At this point, the idea of viral marketing isn’t new. But that doesn’t mean it can’t still be (very) interesting, nor does it necessarily have to be solvable in the traditional sense. All that to say, there's something very interesting going on that seems to involve Donald Glover.
Glover, who’s not that active on social media, shared a number of Instagram Stories updates Thursday night, including a link to a TMZ article about an incident at a stand-up show in New York. Footage shows comedian Mark Normand being escorted off the stage, at which point someone who identifies themselves as “one of the producers of the show” tells the audience to “get out, please.”
Per the TMZ report, this all went down at the New York Comedy Club on Thursday night. By Friday, the venue had issued a statement to social media letting everyone know that “nobody was harmed or injured” during the show. Furthermore, per the club, “the disruption was part of a filming by [HiHi], the producers that rented out our venue for the night.”
Normand himself also issued a "good ole corporate statement" reiterating that no one had been "harmed or injured" at the show.
"The disruption was part of a planned 'surprise' activity by show producers, HiHi," Normand said.
But what the fuck is HiHi, exactly? That largely remains to be seen, but whatever it is, Donald Glover was sure to point his IG followers to it in his slew of updates on Thursday night. As seen below, HiHi, which has its own IG page, is also seemingly behind other performance art-esque developments, including the footage of Tyra Banks seated next to a pair of furries at a Knicks and Nets game earlier this week.
As DG fans are well aware, his Prime Video series Mr. & Mrs Smith, also starring Maya Erskine, is set to debut on Feb. 2. Per the show’s official synopsis, Glover and Erskine’s characters are brought together after landing jobs with “a mysterious spy agency.” This week, Joy Press published a Vanity Fair piece about the show, which is based on the 2005 film of the same name. Right there in the second paragraph is a mention of that agency using the nickname HiHi, this time written without the double-capitalized H's, like so:
"Glover and Erskine play two wannabe spies partnered up by a mysterious entity they nickname “Hihi” (that’s how he greets them in his messages)"
But what does it all mean? What does it all say about the current state of society at large? What's next for HiHi, presuming they have additional plans leading up to the show's release?
All that remains to be seen. Given both Glover and Erskine's respective track records, however, we can be confident that Mr. & Mrs. Smith will be worth our time.
