Whenever a pro athlete wears a disguise and pretends to be a regular person playing their sport, you can bet that people will watch that video on the internet. Kyrie Irving dressed up as an old guy for a soda commercial a decade ago, and it was so popular that he ended up starring in a feature-length film based on it. The undercover-jock bit comes and goes, but lately it's experienced a resurgence.
Retired quarterback Eli Manning recently showed up to Penn State football's walk-on tryouts as "Chad Powers," a character that mainly consisted of a shaggy wig and Manning's willingness to talk 10 percent dumber. Around the same time, former BYU three-point darling Jimmer Fredette snuck into his old team's practice disguised as "Slick Nick," a character that mainly consisted of a shaggy wig and Fredette's unwillingness to alter his voice in any way. Defector would be foolish not to get in on this potentially lucrative IP generator, so I convinced editor-in-chief Tom Ley to wear a disguise and turn into Todd Dipshit, a new junior staffer from Manchester, N.H. He has plenty of ideas, and if you can get him to stop partying all the time, he might even blog some of them!
Last week's Defector company meetings were the perfect opportunity to unveil this new shaggy-haired character. But first, Tom had to wake up at 3:15 a.m. to undergo an intensive prosthetic transformation. While it's true that the main elements of Todd Dipshit were a hat and big sunglasses, and our subject was coincidentally already wearing a Defector shirt, there was so much more to the persona. A photo doesn't really do it justice.
Wow, who the heck is that guy? After seven hours and a quick personality synchronization process, Todd was ready to attend Defector's editorial meeting and act like any other staffer.
After he fixed himself a beverage, Todd opened his computer, introduced himself to his new colleagues (not pictured), and started to toss around surprisingly excellent and productive ideas that no one would expect from a novice like him. Everyone else in the meeting was thinking, Whoa, I don't know much about this guy, but he's good. He made sure to pepper the conversations with some of his catchphrases, such as "You wanna see me eat this in one bite?," "Now that's epic!" and "Check, please!"
After Todd won over his peers with some rad ideas—he calls ideas "rad," that's just a little quirk he has—he was ready to get to the real work. Even though this was his first day, he put together a draft with a properly formatted photo and no typos. Damn, look at Todd blog!
Damn, look at Todd contribute thoughtful suggestions to his colleagues' (not pictured) ideas!
Damn, look at Todd, uh—honestly, I'm not sure what he was doing in this one. He might've gotten up to get a snack, or maybe he was returning from the bathroom. I briefly lost track here.
After a few hours of riveting and hilarious antics from Todd Dipshit, the rest of the Defector staff grew suspicious. Where did this guy come from, and how did he have a seemingly endless supply of excellent ideas and jokes? And in an unrelated question, what had happened to Tom Ley? He said he needed to go back to his cabin to get his laptop charger, but it had been a whole day since they had last seen him. Was Defector's editor-in-chief OK? He wasn't answering any of their calls. It was unlike him to go this long without a reply. Tension filled the air; no one on staff wanted to explicitly say what was implicitly feared.
And then Todd Dipshit took off his hat and sunglasses to reveal that he was actually ... editor-in-chief Tom Ley! Whoa! The Defector staff (not pictured) was so freaking surprised. It was the most epic thing they had witnessed in their miserable lives. "That's crazy," Patrick Redford said. "I can't believe you lied to us," said Billy Haisley.
What a journey. We really learned a lot about the power of friendship today. Please email samer@defector.com if you'd like to discuss monetization opportunities around the Todd Dipshit concept. A feature-length film feels like the natural first step. Now that's epic!
