A version of this story appears in the March 11, 2019, issue of Sports Illustrated. For more great storytelling and in-depth analysis, subscribe to the magazine—and get up to 94% off the cover price. Click here for more.
The idea came to Noah Rubin in the middle of the night. Jetlagged after flying back from Australia, where he had lost in the second round of Australian Open qualifying, Rubin was browsing Instagram—while watching The American Meme, a Netflix special about...Instagram influencers, of course—when he came across a post from Humans of New York.