A dozen thoughts spun around Henry’s head. It was like a dream come true… but not a normal dream, more like one of the X-Men-circus-parade ones Henry might experience after eating too much frozen cheesesteak. Sam’s cute half-smile and slender fingers only made this decision-point more bizarre.
“Well then,” said Henry, balancing the weight of each syllable as he spoke. “I feel like I’m in The Last Starfighter, only with gifs instead of laser guns. But no, for real… I suppose that tricking Kerry Ebner into saying ‘Goatse’ won’t help her any more than… Wait. Tell me what you want me to do again?”
“I want you to help do for us what you did to Fulton… only to help, instead of hurt,” said Sam. Her shoulders relaxed. “You and your team will research, and develop through a workshop format, concepts that can communicate Galen Schmeling’s platform to the millennial audience. You use your Internet know-how to get your ‘memes’ to the right channels and onto the social media platforms that matter to the Democratic base.”
“So, basically, it’s like if the ‘Kingston Pound POUNDS’ meme was intentional.”
Sam arched an eyebrow. Amal remained quiet, though his smooth face couldn’t hide some internal stewing occurring behind it. Why didn’t he speak? He seemed to know more about this than him, or even than Sam.
“’Kingston Pound POUNDS’? Doesn’t ring any bells?” asked Henry, to Sam. “Well, I guess it’s old news… real old news, now that I think about it. God, I’m old.”
Amal snorted.
“Hey, 25 is the new 45! Look, see,” he continued, once again addressing Sam. “A few weeks right before Pound won the last presidential election, the news broke that he had frequented prostitutes some years ago. Don’t worry; those prostitutes turned 18… this year. At the time, some liberal blogging gal made this ironic joke about how ‘Kingston Pound POUNDS.’ The point was to pre-emptively laugh at how Pound’s rabid defenders would still support their candidate. Yet the shady corners of the Internet decided to wear that sarcastic joke as a new slogan, a real rally cry. ‘Pound POUNDS the economy back in shape,’ for example. The media focused on that, Pound said something else dumb, and in a week, those ‘moral’ citizens forgot the whole thing ever was a thing.”
Henry paused, and then added, “Is that the kind of thing you want me for?”
“In short, yes,” stated Sam.
“Right. Look, that blogger gal, whomever it was, she didn’t mean for that meme to spread that way. You forgot one big rule: you cannot force something to go viral.”
“Even if it includes dumping ice water on yourself to raise ALS awareness money?”
Sam smirked.
Henry smirked right back. “You did your research. Sorry to imply that you knew nothing, I did not mean to mansplain.”
“No worries.”
Henry pushed back on his chair to move to the computer. He shook its mouse. The screen lit up and displayed his Twitter analytics page.
“You see all this? For all my work on planning my routine, I didn’t plan for the response to be… well, any size, really. I’ve just got to try once again, again, again, again, until something hits big. All I can do is give my all each time at bat. I want money from the people that I make laugh… I’m not going to accept cash just to shitpost. I want cash for selling good shit. I’m sorry, but I’m not at the point in my career where I should sell out. ”
Henry looked back at the computer screen. Behind the Twitter window, Henry displayed Mot Thal’s tweet as his desktop wallpaper. Sam furrowed her brow. Her eyes darted to the assorted piles of junk in Henry’s room. Henry saw this look before— in recordings of his own stand-up. She carried the same stance he used when planning a build-up.
“You know, I did not think about Kingston Pound for months until you brought him up.”
Henry opened his mouth, and then shut it. He hadn’t thought about Pound either.
Sam continued: “When was he in the news last, you think?”
Henry bit his bottom lip, took a few moments to think. All the while, Amal’s foot tapping grew louder.
“Will you stop that?! I need to think.”
Amal smiled at Henry as if pliers pulled the edges of his lips. “Didn’t you say you were better now at following the news?”
“I follow what’s funny.” Henry looked back to Sam. “I guess Pound didn’t say something stupid in the last— wait, he said he was not going to seek a re-election! Something about waiting until the country learned to appreciate what he did for them, or crap like that…”
“So were you there when he called the Pope, ‘The greatest protestant he had seen’?” asked Sam.
“…must have slipped past my mind,” said Henry.
“It slipped past everyone’s mind,” countered Sam. “Four years ago, that line would be leading every news site on the globe. Even a year ago, Pound could pull a stunt and get the media to stop reporting the FBI investigation on him. But now Ebner’s the new bait in town. Pound only declared his resignation to get some more clicks one last time. We have a short memory as a nation. We’ve got time for a pic with two captions, that’s it.”
“Yeah, well, it’s cause the surprise wore off as well,” said Henry. “Even if it felt like it never would. No one thought Pound would win the presidency.”
“I did.”
Henry raised an eyebrow. Just one. He decided that shouting “Bullshit!” would not be proper interview decorum.
“Have you heard about Genic.AI?” continued Sam.
Henry shook his head.
“It has predicted the winner of the last four presidential elections.” Sam prodded at her tablet five times, then handed it to Henry. Henry glanced over the research paper while Sam talked. “It predicted Pound’s winning of the 2016 election. It was the only prediction to get it right. Genic.AI analyzes and measures Internet Engagement. And that is all it does. It didn’t matter how many people said Kingston Pound was the Second Coming of Christ. Nor did it matter how many people said he was the Second Coming of The Bubonic Plague. Kingston Pound— if that is his real name— got the most clicks, and he got the most votes.”
Henry scrolled through the research paper on the tablet. But he didn’t read it. He just listened to Sam. Each flick of the finger brought him farther down a list of citations, calculations, and notated numbers. Henry felt as if he was sinking into a hidden, underwater world. Maybe, just like a protagonist in one of Schmeling’s novels, he could become a champion in this new world. Henry would know: he had the whole set in his apartment.
“I would prefer Schmeling over anyone from the Republican field,” stated Henry, resting the tablet on his knees. “You think he’ll win if he gets just enough upvotes on Reddit or something?”
“Perhaps, yes. We’ve never tried something like this yet.”
Amal coughed. Henry hopped up a few inches. He forgot that his best friend was listening too. Sam grimaced at Amal’s unconvincing interruption.
But she ignored him. She bent her knees slightly forward, balancing her hands on them. Now she could look Henry at eye level. “And if you figure out how to make Galen Schmeling extremely popular… well, then it should be a cinch for you to get your own memes spread… yes?”
