put a spell on you

A Group of Witches Hexed Martin Shkreli

The now-cursed Martin Shkreli.
The now-cursed Martin Shkreli. Photo: Pete Marovich/Bloomberg Finance LP

If there’s one thing our fractured nation can agree on these days, it’s that professional troll Martin Shkreli is the worst. One look at his career of pharmaceutical profiteering, Wu Tang taunting, and securities fraud will make even the most peaceable-minded person want to slug him in his incredibly punchable face. So a group of witches in Brooklyn hexed him.

The Daily Dot caught up with Howl, one of the witches who took on the responsibility of practicing the black arts on Shkreli. Watching him at the congressional hearing, Howl was convinced that the law would never effectively punish Shkreli. “I’m not really into doing hexes, but I felt like there was a need and an opening for this to happen,” Howl explained. She gathered members of a local queer witches collective and some people she’d practiced with before, and they threw a hex party. An effigy of Shkreli was piled with numerous hexes designed to make him a better human (and maybe also hurt his wallet), and then burned.

But the real question: Did it work? Howl wasn’t sure what impact their hexing might have had, noting only that Shkreli maybe lost some Bitcoins trying to ruin The Life of Pablo for everyone. While that’s not exactly the Craft-level retribution  we might have hoped for, it’s not the ultimate result that matters. Howl noted, “It helps us have a cathartic release. We can’t do anything literally against Martin Shkreli, but we did something that made us feel powerful.” On the other hand, maybe if a whole bunch of us make our own hex, we can at least shut down Shkreli’s obnoxious social media presence.