How 2000 Articles Have Paid For Lunch at Arby’s the Last 2 Months

How One Article Has Paid My Mortgage the Last 23 Months - All thanks to a beautiful stranger 6,000 miles away

Dear Michael Thompson (author of the above linked article),

The story below is a parody article based on your original post “How One Article Has Paid My Mortgage the Last 23 Months.” Although it attempts to capture the tone of your original piece and even uses some similar phrasing and words it is in no way a work of plagarism or copyright infringement in any reasonable sense of those words. It is intended to be a work of humor and should be viewed as an homage to your own post which told a story that made me very, very jealous and angry, and bitter, and jealous, did I say that. In any event, I was recently suspended from Medium for a writing a parody article of this sort and only recently got my account back. I did not want to get suspended again which is why I had originally decided to add this author's note to the beginning of this article. Unfortunately, I recently was suspended again for a similar though unrelated satire/parody article. Go ahead and complain to the Medium trust and safety committee or anyone else for that matter. At this point it matters not to me as the damage has already been done by some other douchebag who complained like a little baby when I made fun of something they wrote. I am fairly certain you are not the crybaby in question, and thank you for that.

Thank you,

DD

“Hey man, I think this post sucks ass and the title 6 Listicle Gimmicks According to Science is absolutely terrible. Got any suggestions?”

“Yeah, it definitely sucks, but for you I’d give it an 8” my dick head friend replied 10 minutes later by Gmail. “Try throwing ‘Top’ in front of it. Still blows but at least it doesn’t start with a number dumbass”

I woke up the next day hungover as hell, and hoping the stats from the article would indeed make me smile, or at least make the nausea go away. But that didn’t happen. It had no upward trajectory initially and it continued to languish, and I puked all over my floor on the way to the bathroom. By the time I went to bed that night, I’d finally kicked the hangover headache thanks to a shit ton of water and Ibuprofen, but had officially written off the piece of crap story, and moved onto to my next even shittier idea.

But something interesting happened while I was sound asleep in my ‘bed’ on the floor of my stoner buddy Ted’s apartment. Something not really interesting I guess, something boring would be more accurate. While I was shivering and trying to sleep with my eyes half open, lest one of Ted’s hippie friends try to gank my wallet, two dudes I barely remembered from 3 years ago were typing. And somehow, it reminded me of how back then I was not making jack shit from writing and how little things have changed. Also, I guess they mentioned me in a blog or something.

“I think I’ve written my first pandal article!” I screamed to Ted the next morning from the nasty old mattress I was laying on. “Some fuckin dudes or spam bots named Uranus Yoda and Ucaca Wa must’ve shared it! It’s already got 2 views and it’s only 8 AM!” “What the fuck are you yelling about douchebag, it’s fuckin 8AM. Go back to sleep or get the fuck out. And what kind of name is Uranus Yoda and fuckin Ucaca Wa, sounds like what I do in the bathroom after a meal at PF Changs. You and your writing friends are a bunch of weirdos.” Ted replied angrily.

For the following 47 hours, I was my normal despondent self as I stared at my phone’s cracked screen watching the numbers barely move from the measly 2 original views.

2

3

4

By the time Monday morning rolled around, these oddly, but hilariously named stranger who had been followers of my account for almost 3.5 years and who I am fairly certain are actually a spam bots, and about whom I had written not one but two humorous stories in the past— had single-handedly driven 3 views to my article somehow — setting it onto a path to eventually top the 4 mark, settling in at a hefty 5 views.

Afterwards

Two months have passed and despite having a few posts that bombed immediately out of the gate, I’m yet to experience a disaster of such epic proportions like I did from that one. It not only sank whatever hope I had of a writing career, it also caused my wife to divorce me and my parents to disown me.

0 Linkedin messages in the first 2 weeks and no more since.

0 new Linkedin connections who continually ignore my work.

0 fans and 0 claps with less than 5 internal views.

0 new followers on this platform.

No Interest from a book agent.

In short, this 347-word article that I published when I only had a handful of followers and had never made more than $35 in a month from writing, has easily paid for 1/100th of an Arby’s medium roast beef sandwich for the past 2 months. To date it has netted an astounding $0.08. That’s lunch money I can use.

And the worst part is, if there was ever an article that I’d not want anyone to ever see let alone read— this would be it. Fortunately, only 5 people have seen it so far, so I guess it could have been worse.

I didn’t try to sell anything. I didn’t provide any tips on how to break out of mediocrity to be extraordinary. Instead I listed six ways that people who write and publish listicles misuse and abuse science in their never ending quest to crap out a story more than 10 people will read. Who wouldn’t want to read that. Clearly, almost everyone.

I simply told my story in a way that made other people who write stories annoyed and pissed at me for pointing out how shitty and lame they are.

The “One”

Ahh. Fuck it. So lazy. Out of ideas.

You never know when your writing will take flight

It’s been almost 5 years, hell, I guess I can keep waiting. Got nothing better to do.