Martin Shkreli Says This Whole Martin Shkreli Thing Has Just Been a "Social Experiment"

Shkreli never stops.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

As the saga of noted AIDS drug price hiker and apparent Wu-Tang fan Martin Shkreli continues to unfold, dude is finally out here being a proper celebrity. In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shkreli speaks on his controversy-stacked 2015 for the first time since being arrested for allegedly cheating investors through his former hedge funds. 

However, for those expecting a detailed explanation on why exactly Martin Shkreli isMartin Shkreli, his revelations might prove a bit difficult to take:

That persona and other personas, like the teasing that I do on Twitter, or I did on Twitter, those were not meant to be taken at face value. They were meant to start a conversation to be viewed much more as kind of an artistic endeavor or a philosophical endeavor. What do you do when you have the attention of millions of people? It seemed to me like it would be fun to experiment with. What would it look like if I said something audacious or outrageous, even if I don’t mean it literally, it’d be interesting to see how people would react.

The former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO also had a bit of insight on that little monster known as regret, something dude isn't necessarily against but obviously isn't too concerned with fully embracing:

If I regret anything, it probably would be to be a little more patient in explaining the actions that I took. It probably would have been in my interest to try to make everyone love me and maybe that would have changed the outcome of what happened on Thursday. You can imagine having hundreds and hundreds of people ask you to explain why you raised the price of a drug that nobody cares about—that nobody cared about before, nobody cares about now [and] that nobody takes.

After briefly losing control of his Twitter account to some restless hackers, Shkreli has firmly regained control and is now blessing the timeline with gems like these:

For more Shkreli performance art, New York Magazine reports that he's been rather busy livestreaming a great deal of his post-controversy existence. This existence, according to viewers, includes playing guitar and revealing that he would love to date Lindsay Lohan.

Is Martin Shkreli the greatest living performance artist?

Latest in Pop Culture