty in those too. I’ve found more inspi­ra­tion in the artists in the last year than I have in an entire life­time up until that point. 

What does ground beef mean to you? 

Meat rules every­thing around me. I find hav­ing your exis­tence dis­tilled into a plas­tic sack of bleed­ing, tan­gled lin­guine noo­dles to be a real­ly com­i­cal prospect. Hav­ing some butch­er with fail­ing organs real­ize you’re about to expire and slap a dis­count price tag on every­thing you’ve ever made. Then to be even­tu­al­ly mixed with an old bay sea­son­ing pack­et and some egg noo­dles and con­sumed via sup­pos­i­to­ry from a scald­ing, microwaved plas­tic tray. Pro­vid­ing bare­ly enough sus­te­nance for anoth­er bru­tal day of insect toil. I love ground beef. Legal­ize ground beef. 

Midwest eh?

(Note: As a Mid­west native myself, this is Mid­west speak for “Can you tell me about your expe­ri­ence as a Mid­west­ern­er and how it influ­ences your art?”)

I was born in a corn souf­fle from a thaw­ing snow mound in a strip mall to the sound of dying dreams and fresh­ly paved asphalt. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. There’s an earnest­ness here, as though we’re all from the same piece of sh*t home­town and held togeth­er by cream of mush­room soup. We share a lot of the same suf­fer­ing and a lot of the same hap­pi­ness. Peo­ple are most­ly kind. Get­ting drunk on Steel Reserves and jug­gling devil’s sticks in an aban­doned Arby’s park­ing lot is where I peaked cre­ative­ly, it’s been down­hill since then. 

While you have a lot of fans (me included) I know a lot of people would find your style and subject matter crude, uncomfortable and honestly disgusting. How would you explain your art to critics like that? 

I think the canned answer here would be there is beau­ty in dis­gust or some bullsh*t like that’s been said a thou­sand times, but real­ly, I find the prospect of cre­at­ing char­ac­ter­less desk orna­ments used to soothe the itchy holes of sh*t cov­ered a**es spir­i­tu­al­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble. I scratch wounds and they bleed. That blood is lubri­cant for our col­lec­tive descent into unsal­vage­able mad­ness. If devi­a­tion from a life­time of force fed pre­scrip­tion pills and per­pet­u­al con­sump­tion of life­less explod­ing shapes in can­dy crush human suf­fer­ing saga isn’t for you, I would respect­ful­ly say do some DMT and watch sea­son four of the Gram­my nom­i­nat­ed real­i­ty tele­vi­sion show Pawn Stars. 

we ate brunch
we ate brunch – avail­able on SuperRare

What is your favorite story from your crypto art journey so far?

I spent six months mak­ing fake Super­Rare appli­ca­tions, tweet­ing things like “Just sub­mit­ted my Super­Rare appli­ca­tion video, it’s me butt fun­nel­ing a Heineken 0.0 and huff­ing a huge bag of jankem and record­ing a stop motion sequel to Pas­sion of the Christ but star­ring Min­ions,” the one that final­ly got me in was claim­ing I was on a month long DMT trip re-record­ing The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sis­ter­hood where me and a Lar­ry the Cable Guy deep fake were play­ing every part. Mas­sive thank you to Zack for rec­og­niz­ing that film absolute­ly needs to be made, still look­ing for funding. 

Not only are you a visual artist, but also a prolific writer. I know the output you maintain is something other artists are inspired by in general along with the lack of filters. How did you get to that point and any advice to other artists who are also fighting their demons to keep creating? 

Ah f*ck yeah thank you for that, I would def­i­nite­ly sug­gest read­ing. It’s sim­ple to say, but it com­plete­ly changes the way you process things. Also again cre­ation for the sake of cre­ation. Not every­thing needs to be mint­ed or sold. Most images. Most text. Most expe­ri­ences are just that. A dig­i­tal dis­til­la­tion of a rapid­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ing meat sack. Embrace urgency. Embrace mad­ness. Shov­el thoughts and feel­ings and emo­tions into a fur­nace and burn them into the already pol­lu­tant bloat­ed clouds. Take no advice includ­ing this.

Where do you see the future of crypto art going?

I see all of us refus­ing our pre­scribed exis­tence of mis­ery and insect toil. Per­haps not dying alone doing some­thing we hate. Maybe still dying alone, but at least not doing some­thing we hate and a beau­ti­ful sparse­ly attend­ed funer­al with a can­taloupe for­ward edi­ble arrange­ment that rep­re­sents our legacy.

3 artists you love in crypto art and why?

Ceren Su: I find their work beau­ti­ful and dis­turb­ing and hilar­i­ous in its absur­di­ty. It’s impos­si­ble to dis­cern any emo­tion your feel­ing when look­ing at the pieces shift­ing, ful­fill­ing some unknown pur­pose, sim­ply a suf­fo­cat­ing feel­ing that your san­i­ty is shift­ing in unison. 

Esra Eslen: Bru­tal on every lev­el. Their dis­re­gard for human­i­ty as a whole is a theme I’m obvi­ous­ly fond of. Doc­u­ment­ing some hilar­i­ous and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous descent as a species. Ful­fill­ing our true des­tiny of dying meat sacks pum­meled into pat­ties and grilled at a sum­mer BBQ. 

Jesse Draxler: is the phys­i­cal approx­i­ma­tion of the abyss. 


Links to explore diewiththemostlikes work further:

Web­site: https://onetie-alltie.com/about/

Super­Rare: https://superrare.com/diewiththemostlikes

KnownO­ri­gin: https://knownorigin.io/diewiththemostlikes

Foun­da­tion: https://foundation.app/@diewiththemostlikes

Tezos: https://objkt.com/profile/diewiththemostlikes

Twit­ter: https://twitter.com/toadswiback


*The author of this arti­cle is a col­lec­tor of the artist’s work at time of publication.*



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