Don't Trend On Me
Wallace, a marmoset, had a dream of one day becoming a big social media influencer. He loved everything about the lifestyle; the glitz, the glamour, the gorgeous gifts, but most of all he loved the idea of everyone in the whole world being influenced by what he had to say.
Wallace’s partner Cindy, also a marmoset, despised this about Wallace. She liked everything else about him except this one thing that he loved. She just couldn’t see what the big deal was with being an influencer? People send you junk? Then you tell people about all the junk you got? Then everyone comments 🔥🔥 on your page?
“Look how many fires I’ve gotten today!” Wallace would exclaim, “That’s at least 80 total fires from like 40 or so comments, I’m killing it baby!”
“Sounds like a good amount of fires Wally, you’re doing great,” Cindy would always respond, flatly.
“How come you’re never excited about all the fires?” Wally finally asked one day.
Cindy didn’t respond immediately. She knew she had to handle this question delicately. If she answered exactly the way she felt Wallace would be upset and she didn’t want that because she loved him. But, if she gave a fake answer about how ‘she totally cares about the fires’ then she would be stuck forever praising how many fire emojis a post got. A prison of her own making.
“Well…” Cindy started, collecting her thoughts…
“Whoa! 6 more just came in! Yes, I’m getting close to my previous record!” Wallace yelled from the other room.
“That’s great!” Cindy yelled back, hopefully, this time with enough enthusiasm to get Wallace to back off the original question.
“Do you actually think that or are you just saying it?” Wallace asked again.
Dang. Thought Cindy, he’s not going to let this go.
“It’s not that I don’t care about how many fire emojis you get it, it’s more that…” Cindy had to choose her next words carefully, “I just think that… they are kind of…”
Cindy couldn’t do it, looking at the big dumb grin plastered on Wallace’s face with the fire emojis reflected in his eyeballs she couldn’t tell him how stupid this whole thing was. Besides, that was just her opinion.
“Maybe you should get everyone to comment other emojis?” Cindy finally said, “Maybe more different types of emojis would get you trending faster.”
Wallace lit up. That was a great idea. He quickly grabbed his phone and went live:
“Ay yo! Everyone it’s ya marmoset with the most fire emojis in the game and I’m asking all of you now, for the next ten minutes comment on my page with emojis that you DON’T usually use. You know what to do, go through that emoji keyboard and comment something you’ve never used. Let’s see what all we can get! Shout out to my lovely partner Cindy who supports me more than anyone else in the world and I love her!”
And with that Wallace ended his live. He turned to Cindy,
“That was a genius idea Cindy, you should really think about becoming an influencer you’d be great at it.”
Cindy took that as an insult but of course she knew Wallace meant it as a very high complement so, whaddya gonna do? At least she had successfully navigated not telling her partner how much she hated influencers. Despite loving one.
“Thanks, Wally,” Cindy replied, relieved. “Glad you could use it.”
Suddenly Wallace stood up on the sofa looking at his phone with shock and excitement.
“Cin! Cin! I’m trending baby! I’m doing it! You did it!” Wallace shouted, ecstatic, “Everyone is commenting all these crazy emojis and then other people are commenting on that about how the actually do use those emojis and then people are commenting back about how now they might actually start using those emojis too! Yes! We did it! We’re trendingggg!!!!!”
Cindy sighed. Wether she liked it or not, she was a good influencer, and furthermore if she was really being honest with herself, she hated it.