Gregg T.

Submission 23,457

About

Gregg T., also known as Gregg Turkin, is a New Yorker who grew to internet fame following his participation in a series of 2016 advertisements for the New York City MTA's "If you see something, say something" campaign.

Origin

On March 21st, 2016, The New York Daily News^[1] reported that the MTA was rolling out a new series of ads as part of their long running "If you see something, say something" campaign that encourages New Yorkers to report suspicious activity in order to keep the city safe. The new ads would feature testimonials from New Yorkers who have reported suspicious activity in an effort to put a human face on the campaign. One of those people was lawyer Gregg Turkin, who reported when he saw a suspicious group of cars while riding the Long Island Railroad.

Spread

While it's unclear when or what exactly made Gregg a New York City celebrity, Gothamist^[2] theorized that the ubiquity of his face had filled a void in New Yorker's lives that once belonged to famed plastic surgeon Dr. Zizmor, whose subway ads had been featured in New York City subways for 25 years. One of the earlier known tweets about Gregg came from @MattyFray^[3] on June 2nd, 2016, claiming Gregg looked exactly like a "snitch."

On July 16th, 2016, a novelty twitter account devoted to tweeting in the supposed voice of Gregg T. appeared on Twitter.^[6] Gregg began gaining further notoriety following a snapchat post by Mike Giannone that was shared on Twitter by @RyGia7^[4] on August 12th, 2016. It featured Turkin sleeping on a train in front of his ad (shown below). The picture appeared on Reddit^[11] in a post by hugosanchez and gained over 2,300 points, as of October 7th, 2016. The tweet was covered by Mashable.^[5]

Gregg began appearing in several threads on the /r/nyc subreddit,^[7]^[8] to the point where an Out of The Loop^[9] thread appeared on /r/asknyc on September 22nd, 2016. Within a week, Gregg T.'s spread as a meme was covered by news outlets, most notably by Vox^[10] and Gothamist. Turkin has a Facebook fan page with 484 followers^[12] and a site devoted to him that sells merchandise.^[13]