#pharma bae

Finally got this done. ♥ Drawing it made me sad though. ;_;

All of these quotes (except Martin's, of course) come from the media. Journalists have been so cruel to him, and the general public is ignorant of how hard he works to save the lives of sick people left behind by other pharmaceutical companies.

Martin Shkreli: Chibi Edition.

Enjoy~♥

Martin Shkreli taught me that fake news exists.

For the past week or so, I’ve been away drafting a long, multipart recap of my Tumblr experience. I wanted that to be my hundredth post. I would still like to finish and post that eventually, preferably for Post #101, yet for my hundredth post, I’m doing this.

I’m thankful for Martin Shkreli. I know a lot of people will be upset and/or confused by that statement. If you are one of those people, please hear me out and read the rest of this.

I wasn’t always a Martin Shkreli fan. The first time I saw him was on a news article criticizing him for the Daraprim price hike. I thought he was a greedy jerk and scrolled to the next headlines. And guess what? He didn’t seem worth my time. He didn’t stand out to me that much in the midst of everything else on the internet. There were plenty of other things for me to learn about and form opinions on and many other jerks in the news. I generally try not to feel strongly about topics I don’t know much about, and he didn’t seem significant enough to my life and interests for me to take the time to learn more about him.

Then he continued to show up in the news, one controversy after another. I still wouldn’t look much into his story beyond what the website said; I’d been regularly visiting that website for a while (and still do), and Martin Shkreli still didn’t seem that relevant to me. Despite this, I found it unusual that someone who wasn’t an actor, singer, athlete, or politician was making so many headlines. His smug face became one I’d recognize.

As I’ve said previously, my main reason for not being interested in Martin Shkreli was that I hadn’t connected him to my other interests. One of those interests is writing. I’ve been working on a novel and wanted to get better at writing body language, so I thought that perhaps the best way to learn was by observing people. And not just people in anime, which composed the bulk of what I’d watch, but real, actual people. And the character I was writing was a stuck up jerk, so I wanted to watch some stuck up jerks in real life and study their mannerisms. The first jerk who came to mind was Martin Shkreli.

I went to YouTube and searched his name, and to my astonishment, he was livestreaming. Of course, I had to watch him in action. He had tweeted his phone number demanding the haters call him. It was so surreal; I was amazed that someone would do something like that in real life. I stared at my iPad screen as he talked to all sorts of people, often about Daraprim. So many people asked about Daraprim. As the hours ticked by, he went from mocking people to explaining the reasoning behind the price hike to philosophical conversations about a variety of topics. This was not what I expected; he was a complex person. And thus he became interesting to me.

(And for anyone curious the reason for the price hike, please watch this video. Here’s a quick summary for those of you who won’t or would like to know what to expect: Daraprim is for toxoplasmosis, not for cancer, AIDS, or HIV. He gives it away for free or sells it very cheaply to those who wouldn’t have been able to afford it. The drug is dangerous since it causes bone marrow problems and isn’t always effective, so he wants to create profit to develop a safer, better working medication.)

After that night, I learned that the media could get some things very wrong, and there was a lot more to people than their reputations. I discovered that Martin Shkreli livestreamed almost every day and began to watch him regularly. I’d also read his tweets and check the headlines to see what else he might be up to. To my surprise, I had become a fan. I was even watching the stream when his cat, Trashy, finally started to be affectionate towards him. Yet once I became more busy, I went from checking on him nearly every hour to every day, and the frequency eventually dwindled to every week. When I looked him up in January and learned that his Twitter had been deleted, I muttered to myself that I had left him for just a week only to be met with that.

