@CSA2D7: chat with Net Evil curator @mackxdav, @SHL0MS, and @steviepxyz

There is something lost in the preservation of it. Nonetheless, this McCarren Park Bench is still a blast to read, featuring Mackenzie Davenport (curator of Net Evil) @mackxdav , SHL0MS (part 2!) @SHL0MS, and Stevie P (@steviepxyz)! In this chat: Stevie P like you've never seen him before, stripped bare for all to see 👀 SHL0MS secret identity is revealed! Mack reveals his favorite kind of robot... and Raptornews unveils a big secret. Also: Taylor Swift, Paul Pfeiffer, Pedro Pascal, and Bushi mackdav i am ready to type i thought it was talking at first for some reason shl0ms hi wym? you're not meeting us at the bench?? CSA2D7 woohoo! yea I was talking to you in the previous chat steviep I'm running a little behind schedule, so I'll be out of pocket for a bit until I get home Until then I give mackdav the authority to speak on my behalf CSA2D7 Alright then, lets do it! Heya steviep shl0ms mackdav Congrats to you all on what looks like a wonderful release on feral file steviep It was a fun show! Mack did a great job curating it and bringing together an awesome group of artists mackdav i got lucky haha or it feels that way shl0ms 100%, honored to have been a part of it mackdav which project in the show are you most into CSA? (present company excluded) CSA2D7 Hey man, I am the one that poses the unfair questions not the other way around I like them all, because no one says the 1 deadly sin mackdav Hahaaa CSA2D7 they say the seven deadly sins A deadly sin doesn't exist without the other. You say its a group exhibition I say its a single show shl0ms i like that mackdav thats fair i'll leave the questions to you CSA2D7 Yea you would you egregore (is that the right spelling)? No, actually this one was meant to be between the three of you and me popping in and out like a jogger. Mack please lead us shl0ms it is, well done mackdav can do CSA2D7 Also, if maya showed up that would be an incredible surprise shl0ms get everyone in here mackdav shl0ms since you joined most recently, I'd be curious to hear what you thought about the process of the show, since it was kind of rapid fire for you shl0ms most of my experience process wise was talking to you, so in that sense it was great! i mentioned on the rhizome talk this was my first time participating in a show, or successfully creating work starting from a prompt of sorts it was interesting to see how different everyone's approach was, and try to carve my own niche into the show in a way that felt additive mackdav do you usually go back and forth with producers / curators on projects? I know you sometimes work with a partner too, which I'm not sure many people know about. shl0ms never really, just me and my sounding board. some rare exceptions if it's an irl thing and there are logistical constraints, then i have to loop more stakeholders in mackdav like moonbeams and other big irl stuff? shl0ms yeah! those will always be a compromise and things will go wrong and you kind of have to mold it to the realities of the world and resource constraints and the wants and needs of the people you're relying on to make the thing happen. but when it's a digital-only thing it is always just my solipsistic ideation and then bouncing it off a partner or artist friend to make sure it isn't gibberish mackdav steviep Do you bounce ideas off people? I know we talk about things but your ideas feel fully formed by the time we chat about them usually steviep One sec, I just got home Gimme a minute to get in front of a keyboard mackdav i will expect a thorough and thoughtful response momentarily steviep In the meantime, I just want to say I really like the liminal space-ness of what shl0ms did CSA2D7 I liked shl0ms dialogue with paul pfeiffer wait did I misspell paul's name shl0ms thanks stevie, and i love how you build these absurd worlds with your work. i'm glad you got greed and not me because whatever i came up with there would not compare also i have a bone to pick with stevie mackdav in the rhizome call today people were talking about how the rate that the celebs flash back into the page was 'perfect' shl0ms which i thought was kinda funny because that was partially luck, since you adhered to some strict rules on it. steviep ok, i'm back you can tell i'm on my computer because i'm typing in all lower case now what's this bone you need to pick with me? shl0ms yes, a bit of both. i did tweak the frame rate and morse "rules" (dash/dot length and spaces) to balance the apparent flicker speed. i wanted it to be almost fast enough that you couldn't see them, but not quite shl0ms i tried to sign up for an account on friendworld a few weeks ago mackdav uh oh shl0ms and i got this message An Error Occurred: "This device is not eligable to create a Friendworld account" (sic) steviep yeah, sorry about that shl0ms i was very excited to sign up to friend world steviep you're only allowed to create an account if you live outside of the liminal void shl0ms Wtf steviep it's a legal thing shl0ms how do you even detect that based on my device Cookies? steviep i developed a complex geo-triangulation methodology so i'm glad to see that it works CSA2D7 I saw this in the dark knight movie with christopher bale [... - . ...- .. . / .--. / .. ... / ... .... .