Anonymous artist SHL0MS on detonating a Lamborghini to critique crypto culture — and why AI makes creative work more asymmetric

Oh, yeah. We did it. This [clears throat] is a crazy crazy a non call. We've had a few. No one's ever sent in such a video to look at. Yes. This this is just my webcam. I have a very old laptop. Sure. Yeah. Makes got it.

I I apparently the technical difficulty was that my display name was breaking Zoom, which I [clears throat] suppose is on brand. Whoa, that's super interesting. What is your breaking stuff?

Uh, [clears throat] so uh the backstory is that I was looking for the longest unic code character to break Twitter in maybe 2017 um [clears throat] which is a very long Arabic uh um sign. Um but then people told me that they didn't like that I was using that.

So I looked for the second longest unode character which is a uniform symbol. Yeah. And so you stack all this up. Yeah.

you've been you've been fantastic at kind of like hacking these systems and and and breaking them in a way that you know really gets outside the box like yeah you I've seen like the text that goes completely out of you're you're a UI designer's worst nightmare basically [clears throat] uh so many places I want to go with this conversation we're super excited to chat what uh what are you who would you say you do here yeah what exactly do you do here that's a tough one I mean you So I think a lot of artists are driven by wanting to be an artist, right?

And same with founders um to connect it back to your your wheelhouse. Um and they want to be the thing, right? And and then they try to figure out whatever their angle is. Then there's people who are kind of like driven by whatever instinct or whatever is inside of them. Uh and yeah, this is this is just me, right?

Um I'm anonymous, so this is like a very specific part of me, right? That I'm filtering, but I wouldn't say it's a character, per se. Um, I've always been driven to break things. Yeah. Do you like the term artist, hacker? Does it matter? Is any of this relevant? [music] That's a good question.

No, I don't think it matters. I think artist is a boring and kind of um, yeah, it's kind of a self-s serious term, right? And I don't want to take myself too seriously. Let's skip the titles then and jump to the projects. Uh, I always like this question. We asked Gabe Why from Mischief.

Uh, what is the most underrated project that you've worked on? Something that you [clears throat] are proud of, but maybe people don't already know you for. Uh, that's a good question. I mean, I think most people know me from blowing up a Lambo, right? Yeah.

And can can you for those who don't know, can you tell the Lambo story briefly? Sure. One of my one of my favorite and most memorable moments from from that whole cycle. It was so cool in so many different ways, but I'll let Schloms tell the full story.

Yeah, I think I think that um that project, you know, like a lot of things, you know, trying to ride the the line between like a satire and a serious like earnest engagement with something. So, that was my sort of take on what was happening in crypto art at the time.

Um, but yeah, we physically blew up a Lambo well before that was possible to sort of fake with AI or anything. um took all the pieces to a very involved uh videography studio and and took these like beautiful videos of all the fragments um and sold those as NFTs. Wow. Uh and uh like a postmortem on that project.

Uh are is [clears throat] everyone generally like happy with the way it went? I feel like there's so many uh NFT projects where like the expectations of the community get away and people are like no like it's going to be a whole metaverse and it feels like I don't remember you promising that.

Is everyone pretty happy with like they were bought in on an art project and that's what they got? Yeah, I I I try to make things that stand on their own, right? I think that stood on its own and didn't need a road map.

It was a thing that happened and people wanted to own it and I think that was always, you know, what NFTs should have been and sadly didn't quite turn out that way, you know. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that that makes total sense. Um, should we go back to any underrated projects that you think uh Yeah. What? Yeah.

underrated project would be cool and I and I just want to I mean I think maybe we we'll get to some of that. The thing I'm interested is like what's what's interesting to you about the current state? That's interesting. Yes.

And uh and specifically various platforms like I I know you from from axe but I'm sure you're active elsewhere but how what is your how do you how do you rate the the current internet? So uh first of all prediction markets um you know you're seeing sort of turning into hyperstition markets.

I think there's a lot of artistic potential there that hasn't been engaged with. So pay attention to that space. Um and you know I think you asked earlier if I view myself as an artist. I I think that um I try to I try to just do things right like it's I'm an agentic person or I try to consider myself one.

