Just before 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday, college football writer Ryan Nanni tweeted that he had always dreamed of being the guy in the bloomin onion costume at the Outback Bowl. Less than five hours later, he had apparently turned his dream into reality thanks to the wonders of Twitter.
Nanni, who co-manages the SB Nation site Every Day Should Be Saturday, said his Bloomin Onion dreams began as a joke during an episode of SBNation’s college football podcast The Shutdown Fullcast, but became more serious as the game approached. With no obvious way of convincing Outback to hire him a mascot, he did the only thing he could do: offering up retweets, Wendy’s-kid style.
https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/938119290359861248
https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/938119650528890880
https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/938119921661341701
Outback responded within 15 minutes, asking for a fairly modest 10,000 retweets.
Those are Bloomin' big shoes to fill. 10,000 retweets! #FryinNanni
— Outback Steakhouse (@Outback) December 5, 2017
Nanni’s RT total grew rapidly over the next few hours, and by 7 p.m., he had reached his goal.
https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/938192169810227202
https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/938192403177136128
Outback, to its credit, seems serious about rewarding Nanni for his Twitter efforts (and the free advertising all those retweets provided), asking him to DM them his measurements.
We should’ve made that harder 😂 Send us a DM so we can get your measurements to the onion fryer. #thisishappening
— Outback Steakhouse (@Outback) December 5, 2017
And just like that, Nanni’s bizarre dream appears set to be fulfilled, and Outback no longer has to fret finding an intern to run around a stadium in an onion costume. Rarely does Twitter provide us with feel-good happy endings, but folks, we seem to have one here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qKBNKtzTWg