-.. ----- -- ...] shl0ms asking my attorneys to check in on anti-discrimination laws. at the very least this is definitely illegal in europe steviep also, it cost money to keep that website running on a server, and all my friends got bored with it after the months it was online in 2019 so it's in read only mode now but i've been thinking about giving it a reboot with more (and better) bots shl0ms well if you ever need a paying customer i'm ready to join steviep the market seems to have moved in the right direction mackdav i can still go on a date with that female wrestler right? or is that read only too? are you saying she never actually talked to me? shl0ms sorry for derailing this CSA2D7 had to get that off my chest CSA2D7 hey apologize to mack, not to me mackdav hey man i just found this bench im fine with whatever you show up to the park, anything could happen. CSA2D7 the rails on this thing are being built as we're moving so im not sure its possible to derail Bushi Are these the sex bots because I have a friend who would like to customize there own steviep no, you can definitely still date Mandy Rose if you can convince her [Editor’s note: Stevie P inserts a link] CSA2D7 I see you bushi 👀 mackdav does everybody in here know about the findom site stevie made CSA2D7 I think im the only real paying customer steviep mandy isn't strictly a sex bot, but she makes a cameo if you know where to look 😉 i bet that must feel aaamaaaaaaazing 🥵 shl0ms i'm still trying to figure out how to turn my fastcash into money. slowest cash i ever bought CSA2D7 You could use the barter system shl0ms but i got a subway pamphlet that promised me prosperity and now i am watching my affirmations steviep yeah, there's a very small bug in the fastcash contract, and it doesn't play nicely with uniswap LPs, so the whole market is OTC for now CSA2D7 My two subway pamphlets are cherished works from stevie p mackdav how do you make it so fast cash looks like its worth money on ethersscan steviep ? steviep i think we'd need to wrap it in a 1155 token and make the metadata really fast looking lots of italics on chain svg, of course CSA2D7 if thats a joke its over my head mackdav me too steviep (etherscan shows nft metadata, so if you wrap fastcash in an 1155 token it'll show the art next to it) mackdav ohhhhh there you go i thought that was clever, and the kind of UI manipulating thing shl0ms would be into shl0ms i love breaking etherscan CSA2D7 I wish etherscan were better at displaying the art, but as Paul liked to say there are no erc standards for art so we are stuck mostly with opensea shl0ms art-focused block explorer would be nice CSA2D7 Did you choose pride? shl0ms Nope, i was last to join the show mackdav shl0ms was destined for pride. that sounds nicer than they had no choice lol CSA2D7 Mack did you choose pride for shl0ms? Stevie P must have chosen greed though? mackdav no they were last haha so it was gonna be pride. but if i could choose, and i'm not just saying this, i would've picked pride. I think there's a lot to do with pride and the anon thing I kinda picked greed for stevie, he was down for it. CSA2D7 Just a good curatorial mind right there. What is the link there for you? mackdav Pride is partially about separating yourself from the world / building an identity, and thats especially pronounced in anon personas steviep in a pinch i think i could've done lust or pride though but greed is my safe space shl0ms i brain dumped about how this made me reflect on my own pride CSA2D7 Ive seen your penis, and let me say CSA2D7 Yes, tell us about this steviep have you? i thought Raptornews was the only one to play my sexy blockchain game? or did you sneak a peak? CSA2D7 Im not sure how I saw it but it was freaking crazy you should get that checked haha yea you showed us a preview Raptornews I still to collect some of those other finsexy Nfts CSA2D7 Honestly finsexy was so good shl0ms [Editor’s note: SHL0Ms links to his X post on pride: “i’ve long been fascinated by fame, and terrified by it. i’ve seen firsthand the ways it can warp the fabric of a person’s reality and turn them into a monster, but that understanding also makes it incredibly hard to judge a person for succumbing to it.” Raptornews Don't play so my steviep dick pic remains a 1/1 CSA2D7 The game is a little too intense for me, 1 eth might be a lot more than 1 eth soon 😂 mackdav two parallel, equally valid conversations going on rn steviep enough about my penis i want to hear about how many celebs shl0ms needed to comb through mackdav yeah what celebs did not make the cut lol CSA2D7 If I were redoing the bible I would make pride a virtue shl0ms between this and the fact that all the emoji reacts on our banger jokes are missing i think these need to be posted on twitter as scrolling screen recordings instead of text mackdav wait these are posted as text oh yeah they are lol hi mom shl0ms there were definitely some i wanted to include that didn't have any public mirror selfies. the mirror selfie is definitely a genre perfected by people in a certain age range and of a certain internet culture vintage some have few selfies at all, others a lot of non-mirror CSA2D7 Where Im going with this is - back in the olden days they used to think of characteristics as binary things - you have it or you dont. But