Does the name Martin Shkreli sound familiar to you? If you’re an avid user of the internet then it probably does, but if you’re struggling to recall why, exactly, let me freshen your memory: Shkreli, a Brooklyn native that made his fortune working for hedge funds and speculating on the stock market, first invaded our conscious minds in May of 2014, when he acquired the rights to Daraprim (a drug used in the treatment of AIDS) and promptly hiked the price up by some 5,500 percent. What a guy.
Feeding off of the ensuing bad press like an unrelenting tapeworm, this spineless Pee-wee Herman lookalike has continued to loiter around in the internet headline cycle like a particularly stubborn underwear stain by repeatedly jabbing common decency in the eye with belligerent, headline-grabbing stunts.
When Wu-Tang Clan put the only existing copy of their seventh studio album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, up for auction late last year, it was Shkreli that paid up $2 million to secure it for himself. He offered Kanye West $10 million for the sole existing copy of The Life of Pablo. After being subpoenaed for the Daraprim debacle, he sat before congress, repeatedly pleading the Fifth Amendment with a smug look on his face.
It was a look that made me want to punch him in the mouth, and, well, now I have the opportunity to – we all do – because he’s auctioning off the chance to punch him in the face. Or take him out for dinner, y’know, whichever one you prefer (the punch, obviously).
There are two reasons why Shkreli has offered up this glorious, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: because his now-former PR manager died in his sleep recently, leaving behind a 5-year-old son with a history of health problems, and because he’s a social media parasite in the Ann Coulter mold that loves attention.
Shkreli has said that he will match the highest donation to this GiveForward page (which has been set up to raise some money for a trust fund for the aforementioned 5-year-old) and that every dollar donated will count as one ticket in a raffle to either punch, slap or take him out to dinner. It will also inevitably push internet commentators such as myself to write about it and feed Shkreli some of the attention that he was quite obviously denied as a child.
Now, there’s no mention of Shkreli’s offer on that aforementioned GivingForward page, and I, for one, wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this is just an elaborate hoax to siphon money and attention out of hopeful internet users that would love nothing more than to inflict some pain upon him. It also appears that Shkreli has attempted to create an eBay auction that would allow us to bid directly for this violent pleasure, but, unsurprisingly, it was never approved. And even if it was, would it be worth it?
Although watching Shkreli take one to the chin from a very strong man would be unbelievably satisfying (filming the incident is allowed), it would only give him more of a platform and keep him in the public eye. He is a pitiful leech of a human being and every spiteful article or angry tweet directed his way gives him more importance than he deserves.
Yes, we’d get to see him wince in pain, and visualize ourselves landing that punch, but it would only validate him further, prompting him to return with yet another dumb stunt. I realize that what I’ve written is doing exactly that, so I’ll finish this with an appeal: let’s ignore him, in the hope that he might go away. Or recruit Mike Tyson for that punch. That might make it worthwhile.
The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those solely of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of Highsnobiety as a whole.
