It only took Tyra Pierce 35 years to go viral.
A high-energy adjunct professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Drury since 1991, Pierce ends every class with a magic trick, something he has been doing since before he arrived in Springfield.
“I do about 40 different tricks,” Pierce said. “Card tricks, silk tricks, mind-reading tricks. Sometimes it ties in directly to the lesson, but mostly it’s just for fun.”
Earlier this month, freshman Kole Esselstyn decided to record Pierce as he attempted to escape from a straitjacket at the end of class.
“He told us if he didn’t get out in under three minutes, we’d get an extra five points on the next test,” Esselstyn said. “And, of course, he made it in under two minutes.”
Esselstyn didn’t know it at the time, but his recording would soon become social media gold.
Around noon on Feb. 10, Esselstyn posted a 30-second clip of Pierce with the tag of, “My psych professor is crazy” to one of his two Instagram accounts, @kolesports2007. By 4:30 p.m., the video had 100,000 views. By the time he went to bed, it was up to 2 million views.
By the next morning, it was at 10 million.
As of midday on Feb. 24, the video had been viewed more than 34.7 million times and had 3.1 million likes, making it one of the most viral videos on Instagram for the month of February. The video became so popular, ESPN SportsCenter reached out to Esselstyn and the video was featured by social media content factories Viral Hog, LADBible, and Overtime.
While Esselstyn is soaking up the attention a viral video brings, Pierce is taking it all in stride.
“I don’t really have a concept of what’s going on. I’m on Facebook a little bit, but I’m mostly doing research,” Pierce said. “I’ve been doing the same thing at the end of every class all these years, and I’m glad somebody’s getting smiles out of it.”