Gaming the 4th Wall: Pied Piper, HooliXYZ & Silicon Valley’s Viral Genius

I hope you’re onto this as HBO is playing pure genius. Pied Piper, the fictional start-up in Silicon Valley, has been running IRL job ads on their site & on Facebook, billboards, and a very funny company blog (penned by high-anxiety Jared).

The ‘We’re Hiring’ post nails Jared’s insecurity-propelled verbal contortions:

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HBO ran the ad on Facebook…

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Clicking through and reading closely on the company ‘We’re Hiring’ post,  some of the comments seem to be from applicants who appeared on the show… (ditto other blog posts)

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The just-posted Pied Piper Workplace Harassment Policy is a gem, closing with:

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Best of all, the icing on the transmedia viral cupcake is that Wired just picked up on the May 3 episode’s mention that Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti was about to be interviewed for a Wired profile. And they ran with it. And it’s hysterical. In-game & totally consistent. Doesn’t get better than this.

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From the Wired feature:

“In person, Bighetti combines the visionary thinking of an upper-level Silicon Valley executive with the look and relatability of an utterly unemployable programmer. But the horizon wasn’t always so limitless. Mired as a cog in the admittedly plush Hooli machine, Bighetti’s talents were being wasted so thoroughly that he began pouring his efforts into NipAlert, an application nurtured at investor Erlich Bachman’s startup incubator that “gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples.” It wasn’t flattering. “I made a perverted, sexist useless thing,” says Bighetti now—an unfortunate squandering of talent by Hooli, at least initially.”