When one female student invited Brett Tietjen to join her for a drink at Santa Fe Cafe Tuesday night, she asked him why he always wears the same button-down shirt.
“Because I get [lucky] in it,” Tietjen said, using more colorful language that is sometimes used to describe cats.
The woman who invited him for a drink didn’t seem to get the humor, quickly repealed her invitation and walked away.
Tietjen is not just a jerk in a bar. OK, he may act like a jerk, but he’s also part of a new breed of Internet celebrity, building his notoriety one viewing at a time on YouTube.
Tietjen, the hair-gelled, collar-popped “broski” has forged a career on mimicking the guido Italian-American stereotype. His video, “My New Haircut,” which features a Long Island musclehead, who Tietjen played Tuesday night at Santa Fe and last night at The Mark, has garnered 11 million views since it debuted in June.
He appeared this week at the university as part of his nationwide tour of bars to promote his production company.
In reality, Tietjen is a film school graduate in his late 20s who enjoys acting, playing lacrosse and seeing his favorite bands, Nine Inch Nails and the Queens of the Stone Age, in concert, but last night he was the lewd, arrogant Brett Broski. Hundreds of students came to see him Tuesday night at Santa Fe, taking photos with the celebrity and buying him drinks. Tietjen, staying in character all night, made his introduction to the Corey Hart song, “Sunglasses at Night,” which opens the YouTube video, promising to “grind all that Terrapin pussy.”At around 1 a.m., Tietjen invited fellow broskis to compete in a Heineken chugging competition, and promised $25 and a T-shirt to the winner – or the first person to puke.
In fact, sales of drinks featured in the video – Heineken bottles and Jagerbombs, a Red Bull-Jagermeister cocktail – were much higher than usual, said Geoff Rifkin, a manager at Santa Fe.
Tietjen said growing up on Long Island gave him plenty of material for his Brett Broski character, who swears incessantly, takes steroids and demeans women.
“I would go to the gym, and there would be this guy that would scream, ‘One,'” Tietjen said. “And then there would be someone that wears sunglasses while he’s working out.”
The event brought a number of students dressed as their own versions of the character from the video.
Mark Leh, a senior kinesiology major, wore a popped collar shirt and headbands.
“It’s a fun time,” said Leh. “You get to act like an asshole for the night. Girls actually think I’m the actual guy.”
A reality show and feature film based on the Haircut character are already in the works.
“We’ve gotten some interest from a bunch of people who want to shoot it,” Tietjen said. “We’re trying to get a quarter million dollars. We’re on our way to that goal.”
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