Free Hugs

In the summertime, opportunities to show skin at concerts are plentiful. Some visitors to events like Warped Tour and Electric Daisy use that opportunity to turn themselves into billboards declaring that they’re open for business, in a way—scrawled on their arms or midriffs is the term “FREE HUGS.” The prospect is pretty simple, and in the context of spendy festivals it’s alluring: People are willing to dole out embraces to any and all comers, for the princely sum of zero dollars. (More adventurous show-goers offer other tokens of affection, for the same price.)

Spotted as early as 1996 at a Phish show, “Free Hugs” didn’t become a thing until 2004. That year, an Australian who went by the name of Juan Mann (“one man”) was going through a depressive period until a stranger gave him a hug at a party. “I felt like a king!” Mann told an interviewer in 2006 when recalling that moment. On June 29 of that year, he decided to hang out at Pitt Street Mall, a pedestrian plaza in the middle of Sydney, and offer up his own services via a sign, since just going up to strangers and hugging them without introduction would, he correctly surmised, be “kind of creepy.” He doled out hugs until local authorities found the program creepy—yes, even with the sign—and told Mann that he needed an insurance policy if he was going to continue with his campaign. A petition signed by 10,000 people convinced them to relent, and Mann was allowed back on the streets.
Mann had become pals with Shimon Moore, lead singer of the Australian hard-rock band Sick Puppies, during the first two years of the Free Hugs campaign, and in 2005 Moore took video footage of Mann on the loose and eventually set the footage to his band’s grinding ballad “All the Same.” That clip was uploaded to a fledgling video-sharing site called YouTube, and its combination of good vibes and nu-metal riffing led to it accruing 250,000 views in its first few days online. The video eventually became one of the site’s earliest viral successes, eventually leading to the Free Hugs campaign making appearances on Oprah and in other media.
Almost as immediately as Free Hugs became a sensation, though, there was backlash—the Sharpied skin and signs became commodified, with bands at festivals like the emo-punk fest The Bamboozle offering free hugs in exchange for some nebulous show of support. In the 2007 Absolute Punk post “Free Hugs: The Scene Epidemic,” writer Anton Djamos snapped a photo of a “Free Hugs” sign and pointed out the contradiction at its center: “[This] showcases exactly what is wrong with free hugs nowadays … they’re not free … Want a free hug? Only if you promise to watch [the pop punk band] Patent Pending at 3:30 at the Mountain Dew Stage!”
Djamos’ post points to a problem with the way the Free Hugs campaign has evolved, particularly in the YouTube age; the idea of offering up free hugs sometimes seems to have become less about the action of the hug, and more about the process of getting attention for doling those hugs out. “The kind of person who’s attracted to partaking in the Free Hugs campaign is, I’m guessing, an extrovert—they’re not afraid to draw attention to themselves,” says Megan Seling, a music writer who’s covered Warped Tour. “And I’ve seen a lot of them become quite pushy when you don’t take them up on their offer. They’d act like you’re some kind of hug-hating monster, like their hug is part of the music festival experience and you’re a huge grouch if you don’t hug them. ‘C’mon, why don’t you want a hug? I don’t bite! Come get a hug!’ And that’s bullshit. I love hugs, just not from demanding, attention-grabbing weirdos who think they’re doing me a favor by offering up physical contact. You’re not entitled to free hugs just because you’re holding a cardboard sign.”

via Flickr user jessleecuizon (CC BY 2.0)

This year’s version of free-hugs-as-viral-video involved a guy touring marathons around the United States; Ken Nwadike was inspired to dole out hugs after failing to qualify for this year’s Boston Marathon, which had a built-in media spotlight because of the way the 2013 run ended in tragedy. The Boston video’s combination of a news peg and Upworthy-level shareability made it a hit, much to Nwadike’s elation: “This simple act made national news headlines and lifted runners’ spirits,” he wrote on his website. Note the order of outcomes, which implies a purpose. And pop stars also got in on the act: Louis Tomlinson of the British boy band One Direction offered “free hugs” to passersby while wearing a fat suit as part of each member disguising himself in public; his aggro approach provides an inversion of the “girls chasing after a boy band” ideal, although it also gives a predatory feel to the campaign.
Mann, too, got bit by others’ willingness to turn Free Hugs into an attention-getting scheme; in 2010, he told Business Insider that he hadn’t made a cent from the original video’s millions of YouTube streams, or from the merchandise that was sold via links on the video’s page (which are now inactive). In the early 2010s, this resulted in two websites claiming official rights to Free Hugs: FreeHugsCampaign.org, which claims to be the “official home of the Free Hugs campaign—inspired by Juan Mann, and Mann’s own web site, which trumpets itself as “the true home of the Free Hugs campaign.”
But Mann has not updated his site in three years, and he didn’t respond to our emails inviting him to share his thoughts on the sensation he spawned a decade ago. We only have his cheery, if ambiguous, anniversary note to Facebook, accompanied by the clip that originally attracted the world’s attention. “10 years ago on this day, I gave and received the very first Free Hug that would ignite a spark in a city, a country and the world,” Mann writes. “Thank you, my friends and family, for all the love, support and the millions of hugs over the years. Now let’s see what the next 10 years has in store for us all.”
Mann may be staying true to the altruistic aesthetic of his movement, even if that means destroying the ability to capitalize on it. It kind of makes you want to give him a hug.