Thomas Kramer
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
My name is Thomas Kramer. I want to tell you all a story called Celebrity for the Day. Back in April, my buddies and I conducted a real telling social experiment. We convinced an entire mall that I was a famous celebrity. Not a celebrity impersonator, but that my real self, Thomas Elliott, which is my first and middle name, was there.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
I kind of surrounded myself with a real attention-drawing entourage, but kind of nonchalant and much like a real entourage would be, And then we had staged some ordinary mall goers who had recognized me as fans throughout the mall.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
We picked kind of this focal meeting point, a busy part of the mall, where everyone would kind of collapse on me to create a bit of a frenzy, and a frenzy is what was created. That day I literally signed hundreds of autographs, took almost as many pictures. Grown women were handing me their children. People were telling me that I was their favorite actor of all time. Well, security called on me.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
about 10 minutes later, and we thought we were going to get kicked out of the mall when security and local police showed up. They said to us, for your own protection, we need to provide you all with a private security escort. So we proceeded to shut down the Apple Store and Victoria's Secret, some of the most popular stores in the mall.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And this aesthetic that the security was creating just really made it go overboard. We ended up shooting a video. We took some video from iPhone. We put it on the Internet. And four days later, the video had a million views, and there's something like 10,000 tweets about Thomas Elliott. This social experiment really spoke to so many social themes.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
It was a remarkable day I'll never forget, and I would love to tell you all more about it. Thanks so much.