ONE MAN’S QUEST: EATING JASON SEGEL
Toronto comedian strikes viral gold, vowing to eat a picture a day of actor until the star eats one of him
There are worse ways to go viral with your stomach: a Toronto comedian has achieved Internet infamy by vowing to eat a picture of Jason Segel every day until Segel eats a picture of him.
Noah Maloney, a 19-year-old Humber College comedy student who recently migrated to Toronto from Woodstock, Ont., posted a video on YouTube last Thursday in which he methodically chews and swallows a headshot of the Forgetting Sarah
Marshall star over the unhurried course of four-plus minutes. It’s been viewed more than 550,000 times.
Each day since, Maloney has posted a new video in which he consumes a photograph of Segel, with increasingly creative circumstances: eating it in front of a live standup audience or mixing the photo with water in a blender.
He reveals that an upcoming stunt was recorded in the Eaton Centre food court.
“It was pretty nerve-racking,” he admits.
Maloney is part of a trio of comedians devoted to making the “worst best crap we can make” and whose YouTube channel, Dog Shirt, has steadily built a following.
The Segel stunt was posted to their secondary channel (called, yes, Dog S---), where the group had 54 subscribers before this stunt.
They now have roughly 15,000. Pledging oneself to a daily diet of Jason Segel photos does naturally inspire some curiosity, and Maloney was kind enough to answer a few of the Star’s questions.
How did you decide to do this?
We have our main channel, so we made the other channel so we could just post whatever we wanted without repercussions. We thought it’d be funny to eat a picture of a celebrity.
And Jason Segel just kind of popped into our heads. We thought this was just going to be funny for our friends and us. But it blew up immediately. Jason Segel has tweeted only three times in nearly five years. Shouldn’t you have chosen someone more active on social media?
Yeah, if we were planning on this, I think we would have. But we weren’t doing it for it to actually be a thing, until the Internet made it a thing. So we didn’t do any research whatsoever.
We sat around for five minutes, came up with the idea, filmed the video and just posted it. There was no research, no real thought behind it; we just thought it would be funny. And it blew up, so we had to keep going with it.
It seems like you’re somewhat reluctant about it now.
No, I think it’s fine. I’m a comedian. We’re all comedians. So this is a way to get our name out as the channel and my name to get out there as a comic. It’ll work out in the end. It’s very weird. And very exciting.
What do the pictures of Jason Segel taste like?
Ugh. We’ve been filming a couple in a day, just in case. So I’ve probably been eating three a day now. I’m trying to speed up too.
So I’m kind of just swallowing big balls instead of chewing. It doesn’t taste like anything. It’s just a soggy inconvenience going down your throat for two minutes.
How’s your health? Have you had any gastrointestinal issues?
No. I drink a lot of prune juice to even out, because of the crazy amount of fibre. It should be fine.
How likely do you think it is that Jason Segel sees this?
I think he will. His sister tweeted about it and said she was going to talk about it in the family group chat. So I’m pretty sure he’s seen it.
If I were in his position and this was happening, I feel like I would give the person a few days to see what kind of stuff they do.
Because of all the constant publicity it’s getting right now and how big it’s getting, as long as we keep it fresh and keep it going, I think eventually he’ll do it or acknowledge it.
But if he only acknowledges it, we won’t stop.
We’re not going to stop until he actually eats a picture.
How does your family feel about it?
My dad really likes it. My mom’s worried about my health.
So hypothetically, if Jason Segel never eats your picture, will you really eat a picture of him every day for the rest of your life?
Yeah. I’m pretty committed. I will genuinely keep uploading every day until he does it.
And if it’s never, then it happens until YouTube stops being a thing. I’m not going to stop until it happens. I’m hoping for two weeks.
We have a lot of cool ideas for it. I’m hoping he gives us two weeks if he’s planning on doing it.
After it goes on for a month, that’s when I know I’ll be in it for the long haul. Maybe I’ll switch to fake paper and fake ink, but right now it’s all real.
So I’ll have to probably get healthier if it does go on that long.