nowawayds we know pride and greed are scalable things, you need a bit of it shl0ms same with humility, too much can be a bad thing. most sins really. but then you need to define how to judge a good and bad instance of it, and it's a lot simpler to just be black and white about it the thing about being black and white is how much easier it is to transmit and preserve those values CSA2D7 Why is it simpler? You could also not judge in instances where you don't have enough info? shl0ms it's simple on a local level, i mean if you are tasked with determining what is a sin or not or if you are artistically challenged to cast judgement by a very persistent curator CSA2D7 As a social matter (not a legal one) why is it important that we determine what is a sin? shl0ms i don't think it is i meant assuming you did, it's simpler CSA2D7 What do you mean by simpler? Like cognitively to throw things in groups and categories? mackdav if thats what they mean id agree shl0ms well yeah there are no edge cases or gray areas, just a single boundary to define mackdav i find its a lot easier to do black or white rules for life, but thats easier for hobbies, i.e. go to gym everyday, it becomes a lot harder when the thing is immaterial. Like am i being prideful right now. shl0ms and like you said, you can view sin as a scale too. that's a lot more effort than lumping in an infinite amount of actions into a binary classification CSA2D7 But does it become more difficult if you have black and white judgment but consciously know they should really be gray? Like if you are the great decider Like simple cognitively, but difficult morally Is that really simpler? shl0ms i don't view things as black and white at all. but i have been around communities that do and i think they do because it is a social technology that is highly transmissible at high fidelity no pesky questions to answer or variables to define CSA2D7 Was there a particular celebrity that you felt sympathetic to? Because your artwork is intentionally or not, making a judgment on prideful behavior? shl0ms i really wanted to get a range of celebrities in there, because it felt important for the work to be more of a critique against the celebrity complex in aggregate than specific people. and i ran the risk of coming across as the latter if it was eg only instagram famous women, or only controversial men, or whatever and many of them are victims of it too, in my opinion they're part of a culture where it is sinful to be poor and unknown and money and fame are revered mackdav a lot of the images felt very millenial cringe to me, like just based on when mirror selfies / instagram got so popular do you know the years that most of them came from? steviep as one of my closest zoomer friends, i trust your judgement on what's considered "cringe" shl0ms that would be interesting data to collect Bushi Did you think of leaving any celebrities out of the collection because “they will most certainly sue me”? shl0ms absolutely not Bushi Which one is most likely to sue in your opinion CSA2D7 They wouldnt have a good legal case imo shl0ms i did think of leaving certain ones out because their fans might gruesomely murder me though mackdav taylor is IN btw so they might come for you also gearing up for a new album so they are primed and ready this is actually why shl0ms is anon fear of the swifties steviep if swifties tried to muder you that would actually be great press shl0ms i already got a taste with the Pedro Pascal incident Bushi Not when you find out the press is also Swifties It goes deep man mackdav oh gosh what was the pedro pascal incident the pascal incident, the tesla incident, i can't keep up Bushi How did you handle the technical of removing them from the images shl0ms i posted about the fact that his dad was embroiled in a case where he and his lab partners fertilized women with the wrong eggs and it went viral and i got a lot of death threats. apparently he is a political touchstone at the moment which i had no idea and then it went viral on bluesky all over again and they started calling me a fascist over there. i just thought it was a crazy story mackdav oh now i do remember this photoshop mostly right? shl0ms Yes steviep this sounds like a deleted scene from Edington CSA2D7 Hey shl0ms, oh yea I do remember the time you were threatened with death mackdav Ahaha shl0ms definitely not the only time CSA2D7 Hey man I was joking I wouldnt actually kill you shl0ms have any of you guys ever gotten death threats? sometimes it's hard to gauge how much of my experience on the internet is normal stevie? you def push some buttons CSA2D7 I mean like people have told me they would kill me in physical altercations but I didnt take it seriously mackdav steviep probably did with his childrens story that went viral: 'you are not special' steviep oh yeah, well let me clarify that i at no point felt threatened it was mostly people telling me to kill myself CSA2D7 When you got a crazy looking penis you are past existential worries steviep and a handful of implied death threats but maybe only one or two actual "i'm going to kill you" death threats Bushi Jealous lol I haven’t received any 🙁 CSA2D7 Hey man im gonna kill you, there you go, bucket list shl0ms did stevie actually post his penis? that's crazy and gross. where