rare mfers
season 2
card 1
artist notes:
on february, 13th 2022 sartoshi published a mirror article titled “what are mfers”. the article has since become one of my favorite writings not just in crypto, but overall. i view it kind of like the mfers white paper similar to that of the bitcoin white paper written by satoshi nakamoto. when i first learned of bitcoin pre silk road and mt gox i dismissed it is a fad, magic internet money…can’t be real, sounds like a scam - that kind of thing. at the time, i came to this conclusion based on zero actual research of my own. later in 2016 i was convinced by a colleague to read the bitcoin white paper and was absolutely blown away…the light bulb went off - i “got” it, and there was no turning back. i learned a valuable lesson from this: prior to commenting on a particular topic or formulating an opinion you should really “do the work” and learn about what you’re talking about first…dyor. my early dismissal of bitcoin was intellectually dishonest bc i didn’t spend the time to actually understand it. fast forward to early 2021…i was consistently hearing more and more abt nfts from crypto friends and rather than dismissing it like i initially did with bitcoin i decided to “do the work”. in this case that meant minting some nfts and actually becoming a user of the technology…minted some rugs, got rekt, but was learning. one of the earliest projects i got involved in that worked out really well was onchain monkey…another lightbulb moment. later in nov 2021 i saw a tweet from punk6529 with the image of a stick figure wearing a cap and smoking a cig…it looked tight. dug into it a little more and realized that this was the mfers mint and sartoshi was the artist. i wasn’t able to grab one at mint, but picked up my first mfer later that evening on nov 30th at 11:16pm est. i still didn’t really know what i was doing but i liked the motherfuckers. the mirror article titled “what are mfers” wasn’t published until a couple months later in feb 2022. i’ll never forget reading it for the first time…very similar to how i felt after reading the bitcoin white paper for the first time. i believe that “what are mfers” by sartoshi contains the most important 1,912 words in the entire nft space. i’ve shared the article link with so many people, tweeted about, and even read it out loud numerous times on twitter spaces. i’ve always wanted to find ways to share that document with as many people as possible - i think it is that important. when breezy approached me about kicking off season 2 card 1 of rare mfers i was a little stressed about it considering i don’t really have a background or training in art…but obviously couldn’t say no. i knew that i wanted to do something related to “what are mfers” but didn’t know exactly what (or how, lol). i was initially thinking maybe i’ll create a piece and record a voice over of me reading “what are mfers” - quickly scrapped that idea realizing it was lame and there was no way that anyone would wants to hear my voice on a nft. i settled on trying to figure out a way to incorporate the actual text of “what are mfers” into a piece (still no idea how i was going to pull it off). in the opening sentences of “what are mfers” sartoshi talks about coming up with a name for his digital identity “we all know about satoshi & digital currency…but this was about a foray into digital art…suddenly ‘sartoshi’ was born”. i thought “what if i use the iconic image of satoshi nakamoto and overlay the text somehow on that image” - that might be badass. there was only one problem, i didn’t have the skills to pull it off…yet. after many painful hours and photoshop lessons on youtube i was able to figure it out…there was a lot frustration, deleting and restarting, what opacity to use on the font, how to properly displace the two separate text layers, etc…at one point i was running into so many issues i seriously didn’t think i was going to be able to finish and would have to resort to calling an artist friend for help. fortunately it didn’t get to that point and everything worked out. rare mfers season 2 card 1 is an accomplishment i am very proud of…i was able to create a piece that pays homage to those incredibly impactful words written by sartoshi, and i learned a lot in the process. i hope you appreciate it as much as i do.
link to the original mirror article below…give it a read.
https://mirror.xyz/sartoshi.eth/QukjtL1076-1SEoNJuqyc-x4Ut2v8_TocKkszo-S_nU
