The viral social media star known as “FunSignGuy” on TikTok has thousands of followers thanks to the signs he protests with in Northwest Houston
The death of Charlie Kirk the day before hung in the air pretty much the second I got Jeff Tims on the phone last week. Better known as FunSignGuy on TikTok, Tims has amassed tens of millions of views on the app and 200,000 followers thanks to the provocative anti-Trump and anti-fascist signs he protests with in Northwest Houston three times a week, weather permitting. Tyler Robinson had not been arrested for Kirk’s murder when we spoke, and people were still hypothesizing that Kirk had been murdered by a left-wing activist instead of a radicalized groyper.
Tims attempted to calm the waters a bit after the killing, but it didn’t go well.
“After what happened with Charlie Kirk, what I do is definitely going to be more dangerous now,” he said. “I tried to go out with a sign that said, ‘I condemn all political violence,’ and within three minutes, I had a group of guys on the porch at Moe’s Tavern coming outside to threaten me. “We’re calling the cops! You’re getting towed. Get the **** out of here, you beta, cuck, blah, blah, blah.’ And I was like, wow, guys, I’m literally out here with no other sign, but a lot of these guys are ready to fight.”
Kirk was known for his provocative style of interaction, most famously picking fights with students at college campuses and daring them to “prove me wrong.” His opinions were often racist, misogynistic, and dismissive of the concept of empathy.
Tims style is also provocative, but not cruel. The large following he has on TikTok comes from the confrontational nature of his signs. “Tell me why you voted for a rac/pist” reads one. “Keep the immigrants! Deport the racists!” another. His work strikes a nerve with people struggling under the right-wing backlash, as well as angering the people who power it.
It was the fall of Roe v. Wade that turned Tims into the FunSignGuy. Before that, he was a staunch Republican who voted and raised money for President Donald Trump in 2016. By his own account, he was a model Texas conservative, a big white man (6’7”, 300 lbs) who worked in the poker industry and had spent most of his life on the right. The end of reproductive choice helped him switch sides.
“The trigger that really set me off was Roe vs. Wade being overturned,” he said. “The very first sign that I ever made was, ‘Republican women, I’m so sorry what Republican men have done.’ I took it out and I stood on a corner in The Woodlands and just held it up. I wasn’t screaming. I didn’t do any ad stuff. I just wanted people to see that not everyone who looked a certain way thought the same way.”
His work took off like a rocket. Within his first few time protesting, tens of thousands of people were sharing videos and photos of him. He started his own channel, racking up 16 million views on a single video from February. Hate mail flooded in, predictably, but also praise from people who wanted to speak out themselves but felt afraid. Some even asked Tims to make signs for them and mail them out so they could also protest. One of his biggest fans became his teenage daughter.
“I had one that said, ‘Women are somebody, not some body,” he said. “My daughter appreciates those kind of things. I have another sign that says, ‘Dead men don’t rape.’ I don’t know how many times, that hundreds of, if not thousands of comments in my TikTok sessions [were] women thanking me for understanding and trying to see the world from their perspective. And that’s kind of what it took for me to get a better understanding of just how things, how awful things are for women.”
Much of Tims’ personal journey has involved embracing feminism. By his own admission, almost all of his friends now are women.
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