WHEN YOUR WORDS GO VIRAL

We all dream of our words going viral ...

We think it will lead to recognition beyond the ghetto of author blogs and then to higher sales for our books.

But would it?

This past Saturday, Jake Flores writes of his words going viral in the The New York Times.

Whoa.  The New York Times?  Yeah .. they don't pay for opinion pieces.  Oops.

Who's Jake Flores you ask.  So do a lot of others ... many of them who quoted his viral words even.

Earlier in the year, February 13th, Jake tweeted:

"I'm starting to think that this is the last season of America and the writers are just going nuts."

Funny and all too true, right?

On the first night after the tweet took off, his name was trending in different cities around the globe. 

Celebrities were batting his joke at one another.

 People like John Hodgman, Bette Midler, Minnie Driver. People he watches in movies and doesn’t even consider real. 

Friends from all over the country got in touch to tell him they heard someone quote him. 

 Someone in Britain immortalized it in needlepoint. The tweet reached easily more people than any album or podcast he’d ever produced.

Jake is a joke writer and would-be comedian.  He thought his career would take off.  

 Ah, not so much.

Though his joke was quoted in FUNNY OR DIE and PLAYBOY 

(fairly big accomplishments for an unknown comic.)

He woke up to find his words were on CNN!

And how much work did it get him?  None.  None at all. 

In his words:

"I think the Internet is like a broken slot machine.

 I didn’t put any money into it, I received all of its flashing, shrieking, beeping cacophony when I hit its jackpot, and no money came out.

 I wonder why I believed in this system at all."

WHAT DO YOU THINK?