NFT Creator – Cointelegraph Magazine

Mark Wilson — the artist known as diewiththemostlikes — has a truly unique style to his art and a presence that could be described as grotesque, performative, thought-provoking and hilarious all in one packet of rolled-up ground beef.

In a digital art market where supply can be infinite, the Indiana-based artist really stands out from the crowd with his ability to garner attention by often ridiculing the NFT space and eliciting both humor and sadness within his work.

An author of five books, diewiththemostlikes has a passion for not only visual art but also scribing his streams of consciousness. He originally minted his first NFT on March 26, 2021, on Foundation after a random account on X reached out because Wilson had made a joke campaign poster for comedian Eric Andre that went viral.

“This dude reached out and just said, ‘Hey, I have a Foundation invite. Would you want to mint a piece on there?’ I said I don’t know what minting is. I don’t know what Foundation is. I have no clue what any of this shit is,” Diewiththemostlikes explains.

“He said, ‘It could be a good avenue for your digital art,’ so I said, ‘Well, fuck it, man. It’s not like I’m not doing anything with it now. It’s getting two likes on Instagram from fucking porn bots. So, whatever, I’ll mint something, and maybe I can sell something finally as an artist — that would be nice.’” 

It was a relatively slow start, but consistency and persistence positioned him well, and he’s often received praise from other well-known artists such as OSF. 

Now knocking on the door of digital art stardom, diewiththemostlikes still hasn’t come to grips with the position he finds himself in.

“I still honestly can’t really wrap my head around this shit that’s going on. I just assumed I was gonna die alone doing something I hated. To be part of this kind of movement with all these other really insane artists who are on this crazy trajectory and who are constantly leveling up is really cool. It’s pretty wild,” he says.

Origin of catchy and cumbersome name

How did the name diewiththemostlikes come about? Well, in classic “die” fashion, there’s humor and an underlying meaning.

“I’ve got the most common name to ever exist, Mark Wilson. When I was applying for apartments, people would think it was a scammer name because Mark Wilson is a super common name here in the States. They would do a background check and think I was a fake person.” 

“I’m cool with my name… But diewiththemostlikes kind of came in, and it’s funny because it’s actually a really cumbersome name to say. A lot of people during interviews will ask what they even call me. It’s a really long and kind of an unenjoyable name to say, but I suppose that I find comfort in that. Discomfort, if you will, or the inability to kind of determine what I should be called is awesome.”

The name pokes fun at a world where we seek likes on social media for dopamine hits, which Wilson points out is a transactional existence.

“It’s a really interesting distillation of our transactional existence as a whole and kind of how fucking sad and depressing it can be in many ways. But also the beauty of it, obviously, none of us would be here; we wouldn’t be talking here without Twitter. Certainly, my art wouldn’t be doing what it was doing, or I wouldn’t be able to impact anybody without a platform.”

Finding a story in peculiar places

Observing society and its idiosyncrasies is a big inspiration, and his work often carries open or sometimes subliminal messages that make collectors really stop and think.

Of course, always the prankster with a dry sense of humor, diewiththemostlikes is quick to tie a bow around it with some over-the-top window dressing.

“I would say there’s stories in the most peculiar places. There’s a story in every sagging ass of anyone walking around the fucking dregs of this country,” he says. “Within those kinds of nuanced little wrinkles, scabs and wounds is where I thrive and where I love to exist.”

“This lens on life and humanity is often exaggerated… If you look a little deeper on my pieces, they’re definitely documentarian but certainly grotesque at a very surface level.”

Good meat! Sublime satire

The tsunami of crypto X accounts posting “gm” led to a series of meat art.

“Good meat originally arose out of a place of complete ridicule, which is where a lot of my art I feel like comes from. It’s satire; it’s ridicule; it’s hilarity. I was really annoyed with the transactional state of everybody just saying ‘gm,’ with nothing else to say. It was gm with a fucking coffee…