Recent Titanic Facebook Pub-Push Goes Viral

Northwestern’s own Titanic Players, the premier long-form improv group on campus, has been promoting shows  on social media since the early days of Friendster. In coordinated events known as “pub pushes”, members share a themed Facebook event for their show simultaneously, garnished with whimsical captions based on the theme. 

On Thursday, Weinberg sophomore and Titanic Player Gerard Patard participated in his team’s regularly scheduled “pub push” for their Friday show, for which the theme was, loosely, horses. This being his first of the year, Gerard was unsure of his strategy, and took nearly three minutes to really, deeply ponder before settling on an idea. At 4 PM on the dot, he shared the event, along with the caption, “Hey, why the long face? Oh, it’s because you’re a horse. My bad. *return return* Come out tomorrow! First show of the year!”

At 4:01 PM, Gerard went down for a nap.

When the Sherman Ave team last checked the post, it had racked up 750k likes on Facebook alone. Both Chrissy Teigen and Caucasian James retweeted a screenshot of the post. Caucasian James does not retweet. Ellen DeGeneres posted a video of herself weeping, genuinely weeping, with laughter, and invited Gerard onto her show. Gerard has racked up 40,000 new Facebook friends.

We asked the young comedy phenom what his secret was:

“When you’ve been on your grind for as long as I have, you’re bound to cash in at some point. I think the honesty, the way it twists on you and it turns out the dude you’re talking to is actually a horse, just the way it’s so funny without being too political or offensive, I think, really resonated with people.”

Unfortunately, none of this affected attendance at their Friday show.