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This screen grab from MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" during a live broadcast outside the GOP debate in Cleveland went viral on Thursday.

(MSNBC)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It may have seemed spontaneous, but a viral image from Thursday's Republican debate was almost 1,400 miles in the making.

Wayne Tables, an Austin, Texas-based blogger, made the trip up here planning to experience the event, as he described it, like a sports fan.

He began his day by tailgating in a parking lot before the debate. He then hand-wrote his misspelled, non-sequitur, sports-talk sign -- reading "Is Joe Flacco A Elite Quarterback?" -- and went to East Fourth Street, where MSBNC was broadcasting live. He later cheered outside Quicken Loans Arena, the site of the Republican candidate debate, holding aloft a "D" in one hand and a picture of a fence in the other, to the bemusement of TV reporters.

Tables said he retired afterward to the bar at the Renaissance Hotel, where the Republican National Committee held their summer meeting this week -- eating and drinking for free.

Wayne Tables

"I treat every event like it's a sporting event. I live life through the eyes of a football Internet commenter," he said on Friday afternoon, sitting in the back of a ballroom in the downtown Renaissance Hotel while a couple hundred Republican committee members and staffers ate a catered lunch, awaiting a speech by John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor. Tables wore aviator sunglasses, a gray suit, an NFL draft T-shirt, and a gold media credential that dangled from his neck.

The evening of the Thursday debate, Tables held up his sign during a live shot of "Hardball with Chris Matthews." On the other side of Matthews' head, two men kissed each other, a fact that was not immediately obvious to some who saw a screen-grab of the scene after it was tweeted by Deadspin, the popular sports blog.

One of the two men in the photo told Northeast Ohio Media Group that his presence downtown had nothing to do with the Republican debate. He traveled to East Fourth Street with his boyfriend and others just to eat dinner at Wonder Bar.

"I honestly had no idea that MSNBC was going to be there," said the man, a Lakewood resident who uses the Twitter handle @pauldisastro, but declined to be otherwise identified. (He's the bearded man wearing a tank top.) "When I came up, I saw a stage, and thought they were going to do live music or something. I just wasn't paying attention at all."

He said a member of his group dared him to kiss his boyfriend on national TV, so he did.

He said he's enjoying the attention that accompanies minor Internet celebrity.

"My Facebook kind of exploded today," he said. "I never expected Ann Coulter to ever re-tweet anything with me in it. That made me laugh really hard."

Meanwhile, behind Chris Matthews ... pic.twitter.com/8tHac2HMeZ — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 7, 2015

Tables, who blogged about the debate for SB Nation, said he has enjoyed his time in Cleveland. He said he may end up following more GOP events in the future, and he said he's a fan of Donald Trump.

"There are 11 more debates to go," he said. "Thank God."