I think AI unlocks like unlocks the ability for people to be agentic, right? So I don't I don't view like when people say AI art, they think of entering a prompt and you get an image output. I don't make images, right?

Like that's not what I consider my art, but I do things and so I can use AI to more effectively do those things with fewer resources in a more asymmetric way. So it's completely changed my life. I hope I don't sound too oneshotted. So yeah. No, no, no. I completely I completely agree. I guess help me uh resolve this.

And we were talking to Gabe Whe at Mischief, not to comp you guys too much, but uh I I I do think of him as like another person who creates in the original thinker that's not just not entire, you know, commercial element, but is not entirely just, you know, not not the goal is not wake up every day, create shareholder value.

It's like wake up every day and do novel, which we would have no problem with. We would actually prefer, you know, if you could stop. My real passion is improving the monthly recurring revenue of B2B SAS. This is my fallback. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is that is that actually true? Do you actually No. [laughter] Okay.

But but so so here so here's my question. Uh it's it's it feels like um it feels like there are all these really heady questions about AI and slop and what is good and will it oneshot you and paper clipping and it's the most it's the best time to be a podcaster, a newscaster.

Like the Dark Cash Patel podcast is fascinating. There's so many different ways to engage with it. There's books. Um, do you feel like uh the art community is engaging with it in the proper way? Are there are there more projects coming?

Is is it harder to engage in a critique of AI art because it's it's it is it proclaims to be art itself? uh and so it's maybe a little bit more uh complex to tussle with or do you think that uh basically like are artists driving the discussion uh around the all the trade-offs in AI effectively in your mind? Right. Yeah.

I think there are a lot of interesting parallels with like crypto art, right?

Because in early crypto art, it genuinely did unlock some interesting things, but then you kind of had a 8020 where 80% of it was just like kind of boring meta stuff or people who probably shouldn't have been anywhere near that stuff pushing kind of garbage, right?

Um I think I think there are definitely creators who are doing some insane just like on a technical level, some things that they couldn't have done before. Then there are a lot of people kind of pushing out kind of slop images that I would say is like a second bucket. Um and then you have kind of like meta AI art.

So like people you you see like in in like digital art spaces like Instagram, if you own your Explorer uh page and you're interested in art, you probably see like a lot of things of like bounding boxes or just like these kind of uh overplayed motifs about like surveillance or whatever, which you know there's a time and place for.

Um but yeah, I think I think any new technology that people are interested in like is is bound to result in just uh really boring pontificating about it. Sure.

And then like really boring engagement with it and then like a very small subsection that maybe doesn't get enough attention of people doing genuinely interesting innovative things with. Right.

And and I'm not the person to do those genuinely innovative things because I'm someone who works within their own constraints of being a [ __ ] idiot. So [laughter] my my my my game is to do something interesting conceptually about it uh with my own limited tool set and intellect. Yeah. It's fascinating.

Uh you made a viral post on on Sora of uh Sam grilling and eating a Pikachu. Oh yeah. Yes. How did that uh how many how many shots on goal did it take to come up with uh something that that you felt like was worthy of of uh of sharing or something that kind of broke through the noise?

Well, um I it's it's cool that you that you talk about Shots on Gold because I think a lot of this stuff like I wouldn't necessarily view that as an art piece. I think that maybe even more falls into my kind of like misinformation practice, right?

like trying to spread some sort of viral rumor or something inherently is going to be like a shots on goal game. You're trying to find some asymmetric way of hitting on like just the right court at the right moment. Like my big example is like the Gmail suns setting hoax.

So I I created this hoax that Gmail was shutting down. And you know for that one there were hundred of 100 other things that I tried to do that didn't quite hit but like this was at a time that Google had just sunset something. So it was like kind of in the late in zeitgeist.

But I think the the real thing there was like it was it was sort of this moment of people being like feel viscerally feeling the their reliance on Gmail, right? Which like if I just wrote an essay about how much we rely on Gmail, that doesn't really go anywhere.

But if you like I think that's why misinformation or some of the stuff is like a useful tool. But to bring it back to to um to the to the Samma thing, yeah, I that was a bit of a lowbrow moment for me. Um but you know that that that day kind of was you know the thing was like their It was a lowbrow day on the internet.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. [clears throat] It was it was slop about Pokémon all over Sora and and your timeline, right? And and this [clears throat] was just kind of a depiction of that. But uh uh not my proudest moment, but it was fun. Yeah. What uh how did the Gmail suns setting hoax uh really catch fire?

