What started out as a joke became a social buzz in a matter of days.
Ken Peng couldn’t scroll through his Facebook news feed without seeing the trending Facebook pages Humans of New York and Humans of UF as his friends continued to like the pages.
The 28-year-old businessman behind Ken Eats Gainesville noticed how these pages had the ability to give a voice to strangers in the area.
“I thought, ‘It can’t be real,’” Peng said. “I feel like a lot of it is embellished.”
Then, it got him thinking.
At 3 a.m. on Nov. 10, Peng created his own Facebook page: Non-Humans of Gainesville.
“My mission is to provide a voice to those who otherwise would never be heard. The trashcans, the parking meters, bad haircuts, and ceramic lions of our beautiful city,” Peng wrote on the page.
Known as the local writer for unfiltered food reviews, Peng decided to create a more spontaneous page for his personal use, as well as general amusement.
“I wanted to do a parody to give a voice to inanimate objects,” Peng said.
To his surprise, the page became an instant hit and has more than 1,900 likes and counting.
“I’m certainly surprised,” Peng said. “It’s a stupid page.”
Bubba Silcox, 21, was skeptical of Peng’s page at first. He said he was scrolling through his Facebook news feed when he came across it.
“I’m sitting here thinking, ‘What in the heck is this?’” the UF history senior said.
After he clicked on it and read some of the posts, Silcox thought the page was actually a pretty creative way to incorporate important, distinguished landmarks throughout the city.
Silcox said his favorite post so far is the one about the south endzone goal post for the past two decades, who Peng calls Trevor.
“I thought it was hilarious,” Silcox said. “Whoever did this is a genius.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 11/20/2014]
