Who owns MSCHF? Company behind Lil Nas X's 'Satan Shoes' once sold Jesus Shoes filled with holy water
If you spend a considerable amount of time on the internet, then you're familiar with Lil Nas X's 'MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)'. The song has taken the internet by storm, thanks to its video, which features the singer pole dancing his way into hell, only to twerk on Satan.
While there has been a ton of hype and outrage regarding the video and its theme, the singer stirred up another controversy. He collaborated with MSCHF to create a pair of 'Satan Shoes', a limited-edition pair of Nike Air Max 97s that allegedly contains a drop of real human blood and 60 CCs of red ink in the soles. While Nike itself has said that the brand has nothing to do with the sale and creation of the shows, all eyes are on MSCHF, the company behind them.
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If you look up MSCHF on LinkedIn, the company is listed as a dairy company with barely any information that seems to hint at what they do. It's not exactly easy to define what MSCHF does.
The company is known for its viral stunts and products and for them, every idea is fair game as long as the team can materialize it. The list of products created by the company has no real connection. Some of their products include the 'Jesus Shoe', custom Nike Air Max 97 that is filled with 60cc of water from the River Jordan that's been blessed, allowing the wearer to 'walk on Holy Water'. Their other products include a rubber chicken bong and a toaster bath bomb. The man behind it all is Gabriel Whaley.
Who is Gabriel Whaley?
Gabriel Whaley, the 31-year-old founder behind MSCHF has had a rather sheltered life, as reported by Campaign. In an interview with the platform, he mentioned that his mother is Korean while his father is Caucasian. Whaley had little to no exposure to the internet before he joined Westpoint, a military school in upstate New York (his father was ex-military as well). However, Whaley soon dropped out and began his tryst with the internet. One of his first projects involved giving out bad advice for $1 dollar on Twitter, which subsequently became a phenomenon. He was garnering attention on numerous online portals and ultimately landed a job with Buzzfeed. Unfortunately, the department itself shut down shortly after.
However, it was after this that Whaley founded MSCHF and went on to create Late Night Snap Hacks for Casper, the mattress brand. Late Night Snap Hacks was a website that created a fake social life for users on Snapchat while they stayed in bed and practically did nothing. The project went viral and soon MSCHF went on to create Insomnobot-3000 for the brand, an SMS that only worked past 11 pm when you're lonely and need someone to talk to. MSCHF as a brand creates viral trends. They're also the brains behind The Anti Advertising Advertising Club, which is paying TikTokers up to $20,000 to post videos that criticize companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Tesla and Palantir. As Whaley puts it in an interview with Insider: "Our perspective is everything is funny in a nihilistic sort of way," Whaley said. "We're not here to make the world a better place. We're making light of how much everything sucks."
As reported by Business Insider, there is no clear indication as to how the company makes its profit. However, last year, the company reportedly had a total of $11.5M funding, of which $8M was made public.