Meet Curt Oren, he's a 23-year-old DIY touring musician currently living in Minneapolis.
Oren's always been a little quirky. A few years ago, he made a shirt with his own face on it.
Oren told BuzzFeed that he and his friend Ben came up with the idea of making a hat that said "Curt's New Hat."
They both thought it was super funny. So then Oren got a shirt printed, obviously, alerting people that he had a new hat.
"I changed my name on Facebook to New Hat. This is where things start getting interesting," Oren told BuzzFeed. "People also have been referring to me as New in real life."
Oren also got a license plate, which, again, obviously, said "New Hat."
And just when Oren's friends didn't think his new hat joke could go any further... Last Friday, this billboard went up.
"The website originally contained just a single picture of my hat but then when my friends found out they staged an intervention for me, telling me I had gone too far," Oren said. Now, there's a donate button.
"I partnered with Public Space One in Iowa City," he said. "They're a nonprofit arts organization that I was artist-in-residence at January/March of 2014."
Oren's hat billboard was recently discovered by Reddit. He said he hasn't raised much, just about $500 so far. But traffic to his website has been heavy enough to crash it a few times.
"The world is a lot more squishy than it seems," Oren said. "Things that look static and unchangeable on the surface (like corporate billboards) can be turned into gigantic jokes."
