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For the last four months, a YouTube user going by the name “Bana Man” has been leaving bananas, often marked with bizarre messages, throughout Dallas. Bana Man has filmed these escapades and shared the results online. The channel description doesn’t shed much light on what’s going on here:
As one observes the American Society and its death spiral of quotidian twaddle, as Art itself gasps what appears to be its penultimate breaths, it becomes one’s mission – a sacred duty, indeed – to eschew the premonishments of the proles. The fetters of established taboo should be reduced to compost, that new vines of thought may grow forthwith! Let the bastions of recalcitrance and mediocrity choke, garroted upon their own hamstrings! Topple down the old edifices of comfort, scatter them to rubble, and use them to build anew, walls of misanthropy and havoc! Through this entropy, many may feel terror, fear, discomfort, confusion… but these emotions will be the birthing pangs of a wholly new paradigm, whose zeitgeist has finally come.
In more than 60 videos with titles such as “You sought to halt my art, Eunice. You cannot stop the tides. You cannot stop me,” and “The horror of death is insurmountable. The universe doesn’t care,” Bana Man leaves a single banana near the Arts District DART station, Pink’s Western Wear, and elsewhere in Dallas. Most of the videos have an instrumental soundtrack, while Bana Man remains largely silent. (He proves himself an adept whistler in this one, though).
Most of the bananas carry messages, ranging from the short-and-sweet “Rebirth” to the wordier “When will you fall? How will you rise?” Many of the videos were shot downtown within blocks of D Magazine HQ, which makes me suspect Bana Man’s true identity could be right in front of me.
I have questions. Who is Bana Man? What is this? An art project? A political statement? Some kind of viral marketing scheme? What do bananas have to do with “American Society and its death spiral of quotidian twaddle?” There’s some discussion on this Reddit thread, but the goals of this serial banana-dropper remain unclear. For now, let’s savor the mystery of Bana Man.
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