Daniel [@end_my_lyth], a local student and self described “not really a hat guy” has been putting hats on his head and taking photos of them for the past 2,000 days and posting them to Instagram. Like all bad things, it began in high school with his acquaintance posting a photo of a different friend every day for nine days. Daniel, mimicking them, did this but with hats. Once it finished, Daniel’s mate told him “you should just keep going and see how long you can keep it up for,” and now, “five and half years later, here I am,” Daniel said.
Daniel said he “doesn’t really know” how he has found so many different hats but frequents the op-shops quite a lot, with St. Vinny’s being his favourite. He doesn’t buy all the hats he has photos with, otherwise “I would be much more broke, or richer, than I am, depending on how you view it,” he said.
On his 1,000th hat, Daniel took all the photos of him in his previous hats, put them on paper, printed it out, and “folded it into a paper hat and took it to a hat themed party”, he said. With milestones though, Daniel said “it’s kind of insane, they keep blending into one”. Just one hat after another, with no end in sight. “I’ve missed all the good endpoints like 100 posts, 1,000 posts, or five years, so I guess I’ll have to keep going,” he said.
He’s been recognized in Wellington bars for being ‘the hat guy’ but doesn’t really think there’s “a higher meaning” to all the hats. He simply just posts a photo of him in a hat. That’s it. That’s the post. But with each post he comments about what he did that day and “everyone that follows me or reads my posts gets to know a little bit about my life,” he said, describing it as ‘voyeurism’.
Has he found a favourite hat along the way? No, not really. There’s been some questionable ones like the KFC bucket hat, not the ones they give away at the rugby, no, that would be too simple for the complex hat man Daniel. Actually, he didn’t even realise those existed. Rather, he and his mate ate a whole bucket, washed it out so “I wouldn’t get grease through my hair”, he said, just to get one photo. He likes the “stories around them” rather than the actual hats themselves.
Daniel might be the world’s expert on what makes a hat a hat, a topic that has generated at least lukewarm discussion in the past. He cut his hair, donated it to charity, not because he is a hero, but because he wanted a haircut, and then posted the photo of his bald head covered up with a hat. Mainly because he doesn’t consider “wigs to be a hat but I’ve worn a hat on a wig to showcase the wig” he said, just like any good drag race star.
In a spicy take, he said a helmet is “definitely a hat” but also realises he changes his definition on how desperate he is, just like every person changing their standards in town on a Saturday night. His most dubious hat, he reckoned, was a shower cap, but he said “if I think it’s a hat, it’s a hat.”
His hats have taken him around the world, making ‘earth-sandwiches’ with a guy from France who he photoshops into his photos every year, messaging the Briscoes Instagram, and begging for sponsorships in his Instagram bio. On the 2,000th photo, Daniel wrote “this has become such an integral part of me that I have no idea where I’d be without it,” since he’s now been taking photos in hats for over ¼ of his life. Critic Te Ārohi hopes Daniel keeps posting hats until there are no more hats, or until Critic slides into irrelevance. Either way it’s a win for us.