Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
In this small patch of New Mexico, I’m probably better known than the average person. It’s a tiny, tiny bit of fame, and not much fortune, but I’ve never had an issue with that.
Being Twitter famous? That’s a different story.
I’ve had a Twitter account for years. Sometimes I post 20 times in a day, sometimes I go 20 days without a post. I usually don’t get much traction outside of a few consistent friends, but every once in a while that one comment will do just enough to get the average stranger to say, “I feel the same way; let’s heart and/or retweet that.”
Anything over double digits is reassuring and anything in the triple digits is flattering. Either way, your phone goes crazy with notifications and you think for just a second, “People think I’m awesome.”
In all my years of tweeting, I’ve never gone four figures — 1,000-plus interactions on something I typed in 280 characters or less. But I have a friend who’s Twitter famous, so that’s just about as nice.
Let me explain. Sometime late Thursday, a video started circulating on Twitter. It was from a few years ago, but it felt like it could have happened yesterday.
• A kid is skateboarding through a park when an older man pushes him.
• The skateboarder looks back and sees the man wants to fight. He approaches the man and it looks like a rumble is about to happen. Swing and a miss from the older man, who almost falls on the ground with his momentum.
• Seconds later, the older man swipes the skateboard from the ground. He throws it at the skateboarder, but misses badly. The skateboarder walks away to retrieve his board, and the conflict appears over.
• The older man pulls out a cell phone, and it looks like he is calling the cops on the kid on whom he failed to land a blow. The cops instead arrest the older man for instigating.
Comedian Patton Oswalt posted the clip and asked if somebody could put the Mentos theme music to it. Ahh, the Mentos theme, from the 1990s commercials where people would find creative solutions to self-inflicted dilemmas as the music went ... “It doesn’t matter what comes, fresh goes better with life, and Mentos is fresh and full of life ... nothing gets to you, staying fresh staying cool, with Mentos fresh and full of life ... fresh boes better, Mentos freshness, fresh goes better with mentos, fresh and full of life. And then the character would look at the camera while holding the package. “Mentos: The Freshmaker.”
The first time I saw the ads in high school, I looked in amazement. How could something be in English, and still be in a foreign language?
A few months later, Lifetouch Photos offered our school “Prop portraits.” I brought a pack of Mentos, and for a day everybody looked at me like, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Flashback to Friday. Somebody did put the Mentos music with the video Friday morning, and whoever it was edited it perfectly. I was one of his thousands of likes (it was around 11,000 by evening). And then I saw it was from a friend in Albuquerque I’ve known for 10 years. Whoa, I know a Twitter famous person.
I was proud to know him, but not at all jealous. Twitter famous is nice, but your phone not going off every 20 seconds is pretty nice too.
Kevin Wilson is managing editor of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]