Months passed, and I became interested in other people, including Martin’s friend, Milo Yiannopoulos. I continued to watch Martin’s livestreams along with all the other new content I had discovered. I joined Tumblr and posted pro-Martin content. And throughout the trial, I’d watch Martin’s livestreams. And then on August 4 came the verdict. I was so worried about what would happen to Martin yet relieved he was innocent on the most serious account, and I was confused why he didn’t seem upset at 5/8. While I had a few people in my life aware and supportive of my interest in Martin, they didn’t share my fascination, and thus I had no one to turn to. So I did something new: I joined the YouTube chat.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this to anyone on here before, but I feel a deep discomfort with both social media and communicating with others. There are many reasons for this, and it’s something I’m currently overcoming (largely thanks to Milo and the events that follow). I worried that people online would either be a waste of social effort and ignore me once I started feeling connected to them or feel so attached to me that I’d feel guilty for not being able to dedicate enough time to communicating with them. I also had little experience with internet socialization and worried about hackers, doxxing, and stalkers. While I was already on Tumblr, I wasn’t that involved at that point, and the thought of joining a chatroom seemed quite ominous.

Another thing was that my primary thoughts about chatrooms stemmed from the anime, Durarara!!. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the show features a mysterious gang known as the Dollars who communicate on a chatroom. The gang started out as an online joke yet ended up being involved with all sorts of conflict, dragging a headless fairy, other gangs, mad scientists, school kids, an assassin, superhumans, internet trolls, and many others into chaotic battles throughout Ikebukuro, a region of Tokyo. The actions of the people on the internet had serious and often dangerous real world consequences. Because of this among other reasons, it took me over a year of watching Martin to join the YouTube chat.

The first time was chaotic. There were so many people saying so many things, and many conversations were going on at once. A lot of people were wishing all sorts of harm on Martin, which he mostly ignored. Yet in the midst of this, a mod noticed my love for anime when I acknowledged a Hetalia reference. It felt great.

I kept coming back, and I came to realize that anti-Martin comments were typically the minority. I’d make a few comments and reply to people here and there, and gradually, I started recognizing people. And they started recognizing me. Even greeting me when I joined the chat. As someone who isn’t very social, it was astonishing that people I had never met would remember me and care enough about me to say hi and ask me how I was doing. We’d have all sorts of conversations from politics to science to medical disorders to anime to food to school, just to name a few. While I had originally watched streams for Martin and had joined the chat to discuss him, this community he created on the internet provided me with social nourishment I really needed. I came to appreciate the other people on the chat as individuals with unique personalities, interests, and lives. I feel as if the people I talked to genuinely cared about me, and I certainly care about them. Martin and the fellow people on the stream gave me a place where I felt welcome.

Joining the chat also lead to me watching Martin more often. Before, I would typically watch him when he was talking to others; now, I began to notice more things about him. While I was aware that he was intelligent, I didn’t know that he spent so much time doing research. He’d often be reading medical journals and examining stocks. And he could type so quickly and was very skilled in Excel. He was also very affectionate towards his cat, Trashy, and would even tilt his camera towards her when she jumped on his lap so we could get a better view. It was also oddly satisfying to watch a millionaire eat Cup Noodles and fried chicken. He would play music for us and gave us an eventual tour of part of his apartment. And he had a Periodic Table shower curtain, making the geeky side of me smile with joy for his love of science.

I also realized that Martin is abnormal in more ways than I realized. Despite being a businessman, he took the time and effort to understand the science behind medicine instead of only concerning himself with profits. And even though he wasn’t a professor, he would spend a lot of time providing us with free tutorials on investing, finance, and chemistry. While he was wealthy, he lived in an apartment and didn’t drive. And as I observed before becoming a fan, he grabbed the nation’s attention without being an athlete, politician, actor, or singer (unless you count him meowing to a Brand New song while cradling a cat and typing away on Excel). He even inspired a musical.

Martin truly cares about helping people and learning; he didn’t have to work so hard to teach us, but he did. And he would strive to provide people with safer, more effective medication even if the general public hated him. He’d make sure people could get their medication after the price hike. I recall him saying on one video that he wouldn’t have done it if even one person would lose access. And he was inspirational to me as well.

