Is chivalry dead? It doesn't have to be! That is, according to an adorable ten-year-old boy who knows how to be a gentleman -- and is spreading his message of kindness at the University of Missouri.
"I may be a kid, but I'm a gentleman in the making," says Cole, age ten, in a video titled "The Extra Mile," which has now gotten more than 250,000 views. "Now I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I know how to treat a lady."
Who is Cole? And why is he giving flowers (and joy) to random women on Mizzou's campus?
Check out the video below and our interview with one of the Mizzou students behind it.
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The "Extra Mile" is a class project of Clint Cannon, a sophomore, Dan Woodward, a junior and Nam Cu, a senior. The three are communications majors and made the video for a survey of communications class.
"The message of this video was just to bring back chivalry to the college dating scene," Cannon tells Daily RFT. "Once we had people's attention, we thought, why not just be nice to everyone while you're at it?"
That's why they had Cole -- who they contacted through a talent agency -- give out flowers to strangers on campus. The video was shot over the last month at Mizzou and posted last Friday.
"The prompt was to make a persuasive video," Cannon explains.
The three of them wrote the script together and then Cannon and Woodward shot and produced it, he says.
They were inspired by the the "Kid President" viral videos, in which a cute kid makes videos pretending to be the president.
"We saw that using a little kid to send out a serious message...was effective," Cannon says, adding that they thought a young boy could explain chivalry quite well.
So they partnered up with Cole, who lives just outside of Columbia, and put together the video, featuring the boy on campus.
"That made my day!" one student shouts back at Cole in the video after he gives her a flower.
"We were hoping for it to go viral in the Mizzou community," says Cannon, noting that it's now getting attention beyond campus as well. "We are just letting it go where it goes."
After all, it's ultimately a message of kindness.
"Don't just be a nice date," Cole says in the video. "Be a nice guy."
Here are some of our favorite moments:
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