Back in 2019, Seth Philips and Elliot Tabele took to the streets of New York City’s SoHo neighborhood to hold up a cardboard sign with the message “Stop replying-all to company-wide emails.” The pic was meant for Tabele’s personal Instagram account, but as the followers grew, the duo decided to make a whole new page dedicated to their low-key protests, and that’s how @dudewithsign was created.
Seth told Forbes that they get the protest and sign ideas mainly from their work environment and coworkers. It turns out, office fun can be an endless source of inspiration for first-world problems.
“When creating the protests, we try to come up with something funny that is relatable that people don't particularly talk about. We try to have each of these elements while appealing to every type of person, which is a big part of why I think the account has accumulated as many followers as it has.”
The @dudewithsign page quickly grew past the initial 4m followers and now has a whopping 7.3m followers on Instagram, as well as 248.6K followers on Twitter. In January, Seth and his witty signs appeared on The Ellen Show, where they helped Ellen DeGeneres with her opening speech.
Seth also told Forbes that at this point, he’s still trying to figure the future out. “Maybe continue making funny accounts? There are interesting opportunities that I would have never imagined coming my way with this all the time,” he said in the same interview.
