Gameday Battle Cry: #GetLoudDKR

By Kelsey McKinney in 40 Acres, Special on October 5, 2012 at 2:29 pm | No Comments

An inside joke has become a mass movement for tomorrow’s West Virginia game.

When fourth-year defensive back Kenny Vaccaro told the Daily Texan last month that he “without a doubt” preferred playing away games because the Darrel K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium wasn’t loud enough to pump him up, the Longhorn Nation decided to change his mind—with a little help from Twitter.

On Monday, student Cole Kirby and a friend were discussing the West Virginia game when they decided to create a Facebook event to help raise the stadium’s volume. “We decided that if we used social media, maybe people would get excited about it,” Kirby says. “We thought it would just be kind of a fun inside joke.”

Kirby and his roommate, Ryan Hernandez, invited around 150 people to the Facebook event, which they called #GetLoudDKR. “Within an hour and a half it went viral on campus,” says Kirby. Quickly, more than 3,000 people had been invited to #GetLoudDKR. Now the page has more than 2,000 attendees and almost 5,000 invites.

Since Monday afternoon, the hashtag has circulated through hundreds of Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, including the Texas Exes’ Twitter page. “Having the support of the Texas Exes really helped to get people involved,” Kirby says.

The hashtag has since been used by many UT football players, the official @UTAustin twitter, the Dean of Students‘ office, the Longhorn Network, and hundreds of personal accounts.

This 21st-century grassroots trend is as student-led as they come. There are no T-shirts, no official affiliations, and no planning. As Kirby says, everything is “purely social media.”

Kirby has high hopes for the noise level of tomorrow’s game. “We’ve got a lot of people in that stadium,” Kirby says. “I’ve always thought that all of those boot heels and aluminum seats could combine to make a lot of noise.”

Photo courtesy UT Athletics

Follow the progress of the #GetLoudDKR hashtag below.

Tags: #GetLoudDKR, Cole Kirby, Kenny Vaccaro, Ryan Hernandez, The Daily Texan, UT football, west virginia