Sioux Falls’ unofficial mayor makes national news as micro celebrity

Bryce Wollmann jokes that he’s Sioux Falls’ unofficial mayor.

The 25-year-old Sanford Health operating room nurse loves hyping up the city and its intricacies on Twitter — whether it’s celebrating the Crow Bar and the 57th Street Corn — alongside his own inside jokes, like his passion for Crocs and his 2007 Chevy Tahoe with a DVD player.

He goes by “Bryce ‘Lucky Sioux Falls Resident’ Wollmann” with the handle @TheBigAndSexy70 on Twitter, sharing his thoughts with nearly 6,000 people scattered across the Midwest and nation.

After years of Wollmann declaring himself Sioux Falls’ unofficial mayor, Mayor Paul TenHaken finally recognized him with a supper at Dave & Buster’s in July and gifted him with a sash declaring him the official unofficial mayor.

It all started off as a joke, just something he thought was funny and that his friends echoed on the social media platform. But now it has become real.

In fact, he has become an ambassador and representative of Sioux Falls and South Dakota for thousands of out-of-staters who know nothing about the city other than Wollmann’s innocuous tweets about his life here.

To most of Sioux Falls’ residents and to Wollmann himself, he’s just a guy with a Twitter account, tweeting out about the same kind of content he did as a 15-year-old.

But on a national level, he’s a “nimcel,” or a niche internet micro celebrity, recently featured and explained through an August Washington Post article.

“Niche internet micro celebrities are people online who are known to a small but often dedicated group, and they represent a growing variant of the attention economy,” the WaPo article explained. “Online fame is a consequence for a niche internet micro celebrity, never the goal. They rarely make money from their social accounts, choosing instead to post for the fun of it. The term is often used in a tongue-in-cheek way.”

Now, he has followers across the country who see Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the Midwest through his eyes. Journalist Taylor Lorenz, author of the WaPo article, said she found Wollmann through suggestions from a few of his out-of-state followers. She even has a mutual acquaintance from Colorado who follows Wollmann.

Wollmann was on the first wave of nimcels gaining popularity around 2019, which Lorenz said is a phenomenon originating out of the center of the country. After three years, these “neighborhood celebrities” are just now catching on in coastal cities like Los Angeles, Washington and New York.

National media outlets are writing about it as if it were a “New York thing,” Lorenz said. But it’s a cultural phenomenon that began in places like the Midwest and Sioux Falls with people like Wollmann.

“Sometimes in national media, things are only a story when it’s in a three-block radius in Manhattan,” Lorenz said. “But that’s the end of a cycle, not the beginning.”

The internet has “democratized culture,” Lorenz said, adding that people like Wollmann can find a cult following online for the novelty of living in a place like Sioux Falls — seemingly off the map for a majority of the country.

“Most people have no idea what life is like in Sioux Falls, so you enjoy seeing Bryce live his life and have a peek into a world you might not have known about. He becomes this notion of what Sioux Falls is like, what it’s like to live there, coupled by his humor and absurdity.”

Lorenz asked several of Wollmann’s out-of-state followers their thoughts on Sioux Falls because of his account, and they all had a positive impression of the city. They even said it might be somewhere they’d want to visit or live, she added.

“If you asked those people 10 years ago about Sioux Falls, they wouldn’t have seen places like that through the lens of a nimcel. They wouldn’t have known anything, or they would have only known what they read in a book,” said Lorenz, who added that she has become a lifelong follower of Wollmann’s after writing the article.

“I have no plans to visit Sioux Falls, but it’s much more on my radar now,” she said. “And if I do, I’ll have to get lunch with him at Dave & Buster’s.”

But for Wollmann?

“It’s just my hobby,” he joked.

He has been tweeting since 2013, gaining a fan club at Augustana University where he played football before the account took off in 2019 after he graduated.

“This state and region are so interconnected. It’s weird how you can get a following because, without fail, you find a common connection with just about everyone here,” Wollmann said. “Like, a kid I knew from elementary school retweets something I posted, and then his cousin retweets it and follows me without actually knowing me. You slowly get this traction from small towns around here, and then it just grows.”

He doesn’t identify his followers as fans like an actual celebrity would. They’re just people he has never met, yet he calls them friends because they get his humor and connect with him.

While he didn’t start out with a brand when he joined Twitter, he has honed his account with the mission to remain lighthearted, funny and positive.

“If I wouldn’t say it to my grandma, I wouldn’t post it. That’s my filter,” Wollmann said. “My grandma is really cool though, so I can say a lot of things to her.”

To prepare for the WaPo article, Wollmann posed for photos in his sash, Crocs, cheetah print tracksuit and a “Backwoods Barbie” trucker hat at Falls Park. Tourists took pictures with him and asked him if he was really the mayor.

After the article published, a handful of co-workers at Sanford found him online and started following him, referencing his tweets to him in real life.

He might not be the mayor, but he embodies the city and the culture here.

“I really love Sioux Falls,” he said. “I’m Sioux Falls’ biggest fan.”