Alex Burns

Make art, and while everyone is deciding what they think of it, make more art.” — Andy Warhol

This is second-order vanity. The term was coined by David Foster Wallace, in his 1987 novel The Broom of the System. “A vain person is concerned that people not perceive him as stupid, or dull, or ugly, et cetera et cetera,” his character explains—that’s first-order vain (the classic). “Now a second-order vain person is a vain person who’s also... See more

What’s important to the third-order vain is that they’re avoiding the pitfalls of the second-order vain, who refuse to admit just how hard they’re trying. The irony is that the third-order vain are trying too, just to achieve different ends.

Also, I'm tired of the bland minimalist aesthetic that's polluted the contemporary Internet. If that's your shtick, I respect it, but it's not my vibe. I'm much more inspired by styles like Rococo, Baroque, and Art Nouveau; artists like Pissarro, Monet, and Cézanne; the interior design of châteaus in France and the exterior design of Disneyland.

In early interviews with Whaley, he often talked about the internet being the magic ingredient to MSCHF: “Life is too short and the internet is too big to not make what you want.”

I meet a lot of people who don’t like their jobs, and when I ask them what they’d rather do instead, about 75% say something like, “Oh, I dunno, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.” If I’m feeling mischievous that day, I ask them one question: “Where would you get the coffee beans?”

If that’s a stumper, here are some followups:

• Which kind of

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