January 2nd

 1


I woke up that next morning and even before I got out of bed I grabbed my phone. That wasn’t normal - usually I need a cup of coffee before I start my day and definitely before I get the full intensity of social media. But that day I couldn’t wait - I wanted to see if there was another missive from this unknown account.

I felt the frown on my face when I didn’t see a new one. Ut I did notice a lot of the other people I followed seemed to be asking where this new account was. An account doesn’t appear from nowhere one day, get almost 200 million likes (I checked on that morning of the 2nd) and then just disappear. But that is what had seemed to happen. 

The man’s account showed only that one tweet, that one facebook post, that one youtube video showing white text on a black background. Whoever was behind it had coordinated their presence incredibly well. 


2


The morning i had an early meeting online. Working from home seemed to fit me quite well - pop into a meeting on the laptop, listen to others and then go about my day. I loved working that way. I’d always been a loner so not talking face to face with others suited me incredibly well. That morning I showed up online 5 minutes early and saw the other three people in my team already there.

Odd, though. They all were silent. They looked kinda depressed. None of them volunteered even the usual banter - complaining about an early meeting or the weather. Oh well, some days none of us want to talk.

What is my Glee and how come I’m not following it?

But then the meeting started and we began our discussion of the project we were working on. All of it seems so petty now, I can’t even remember what the project was. But then my phone dinged at me, saying a new message had arrived.

Oddly the meeting seemed to trail off into nothing almost immediately. We said our goodbyes and have-a-nice-days and signed ott. I picked up my phone, grabbing it like an alcoholic grabbing a bottle, and opened twitter.

“Follow back!”, was the message the man had written. Without thinking I clicked the follow back option. I noticed he had 300 million followers on twitter alone already. I wondered how many subscriptions he had on youtube. I momentarily wondered how many followers on sites like Gab he had but… well, no way was I going there to find out.


3


I was curious so at times I checked into facebook and this person had over 1 Billion followers on it already. That must have been some sort of record. But hey, people pop up and get popular out of nowhere all the time. Especially on social media - popularity is kinda the goal, after all.

Social media was always a weird thing. People were on it not for money - although money was to be made, of course. They were there because we all needed interaction from time to time, right? Even me - with my lone wolf attitude, I needed to talk to others at least a few times a day. So getting a lot of followers was not unknown. People did it. 

I shrugged it off that day. But maybe I felt just a twinge of how odd it was occurred to me. Just a hint of how… weird this was. But then the day got busy and I put it out of my mind.

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