#Trending

For a glorious few days last month, I was the ruler of social media comedy. It started on Valentine's Day, when one of my tweets was read on the air by Jimmy Fallon during his weekly "Hashtags" segment. Jimmy says my name about halfway through the above clip. Check here if you can't watch the video, or if you want to see the slideshow of other tweets that were funny but not, you know, as funny as mine.

(In case you're wondering...the date in question happened about three years ago, a blind date that was arranged by a fellow ordinance worker at the Jordan River Temple. I shared the funniest and most complete version that would fit in 140 characters. If there was more space, I could've provided additional clarifying information, but if I did I also probably wouldn't have been on the show. I did not lie, but I also didn't tell the whole story. :-))

The show aired Thursday night, but I didn't find about it until Friday. The next day I was still basking in my newfound "fame" when I got an email with the subject line "Jim Gaffigan is now following you on Twitter." (Gaffigan, of course, is my favorite comedian.) A few minutes later, another email: "Jim Gaffigan mentioned you on Twitter." This was the mention.

A few days before, I had tweeted a video to Jim as part of a contest he's running to promote his new book. The video was shot after my dinner group one night. We turned my friend Lisa's living room into a makeshift comedy club, with me reading an excerpt from the book while holding a Gaffigan mask in front of my face. I even added a few comments in Gaffigan's trademark "audience voice."

The video admittedly turned out to be pretty awful, but I didn't care, I just wanted to get something in before the deadline. Apparently I was one of the few who did, or maybe Jim liked my concept despite the poor production values, because as the tweet I linked to above indicates, I won a famous follower, four tickets to an upcoming show, and an awkward handshake after said show.

(I'll be heading to a show in Chicago on April 19th--my birthday weekend! I still have no idea who I'll be bringing with me; if you want to be considered, make your case in the comments.)

Jim also linked to my video on all his social platforms--Twitter, of course, but also Tumblr and Facebook. The FB post is particularly fun, because it illustrates beautifully the downside of being a "celebrity," or really just trafficking in social media generally: there's always people looking to tear others down. For some reason, 36 people "Liked" the post, but the three or four who posted negative comments are the ones that stick in my head. I particularly like the "keep your day job" comment. Something similar was said on most of the half dozen or so videos that won the contest. As if, even if I was really, really good at reading book excerpts while wearing a creepy mask, there are legitimate career opportunities for something like that. I know reading online comments from strangers is a fruitless endeavor, and that I shouldn't let things like that bother me (especially since, as I admitted above, the criticisms are accurate), but when someone says something nasty about you the first instinct is definitely to respond in kind.

Fame in general is fleeting, but social media fame is even more ephemeral. It's been less than three weeks since my Fallon appearance, but he's already done two new Hashtag segments since then. I was the first to win Gaffigan's video contest, but several others got the same royal treatment from the king of Hot Pockets over the next few days. When something like this happens, it's easy to get carried away and imagine scenarios where Jimmy is so impressed by my tweet that he offers me a job as a writer on his show. But that's not realistic.

Except...last Friday I got an email from someone who works in our New York office (I'm a social media guru of sorts for JetBlue--a professional tweeter, basically--though this blog and my personal social media accounts reflect my own views and not those of my employer). She told me that she had seen my tweet during a taxi ride (NYC taxis have TVs that run a loop of videos including news, commercials, weather, warnings to tourists on how to avoid getting ripped off, etc.)!

As far as I know, the content on Taxi TV stays in rotation for 2 or 3 weeks, so it looks like my moment in the sun will last just a little bit longer. I'm not gonna lie--it feels pretty good.