The Hidden Book

I came for the view

buttermyfish:

I first started posting videos on Youtube back in year 2007. Back then all I did was to play the guitar to the camera and I didn’t get a lot of attention. I gained a few more followers a year later as I started singing cover songs as well, but my real breakthrough was with my original lyrics. Suddenly my videos were on the front page and my views grew, I got hundreds of comments a day and I started distributing my own CDs, sending them in small, brown envelopes to exotic places far away. I was interviewed on the radio, on TV, and a record company called me to ask if I would consider working with them to release a single. I was on top of the world and soon the glossy magazines which I used to read on the bus going to work would be featuring my name, Alfred Jones, and teens like myself would read about me and be inspired. All I needed was a good event that could brand me as an approachable, young man and the record company had an idea.

“Get in touch with your very first follower,” they suggested. “Show that you care. Invite them to a private concert or something.” I remembered my first follower. His name was ICameForTheView and he had never left a comment on any of my videos and never replied to my messages. I wrote him when we started following me, all excited about hearing why he liked my stuff, but he never got back to me.

Somehow I found getting in touch with him now was a bad idea - after all he would only reply because I was now famous, but I felt forced by the producers and still sat down and typed in a message. I sent it in the evening and the next morning he’d deleted his account. He was off of Youtube and I had no idea where he was or how to find him. My very first follower had disappeared. The company suggested I just picked my second follower, a girl who had commented on all my videos and always wrote me cute messages and sent me pictures of herself. I did as told and she screamed her way through the private concert at her home, hugging and fondling an old scarf I’d been wearing going there. But it didn’t feel right and I couldn’t give her my best. All I thought about was why my very first follower who’d watched all my videos and put them in neat playlists had not wanted to get in touch with me. I wondered where he was.

Meanwhile my success grew. I had three CDs in store and was working on my fourth, but my focus wasn’t on music anymore. I had to focus on the interviews and how I presented myself, and soon I didn’t even write my own lyrics but had them done by an aged man who had the talent but not the voice. I thought no one would care until I received a letter one day.

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