BuzzFeed’s #1 person we should all aspire to be in 2016 is Iowa City’s own Curt Oren

Have you heard about Curt’s new hat?

Iowa City musician Curt Oren bought a hat last year as a joke. The hat was pretty funny, but the thing is, some jokes are gateway jokes, and sometimes the end result of your joke is a billboard joke on Interstate 380 — a joke you can’t really afford.

It’s happened to a lot of us.

When it happened to Curt, he did what we all do: He launched an online fundraising campaign that, as they all inevitably do, ended up on the homepage of Reddit. Before you know it, you are pretty much all over the Internet for like a week. Hate it when that happens.

Curt had so much success from his fundraiser — again, like everyone does — that he felt guilty and started donating the financial overage to Public Space One, a sort of favor returned to an Iowa City arts organization that he felt indebted to for the support they had lent him as a budding young artist.

Now, in the final(?) stage of this highly predictable series of events, Curt’s #1 on BuzzFeed’s list of people we should all be in 2016.

“I live with my parents.” said Curt, in response to the post, shared with him on Facebook by fellow wave-making artist Taylor Yocom.

In addition to BuzzFeed’s suggestion that we should all “be as confident as Curt” in 2016, I’ll add that we should all:

• Have a lot of fun
• Make a lot of jokes
• Work really hard on our art
• Support local art institutions
• Spend a lot of money on advertising (ads@littlevillagemag.com if you need ideas)
• Mess around lots on the internet

Think we can stick to that? Here’s hoping.

In the meantime, from all of us here at Little Village: Nice one, Curt.