OPINIONS
While two women clad only in bikini bottoms and body paint strolled around the room, all eyes at the Funky Buddha were on Michael Buonaiuto — better known as Green Mann — as he talked about how he turned Green Mann from a social experiment to a Facebook phenomenon to a fledgling business.
For someone best known for never saying a word, Buonaiuto is one hell of a public speaker. On Feb. 22, he captivated an audience whose attention span is usually as short as a tweet or Facebook post: the Social Media Club of Palm Beach County.
Not bad for someone who had to still be shaken after being escorted off FAU property and given a trespassing warning earlier that day.
I’ve always been a Green Mann skeptic. At first, I dismissed his antics around campus as attention-whoring with a prop from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and his fans as easily influenced students with nothing better to care about.
When he started interrupting classes by bursting in and dancing, I thought, “Why do these people adore someone who’s disrupting the education they’re paying for?” When I helped unmask him on the UP‘s website last November, I was disgusted at how quickly students mobilized a rally to support him, instead of protesting real problems like fee increases or the shortage of advisers at FAU.
I love messing with people’s heads. So I gained a new appreciation for Buonaiuto when he said he started wearing the suit as an experiment to challenge people’s ideas of communication — Buonaiuto would never speak while in the suit, but still got people to add Green Mann as a friend on Facebook, a stunt right up my alley.I also liked that he saw a business opportunity where most people would only see a weird, slightly perverted hobby.
“I’m able to market, I’m able to get names and logos into other people’s hands,” Buonaiuto said, green spandex suit covering everything but his head. “I’m slowly migrating from Green Mann as a hobby to Green Mann as a living.”
He went on to talk about how businesses have started hiring him to promote their products, like an unofficial mascot-for-hire. And, to his credit, Buonaiuto is good at what he does. He’s not afraid to make a fool of himself dancing, and he’s hardened against the heat after running a 5K in the suit.
The part that really made me respect him, though, was how motivational a salesman he was. After spending thirty seconds talking about someone he had just met that night — a man who sells shirts and donates $5 from each sale to educating kids in Africa — a friend sitting next to me said, “Wow, I really want one of those now.”
Buonaiuto has an entrepreneurial streak, but instead of entering business plan competitions and sitting around talking about profit margins and synergy, he’s out almost every day, building his brand. And for that, regardless of how I feel about his alter-ego, I appreciate him.
