In case you missed it yesterday, I somehow found myself on a Time Magazine list with Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Lady Gaga, and Alec Baldwin. (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) Here’s how it all transpired:
Tuesday, Nov. 6th
1:20PM – I was spacing out in my office, thinking about getting new art for the walls. My mind drifted to those “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters and then I thought of a dumb tweet, so I posted this:
Keep Calm and Carry On Luggage
— Bryan Allain (@BryanAllain) November 6, 2012
1:28PM – Still spacing out. While looking at the map of the U.S. behind my desk my eye was drawn to Ohio. I knew it would be in the news all evening, so I tried to think up with a tweet about it that was funnier than the “carry on luggage” one from 10 minutes earlier.
1:29PM – I decide to tweet about the shape of the state. It looks like a melting square. What about, “BREAKING: CNN reports that Ohio looks like a melting square.” Not bad…but there’s got to be something funnier.
1:30PM – I notice three of the four letters in the name of the state are vowels, and the tweet basically writes itself. “BREAKING: CNN reports that Ohio is 75% vowels.” I post it.
BREAKING: CNN reporting that Ohio is 75% vowels.
— Bryan Allain (@BryanAllain) November 6, 2012
1:31PM – I say to myself, “That tweet is going to get me mentioned by Time Magazine tomorrow!” (Okay, that’s a lie. I love the tweet, but truth is I didn’t think about it again for another eight hours. It was just another one of my dumb tweets.)
9:09PM – My friend Ben tweets that my Ohio/Vowels tweet got mentioned on the Huffington Post Live Election show. A few minutes later I start getting a bunch of twitter mentions and RTs. When I pull up the tweet I see that’s it’s been RT’d over 350 times!
9:45PM – The mentions keep coming. It’s up to 1350 retweets already! Erica and I keep refreshing the tweet while we watch the coverage and keep laughing as the numbers climb. We go to bed around 11pm, and it has been retweeted over 3,000 times.
Wednesday, Nov. 7th
7:00AM – I wake up to see it’s been RT’d over 3600 times. Ridiculous.
11:27AM – My friend Stewart tweets me to say that my tweet was listed on Time as one of the 15 Most Memorable Tweets of election night. Wait, WHAT???
11:30AM – I finish cleaning the poop off of my chair and sure enough, he’s right. Time Magazine says that over 31 Million Tweets were tweeted during the election, and of those they chose my stupid tweet about Ohio being 75% vowels to be one of the Top 15.
Others on the list include Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin, Victoria Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Barack Obama himself.
REST OF THE DAY – Shaking my head at how funny it is as people on Twitter, Facebook, and in real life congratulate me for something I had almost nothing to do with.
Thursday, Nov. 8th
As of right now it’s been RT’d 3,696 times. What does it all mean? Five thoughts…
1. 24 hours later it has had little impact on my platform. I gained 50 Twitter followers. Blog traffic didn’t spike. Book sales were normal. (In case you were wondering.)
2. That being said, you never know what could happen. I have no idea who read that tweet or saw my name mentioned in that Time piece. It could lead to something amazing. Or it could lead to nothing.
3. The best part is, it can never be taken away from me. Even if nothing big comes from it, I can always say I was mentioned in a Time Magazine online article as having one of the Top 15 Most Memorable Tweets of Election Night. Granted, in ten years no one might know what a tweet is, but I’ll always have that moment.
I mean look at this! CRAZY!
Out of the 31 million tweets from Election Day, we chose the 15 most memorable | http://t.co/AZtwEShm
— TIME (@TIME) November 8, 2012
4. This is what can happen when you keep hustling. I’ve posted funnier tweets before and I’ll do it again. You never know when you are going to get lucky, so you keep at it and know that when a break comes, you’re going to catch it. (Just ask my friend Carlos, who won a People’s Choice Award for “getting lucky” by doing something he does all the time.)
5. One last thing.
My new book, Actually, Clams Are Miserable, comes out in paperback on Nov. 27th.
If it’s my first attempt at a full-on humor book, so if you liked the tweet you might like the book. Honestly, I think you’re going to love it.
You’ll be able to order it soon, stay tuned for more details.
In the meantime, I’m going back to writing more dumb tweets and shaking my head.