Martin showed me that it’s important to keep learning and use my knowledge to help others. I was at a mental state where I felt very unmotivated; I could learn and I could show it, but I felt like I had little purpose. I wanted success yet wondered if it were unattainable and if my efforts would amount to little meaning for those around me. Yet watching Martin reminded me that hard work brings good results, and learning and using knowledge can really help others and touch the lives of so many people. Watching Martin remain motivated despite all the adversity he faced showed me that I should carry on in spite of the struggles I’d face.

I’ve mentioned before how coming to the chat made me feel welcome and accepted. Throughout my life, even though I have friends, I’d feel lonely and detached. I still do from time to time, but joining the chat has reduced this feeling a lot. I haven’t been able to see my real life friends lately, and I have low social motivation; I wanted to make other people happy yet felt little desire to be around people. On the chat, I was able to enjoy all sorts of conversation and get to know so many interesting people. They made me feel appreciated, and I’m glad to have played a role in their lives.

In retrospect, I can say that the chatroom did have some similarities to that of the Dollars. For one thing, it was the internet home of a brilliant dark haired troll who made an impact on society, albeit of a different type. Another thing was how information travelled to so many people, and online behavior and real life eventually intersected in a tragic manner. Yet like the Dollars chatrooms, people of all sorts were brought together. There were chemists and businesspeople, programmers and geneticists, kids in school and people with jobs. There were kind people and smart people. There were trolls and spammers. Regulars and people who would just pop in on occasion. We had amazing mods. And we had our feline friend, Trashy.

Yet most importantly, we had Martin. He brought us all together. Some of us worked for him; others were his friends. Many of us wanted to learn from him. Some just wanted to stare at his face while he played with his hair. Some found his antics entertaining; others liked his nuanced views on society. Some people would come in hating him then realize how wrong people were about him. And a lot of us were like that to some extent. Many of us didn’t start out thinking positively. To all the people making angry and negative comments to my friends and on my posts or anywhere for that manner, we were like you once. We looked at what the media said and believed it. Yet unlike you, we dug deeper. We did our own research, and we learned the truth.

I’ve been getting a lot of replies lately for my other posts, and I’d love to respond eventually. I understand that many of them are insulting to Martin and myself, but I believe all of you deserve the opportunity to learn, and if you criticize Martin, myself, or any of his other supporters, at least do so for the right reasons. It might take a few days before I can get back to some of you since I’m busy finishing my other post and with real life, but I do plan to respond, assuming I haven’t been blocked. I’m willing to have a conversation. If you’ve read this far, thank you.

I miss him. I miss his quick typing and his lessons. I miss when Trashy jumped in his lap and how he’d play with his hair. I miss the chairstreams and the late night philosophical banter which came with them. I miss how the mods cared about our community so much. I miss my notifications popping up saying he’s livestreaming. I miss the kindness we showed each other and the intellectual discussions. And yes, I miss the small talk, too. I miss Martin’s music, Brand New in particular, and the Discord voices in the background. I miss his stretching and his smiles. I miss how we’d wonder why he leaves the chat up when he’s not there. (To let us continue our conversations? Security reasons? Did he just forget to turn off his camera?) I even miss the sycophants and the trolls. I miss the kindness shown to me and being able to be nice to others in return. I miss that Martin would even pay attention to us. Keep coming back and stay long enough, and it was bound to happen.

I’m thankful to Martin, and to the rest of the community he created. I was given inspiration, kindness, and knowledge. Furthermore, Martin helped others as well. He strived to heal and to educate, and he’d entertain us as well. We had a place. We were welcomed.

“Big Rows,” AKA Martin Shkreli with cornrows.

This turned out better than expected.

Requested by two people on the livestream.

Yep! I support him very much! :)

Daraprim isn’t for AIDS, by the way. It’s for toxoplasmosis, though people with AIDS are vulnerable to it. And it’s dangerous as well since it can cause bone marrow suppression. Martin explains it in this video. He increased the cost so he can have money to fund the development for a safer, more effective medicine. And even after the price hike, people can get it cheaply or even for free!

As for his appearance, beauty is subjective, but I generally find him attractive. It varies from picture to picture though. For example, I think he looks great here,

but not the best here.

In this gif, he looks amazing!