[MAGAZINE] HOW TO SUCCEED IN INTERNET MEDIA WITHOUT REALLY CRYING
A COLUMN BY JEFF WEISS
Hop up out of bed, turn your brand on, take a look at the laptop, type ‘what’s up.’ Take a selfie in the bathroom mirror and ask, ‘am I getting money?’
If the answer is no, stroll to the nearest coffee shop, order a free trade pour over mocha and languidly fill out grad school applications. If the answer is yes, steel yourself for a sunny day on the content farm, the think piece salt mine, or the hot take tropical #rare forest. Dress for any climate. A day (or streetwear line) that has been trill can suddenly lack trill at any time.
Log onto Twitter. Consult your Google calendar to make sure that your display name is seasonably appropriate. Is it the anniversary of the Allied Forces’ invasion of Normandy? Your new handle is Heavy D Day. On July 14, you’re The Ol’ Dirty Bastille Day. Come holiday season, there’s Hurricane Chris Kringle, Method Menorah, and Rhymefestivus. Chinese New Year? You’re Gong Hay Fat Trel.
The New York Times is your homepage, but you don’t have a subscription. Tweeting about ISIS or Ukranian Separatism has very little virality, unless you can find a way to include it in a Kardashian joke. Remember, one man’s trash is another man’s Twitpic caption of a flaming trashcan stand in for Iggy Azalea.
Scour for the most scorching takes imaginable. If you were a member of The Hot Boys, you’d have to be Juvenile or Lil Wayne. Being Turk gets you no followers, no relevance, no invitations to play your iPhone 6 at parties. Plugging in the auxiliary cord is the new turntablism.
Spend your mornings firing off fire takes about Nicki, Kanye, Beyonce, and Drake, G-chatting with members of the media about how much you hate other members of the media, and pitching editors. When you pitch editors, keep it simple. Take a headline and run it through as many filters, ‘isms, and Madlib fill in the blanks as possible. Then add the word “fire.” See below:
Why Drake, the fluctuating prices of angora, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and the Canadian divorce rate have more in common than you think. Why Kanye’s adidas deal represents a key blow to the war against elitism, body dysmorphic disorder, and naming your children after GPS directions. Congratulations, Slate just agreed to pay you $150. Expect your check in six months. That’s a fire pay check.
Treat yourself to lunch at the nearest restaurant serving aesthetically significant organic meals, capable of attracting 100+ Instagram likes. If you get less than 10 likes in the first three minutes, delete the photo instantly (and may be ask for a refund). If possible, try to meet a friend for lunch. Ideally, they can take Vines of you screaming “Bitch, U Guessed It” at terrified cashiers when they ask if you want a side of fries. You want those fries, but RTs are the main course. Try to stick to restaurants where you can redeem your Klout perks.
Physical fitness is a vital component to the life of a rising digital celebrity. Don’t you want to be a #thirst #trap? Spend at least 30 minutes a day practicing rap squats. Visualise an infinite future of Facebook shares and throngs of adoring fans screaming that your tweets are so hot that they can only be expressed in Emoji. Imagine the Snapchats from fans of your work, clad in nothing but their dignity. Each rap squat firms up both glutes and brand. You want a bulging bulbous brand. You need one. This is not a no-flex zone.
It’s crucial to spend your afternoons engaged in some form of self- improvement. Spend an hour or two reading the urban dictionary, taking Buzzfeed quizzes, making meme flash cards, and interpreting rap lyrics at your favourite iconoclastic tech start-up. The most important thing that you can learn as a writer is that today’s thot becomes yesterday’s ratchet becomes your grandpa’s “skeezer.” Ask said grandpa if he was a gatekeeper. Laugh if he wasn’t.
The older you get, the less you could possibly know about music because you don’t even know how to conjugate the verb “to fleek.”. There aren’t enough SMHs or LOLs in the world to articulate such irrelevance. Understand the supreme mathematics. Every time you use outdated adjectives like “swag,” you have to add a level of irony. If you misuse it, you could risk being slang shamed or worse, being consigned to write for the Huffington Post.
No matter what, you can’t risk being branded as basic, unless being branded as basic is part of your brand. The beautiful diversity of online media means that that you can always find other people who are exactly identical to you. SeaPunks and Health Goths can create their own cultures without having to actually talk to each other. #Sadboyz eventually become #SadMen and sometimes they merge with #Seapunks to become #SeaMen.
Spend your nights at the club. It doesn’t have to be the literal club, but merely the club as symbolic construct. Your club could be a Toyota Tercel. As long as it’s lit like Bic, you can hope to one day get an advertorial sponsorships from Bic. And be sure to always drink D’uesse. One day, you could be an Instagram caption.
Eventually, it’s time to head back home to the loving LED glow. Another successful day is in the WordPress. It’s time to say your prayers to the Based God, go to sleep and dream about doing it all over again.
This is an extract from the Spring Summer 15 Issue of Viper Magazine. Read more from the magazine here. Buy physical and digital copies here.
Words by Jeff Weiss
Illustration by Listen04