exactly did he do that, so i can make sure not to go there. answer in link form pls mackdav Haha CSA2D7 Its a finsexy joke, you wouldnt get it mackdav it is a gross image im sad to say i saw it like a really not fun image to have open, especially at a public wework where i had it open steviep let's take this conversation offline. you can message me here and i'll tell you all about it 😉 FinSexy CSA2D7 Honestly if stevie p's penis is in the moma in fifty years I wouldn't be that surprised steviep i fucking hope so talk about bucket list items CSA2D7 Its gonna take me fifty years to get uncanceled after I publish this on x shl0ms i am committing the sin of lust rn CSA2D7 Actually I wanted to ask about this manifestation of money thing - I feel like it has a lot of tradition in asian cultures? Like japanese gods for prosperity etc I dunno if thats a question for mack or stevie p mackdav that seems right steviep yeah, probably mackdav i know thats a thing but not specifics sounds like me and stevie know about the same amount haha steviep i know a thing or two mackdav c'mon mr bard tell us about wealth manifestation in asian culture shl0ms i know that money trees are very difficult to keep alive steviep i think in general, if you go back a few hundred/thousand years, there was a lot of religion wrapped up in money like, in david graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 years he talks about it a bit (which is a great book that I highly recommend to everyone) but it sounds like you usually need to have some religious or pseudospiritual element tied to money, or whatever social currency you're using i think because if you're trying to coordinate a group of people around some object that has immaterial value, it's an effective strategy and i think similar to how, for a lot of history, the church gave empires sovereignty, religion adds some degree of credibility to the money so, given how money was very wrapped up in religion and spirituality, i'm sure that praying for and manifesting money isn't exactly a new concept i also think that the idea of karma in hinduism and buddhism has its origins in debt in any case, this specifically sounds like a future research project mackdav it feels like money and religion have separated over time. like i dont think religion offers any sovereignty / power to the government now, but debt still does steviep my asian history is pretty spotty [Editor’s note: Shl0ms inserts the José Mourinho meme] mackdav jose is my favorite person and personal idol unrelated but i had to say it CSA2D7 In the united states you mean? mackdav i think so yeah shl0ms have you watched the righteous gemstones yet steviep well, i think for a long time religion gave money + governments legitimacy, but sometime in the 17th + 18th century we started moving past that CSA2D7 God bless the united states of america? shl0ms the vatican is a city state, megachurches are a multibillion dollar business across the US, and there's utah mackdav i just learned about the soda addiction thing in utah Hilarious steviep i think things sorta flipped though. like now the church relies on money instead of the other way around although, i think vatican city technically has its own special version of the euro jgc mostly the church is a jobs program shl0ms i was watching this tiktok profile of an elderly woman who releases balloons for dead loved ones seemingly every single day. and then i was curious about her, and found her youtube channel. and she was selling what she called "spiritual products" which mostly seemed to be household cleaning products with essential oils and various saints printed on the labels. and she said they could cure any problem steviep sounds like a thriving entrepreneur CSA2D7 sounds like finsexy shl0ms for a second i thought it was a stevie p project i hadn't heard of yet Bushi Yea have you even tried it? steviep a lot of solutions! mackdav i've gotta run, great chatting with all of you, good first visit to the bench for me. CSA2D7 SHL0ms I just have thirty more questions on disinformation and then we are good? Thanks mack - really good work. Please take pride 🔥 shl0ms the agent answering qs for me can do as many as you want CSA2D7 god damn it shl0ms bye mack great work today < 3 CSA2D7 Maybe we can do a third bench chat in the future about it, I think there's a good link but I might be too tired today to talk about it shl0ms that would be great i think after 3 i can call myself a regular CSA2D7 Thank you shl0ms, stevie p, mack, and everyone else it was a wonderful chat shl0ms yeah 4 in a day is a lot you must be zonked rn thank you!! steviep btw, someone DMed me on twitter who showed up to the literal McCarren park looking for us but yes, it was fun chatting! shl0ms are you gonna play along steviep i should've but i already spilled the beans CSA2D7 stevie is a sucker for pamphlets, so I know I can always get him there steviep i never see any good pamphlets in the park CSA2D7 Thats how I found the one I gave you! steviep it's always the fucking JW people with their boring ass cookie cutter pamphlets the best ones are definitely in the subway CSA2D7 JW still going strong I found a bunch actually by you after we met up but I said screw it, he has enough Can't be too greedy steviep i can't complain i'll take what i can get