Like what was the inciting post that How did you seed it? How did it actually go viral? I'm always You're asking me to give away the sauce, man. Oh, wait. Oh. Oh, but you have to buy my ebook for it's not something that I can just uh I can just trace through. You're going to have to buy the course on misinformation.

I didn't realize that that was not just I I I would have assumed it was public. Sorry. I I I No, I'm joking.

Yeah, if you if you were to look back at that, like there were a lot of tweets about that and mine like did okay, but like there were there were other people who sort of like picked it up and it's actually not even necessarily clear to me which of those people were engaging with it earnestly or or kind of realized what was going on and were trying to signal boost it.

Um, but yeah, I mean you guys are are part of the uh the cool kids club on Twitter, I would say. And that you know it it helps to be to be at sort of like the there's like an a cantalon effect for attention too, right? If you're like at the if you're upstream of that, then you can really like spread things, right? Yeah.

Like I I I don't actually remember, but I could totally have seen myself amplifying that uh just as a troll on Google, even though I would have recognized that it's not real. But I'm still upset about Google Reader.

And so, [laughter] and so I'm going to amplify the fake news knowing it's fake, but just to cause chaos because uh I want I want revenge for my RSS reader that was killed in the in the cradle. Are you disappointed? Maybe we should uh should spread some more disappoint. I'm ready. I'm ready. We are the fake news here.

Are are you disappointed with sort of a lack of creative uses for artificial intelligence that it's all kind of funny? It's like, "Hey, I made uh this musical artist do country music or I made my dog look like a doctor or Yeah. I mean, I you know, as you guys kind of noted, I'm I'm guilty of the same thing sometimes.

I would say broadly, you know, I I want I want more generally. That's why I do this, right? Because there's like this kind of art that exists in my head that uh that I want to exist in the world. Um, and I'm grateful that other pe that that resonates with other people, right?

Um, so like there's definitely there's definitely things that I think that that people could be doing with it. Um, but I I don't want to be like too misanthropic like I I I think I think it's a net good like long long term because I think the art world is very stagnant.

Not a fan of the the the fine art world as they would call themselves. And I think any like I'm sure they're not a fan of you. I'm sure they're not a fan of you either. [laughter] No, but it's it's surface area, right?

a surface area for people who are willing to engage with something that like the orthodoxy doesn't approve of to say something new and interesting and not have to play the same game of like getting into a gallery or doing an oil painting or a sculpture or whatever like that's you know we need new games to play and technology increases that sort of do you think any of your work will appear in ses at some point or any of the like like I'm sure these sbees I have a ses I think I'm I I'm quite blackfold from because I've pointed out I know but eventually eventually they'll they're you'll still be going.

Their team will turn over and they'll they'll uh Yeah, maybe maybe if they forget about some of the uh dubious possibly illegal behavior that I've I've [laughter] done, but I wouldn't bet on it. You'd be surprised things about that. This was super fun.

Uh next time you have a particularly uh devious stunt, uh feel free to jump on the show and and break it down for us. I love that. Next time we can go deep on prediction markets. So, yeah.

Yeah, I'm super I mean the the watching this category explode and then thinking about all the ways that you could hack, you know, I I think Brian Brian Armstrong's kind of hacking it on on the earnings call was fascinating.

Uh I think there's so so many under underexplored areas and and surface area there and and also some potentially dark, you know, scenarios as well. Um so but uh the sci-fi future is certainly here. Yeah, the last thing I would leave with is I really think the open source AI is important.

I don't know how much you guys have have gone into that, but we can talk about that one next time. Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks so much for having me. Slums model coming soon. I like it. Yeah, thank you. Great to meet you. Yeah, great to meet you, too. We'll talk to you soon, guys. See you out on the internet. Cheers.

Before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about numeralhq. com sales tax and autopilot. Spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Uh we have uh uh a returned guest in the reream waiting room. Welcome to the show. Shazison, how [music] are you doing? Congratulations.

Uh I we got the gong already. Uh sorry we're running late. Give us the news.