@DavidonDemand: Man at the Mercy of The Internets

david-on-demand.jpg

Yesterday at Cannes Lions, Chelsi and I had the curious experience of meeting @DavidonDemand.

Here’s the story: David Perez, a creative recruiter over at Leo Burnett Chicago, really wanted to come to Cannes. In its infinite kindness, LB found a practical reason to send him: he could promote Wildfire, the agency’s self-conscious celebration of spontaneity in the art and craft of modern marketing.

So for the next seven days, this poor sod is strapped to a live feed. His job: to do everything Twitter tells him to do.

Can you imagine being at the mercy of the lulz internet for a week straight? It’s not a destiny I’d inflict on just anybody. But when we found him yesterday he’d only had the feed on for 2 hours, and he seemed optimistic about the whole thing – despite our expressed misgivings. See for yourself.

The internet offered us a drink! We did a little car-dodging so he could make good on Twitter’s word, but then somebody told him to get on a tram or something so he left. Before that though, here’s the three of us, walkin’ off into the horizon with panache:

24 hours later, we found out he got a tattoo. This is @Davidondemand today:

I mentioned to Ask Wappling that it seems like he’s lost the vibrant lust for life he had yesterday. It’s gonna be guns and ammo by week’s end if Twitter doesn’t loosen its grip – and apparently The People seem disinterested in telling him to eat and sleep, so he hasn’t had much of that, either.

“You can tweet me a nap later if you want,” he said weakly as he ambled off toward the next adventure. (When it’s working, the live feed seems to indicate he’s on a boat right now.) Follow the shenanigans of the one guy whose life will forever be changed at Cannes over at DavidonDemand.com.

And maybe light a candle for him or something.

Walking photos courtesy of David on Demand.

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

I’m 73 and the thing that keeps me up at night isn’t fear of dying—it’s the possibility that my children will clean out this house in a weekend and not understand that every drawer, every shelf, every pile they’ll throw away was a sentence in a conversation I was trying to have with them

I’m 73 and the thing that keeps me up at night isn’t fear of dying—it’s the possibility that my children will clean out this house in a weekend and not understand that every drawer, every shelf, every pile they’ll throw away was a sentence in a conversation I was trying to have with them

Global English Editing

I’m 63 and I nursed other people’s pain for forty-four years and the thing I never told anyone is that I learned how to hold space for everyone else’s suffering by completely forgetting that mine was supposed to count too

I’m 63 and I nursed other people’s pain for forty-four years and the thing I never told anyone is that I learned how to hold space for everyone else’s suffering by completely forgetting that mine was supposed to count too

Global English Editing

8 things about my husband I only understood after forty years of marriage—and wished I’d known by year five

8 things about my husband I only understood after forty years of marriage—and wished I’d known by year five

Global English Editing

The sad truth why adult children slowly stop sharing real things with their parents has nothing to do with distance or busy schedules—it’s that somewhere in their 30s they realized their parent would either worry too much, give advice they didn’t ask for, or make it about themselves, and the silence was easier than managing any of those three responses

The sad truth why adult children slowly stop sharing real things with their parents has nothing to do with distance or busy schedules—it’s that somewhere in their 30s they realized their parent would either worry too much, give advice they didn’t ask for, or make it about themselves, and the silence was easier than managing any of those three responses

Global English Editing

Nobody prepares you for the loneliness of being well-married. Not unhappy enough to leave, not connected enough to stop aching, just existing in the strange middle territory where everything is fine and fine is the loneliest word in the English language

Nobody prepares you for the loneliness of being well-married. Not unhappy enough to leave, not connected enough to stop aching, just existing in the strange middle territory where everything is fine and fine is the loneliest word in the English language

Global English Editing

I’m 73 and the loneliest I’ve ever felt wasn’t the years I lived alone — it was the decades I spent in rooms full of people who only ever knew the version of me I was brave enough to show

I’m 73 and the loneliest I’ve ever felt wasn’t the years I lived alone — it was the decades I spent in rooms full of people who only ever knew the version of me I was brave enough to show

Global English Editing