“There is a man in The Bean,” five protesters chanted at Millennium Park.
Holding signs reading “You wouldn’t put a baby inside The Bean” and “Get him out now,” the group fictionally claimed Anish Kapoor, the chief architect of Cloud Gate — the mirrored sculpture that resembles a gigantic bean at Millennium Park, placed a baby in the sculpture in 2004 when it was built.
The man in The Bean movement, a piece of performance art, has gone viral this month, with its Instagram account amassing more than 29,000 followers in about 10 days. It’s now at about 34,000, and at the start of this week, the demonstrators took to the “L” to spread their message. The protest is the latest installment of Chicago’s viral trends — including the former Chicago rat hole and Jeremy Allen White lookalike contest in 2024 — meshing with the city’s penchant for protest.
“Whether it’s a more serious cause or a good cause, like getting a man out of The Bean, (the) Chicago community is ready to rally around it,” said high schooler Noah Jahn, who helps run an offshoot Instagram account claiming to represent the person trapped in The Bean.
The man in the Bean isn’t the first viral trend to originate in Chicago — just last year, the “very demure, very mindful” trend exploded after Chicago TikToker Jools Lebron posted a video discussing how to be “demure and modest and respectful” at the workplace. Many celebrities, including Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian, shouted out the trend or posted their own take.
A more local fixture, the Chicago rat hole, went viral in January 2024. The rodent-shaped imprint in a Roscoe Village sidewalk drew national attention. Locals and tourists alike visited the site to leave coins, Malort and contraceptive items as a tribute.
The @maninbean Instagram account follows six actors and performance artists. Two artists associated with those accounts, Zach Foley and Demitri Magas, declined interview requests.
Meanwhile online, the protesters claim Kapoor stole and placed a baby into The Bean in 2004, according to the @maninbean Instagram account. They also claim renovations to Cloud Gate over the years, including in 2023, were cover-ups to supply the man trapped inside with rations.
“If you look just right when the sun hits the Bean, you can see a faint outline of a man,” one of the protesters yelled at an onlooker in an Instagram video from July 31.
Kapoor did not respond to a request for comment.
Viral movements like the man in the Bean often start with simple “wouldn’t it be funny?” ideas, said Ryan Milner, a professor of communication at College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, who studies internet culture.
The novelty and juxtaposition between expectation and reality can make spectators — online and in person — follow the trend, Milner said.
“(It) probably wouldn’t be unexpected, especially in this political moment, to see protesters talking about something when you’re out and about downtown,” he said. “You get a little closer and you hear what they’re saying and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, what?’”
Within online friend groups, being the first to “discover” a funny new trend can earn social capital, helping drive virality even further, according to Milner.
Man in The Bean takes off
On social media, several people and organizations have hopped on the “man in the Bean” bandwagon.
“We stand with the man in The Bean and ask for his immediate release. ❤️,” Lou Malnati’s, the Buffalo Grove-based Chicago-style pizza chain, commented on one of the maninbean account’s posts.
LIV Golf, a league aiming to compete with the PGA Tour, also posted an Instagram reel with several golf players saying they’re worried about a man stuck in The Bean.
Jahn and his friend Sean Lehmann run an offshoot @maninthebean Instagram account. They said they gave the man trapped in The Bean a phone a few weeks ago after he slipped them a drawing of what looked like a cellphone through a crack in the sculpture. They pointed to a section of The Bean’s underside as where the crack used to be, but hypothesized it had since been repaired.
The two Prospect High School students have their own hypotheses on the man in the Bean, which they said they’ve spent a few hours a day in the last week researching. They said they suspect moles climb up through the base of the sculpture to deliver food, and Kapoor placed a second person in a second Bean-esque fixture completed in 2023 in New York. The Tribune has not found evidence that either claim is true.
Not everyone is impressed by Chicago’s latest hoax-turned-Internet sensation.
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Some users have commented on Instagram that there are more important, legitimate causes for which to protest than the “man in the Bean.” Still, Jahn said, the conspiracy cause is worth the time.
“The concept of having a man in The Bean is just hilarious,” said Jahn, who used to live on Chicago’s North Side. “Come down here, have some fun. Lighten up a little bit. There’s legitimate things to protest, but there’s also times to have fun.”
The “man in The Bean” protest’s even caught the attention of Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, who confirmed there is no man trapped in the Bean in a written statement, where he joined the bit, saying the man was “freed years ago.”
But the alderman also criticized the movement’s affect on his work, saying in a statement the “heavy volume of calls regarding this hoax is ultimately a distraction for my office.”
The disruptive calls to Reilly’s office are an example of internet memes’ hidden consequences, according to College of Charleston’s Milner. Online, it can be easy to “not really think of the poor clerk or staffer” who has to answer the joke calls, he said.
And, it’s hard to discern satire from reality on the internet, which has prompted some people to take drastic, harmful action based on viral trends in the past. Milner pointed to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which claimed Democrats were running a sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizza shop. It spread during the 2016 election season and resulted in a shooting at a restaurant.
Milner said it doesn’t seem like the “man in the Bean” is headed in that direction. As its online presence grows, it’s still important to “be prepared” for similar extremism, he said.
Nothing lasts forever, though.
Eventually, the novelty wears off and the internet and public move on. This happens without sustained engagement from the people who launched them. “So then it kind of dies down,” Milner said.
For Alyssia King, an art history student at the University of Tulsa, the “man in the Bean” seemed funny at first but also resonated with her at a deeper, political level.
She posted about the trend on her Instagram art analysis account, saying it paralleled “conspiracy theories of wanting to save children from fake predators when a real one is president.”
The trend has likely gained traction because of its ambiguity, King said. Even if people don’t interpret the man in the Bean movement exactly as she does, King said she hopes they will “gain a skill of questioning.”
And while King last visited Chicago over a decade ago, she said seeing the man in the Bean come across her social media feed has reinforced the city’s reputation as a great art city.
“It made me want to get on a plane and see them do this performance art,” she said.
The Tribune knocked on The Bean Wednesday, but heard nothing in response.