by Geoff Rodkey
REESE
It’s hilarious when you make that guitar face! You look like you’re pooping!
CLAUDIA
This is EXACTLY what I mean by “trolling.”
Instead of filming me playing the song, Carmen shot close-ups of my hands playing the guitar. Then she intercut those with shots of a pinwheel that we filmed on the roof garden of my building.
The video turned out great. And Carmen was totally right that a pinwheel was just as good as an actual windmill. So I’d like to officially apologize to her for the fight we got into about that.
CARMEN
It’s all good. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t WANT to use a real windmill. It’s just that it’s basically impossible to find them in New York City. And when you do, they don’t look like windmills.
CLAUDIA
After Carmen finished the “Windmill” video and all I had to do was upload it to MeVid, I got incredibly nervous. Because the way my friends were talking, this video was going to be MAJOR. And it seemed like once I put it online, my whole life might change forever.
CLICKCHAT POSTS (PRIVATE CHAT)
c_2_the_g Ed. Note: Carmen can’t wait for this vid to blow up
sophie_k_nyc Ed. Note: Sophie srsly. Its going to break the Internet
Parvanana Ed. Note: Parvati U R GOING TO BE A STAR @claudaroo!!!
Parvanana U WILL TAKE ME ON TOUR W YOU RIGHT???
claudaroo Ed. Note: me I dunno you guys. I’m kind of scared to post it
sophie_k_nyc But it’s awesome! And u worked so hard on it! You should post right now
c_2_the_g If u dont post it I will @claudaroo
Parvanana POST IT SO WE CAN GO MENTAL
c_2_the_g u r already mental @Parvanana
Parvanana TRUE. IM ABOUT TO PEE MYSELF
sophie_k_nyc Eeeeeeew
Parvanana JK
c_2_the_g Cmon @claudaroo post it!!!!!
CLAUDIA
It took me a whole day to get up the courage to put “Windmill” on MeVid. When I finally did, I posted on ClickChat to let everybody know about it:
claudaroo
24 likes
claudaroo Hey everybody! My new music video is up at http://mevid.com… I hope you like it! Thx to @c_2_the_g for doing an awesome job directing! And to @Parvanana and @sophie_k_nyc for all the support!
CLAUDIA
Then I shut down my computer, because I didn’t want to spend all night constantly reloading the MeVid page to see how many views I’d gotten.
But I couldn’t help myself. So after half an hour of pacing back and forth in my room and reminding myself to stay totally down-to-earth no matter how huge I got, I went back online.
Then I spent the rest of the night constantly reloading the MeVid page.
It turned out I didn’t have to worry about staying down-to-earth. Or about my life changing forever. Or even for five minutes.
Because nobody watched the video. That whole first night it was online, it only got 37 views.
And at least 30 of those were Parvati.
PARVATI
I had it on repeat. Because it was SO AWESOME!
CLAUDIA
By the next morning, “Windmill” was only up to 41 views. And I realized if I wanted to make it a hit, I was going to have to do a TON of promoting it.
Which felt a little icky. But fortunately, my friends helped a lot.
CARMEN
We pretty much forced the whole Culvert Prep sixth grade to watch it.
PARVATI
It wasn’t just sixth graders. I was personally responsible for at LEAST ten page views from eighth graders.
AKASH GUPTA, eighth grader/older brother of Parvati
My annoying little sister parked her butt at our lunch table and refused to leave until my friends and I all watched Claudia’s video on our phones.
PARVATI
Aren’t you glad I did? You LOVE “Windmill”!
AKASH
It’s pretty catchy. Not my kind of music, though. If there was an EDM remix, I’d be more into that.
CLAUDIA
The reaction I got from kids at school was VERY encouraging.
KALISHA HENDRICKS, sixth grader/extremely smart person
It’s a really excellent song, Claudia. You should be proud of yourself.
DIMITRI SHARANSKY, sixth grader/moderately smart person
Big ups! It was cool.
CLAUDIA
Although not everybody was encouraging. The Fembots Ed. Note: FEMBOTS = annoying 6th grade rich girls who look down on everybody else for not being rich/annoying enough all ragged on it. Then again, they rag on everything.
ATHENA COHEN, Fembot dictator
I’m sorry, but that video was, like, TOTAL amateur hour. I mean, like, what was the budget for that? Like, five dollars?
CLAUDIA
It was actually more like zero dollars? Because there was no budget at all?
ATHENA
Yeah, well, congratulations. It totally shows.
BTW, all that begging you did to get people to share it on ClickChat? Totally classless. And SUCH a fail. What’d you get, like, five views?
CLAUDIA
If you couldn’t tell already, Athena Cohen is evil.
Unfortunately, though, she was also right. Even though almost all the kids at Culvert Prep liked the video, there weren’t nearly enough of them to make it a viral hit. Or any other kind of hit.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying. I reposted the link on ClickChat a bunch of times, and I asked everybody I knew to share and/or link to it. Including Mom and Dad, even though they’re not on ClickChat. And Dad’s barely even on Facebook.
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(MOM) Don’t forget to post Claudia’s video on your FB page
(DAD) Already did. It got three likes!
That’s it? How many FB friends do you have?
No idea
I checked. You have 23
Is that good?
It’s terrible
Are you sure?
Yes. Makes me feel weird about being married to you
How many FB friends do you have?
632
OMG
There is no way all those people are your friends
Reese has 786 on ClickChat
How is that even possible????
Reese has not met 786 people in his whole life!!!
When you get home, I will explain how social media works
Not sure I want to know
CLAUDIA
At one point, Carmen told me to add hashtags to the MeVid page so people could find “Windmill” in search. So I did.
Windmill (by Claudia Tapper)
claudaroo #Songs #Songwriters #Music #Windmill 198 Views
CARMEN
You barely tagged it! I was like, “Claude—do I have to do this for you?”
CLAUDIA
Carmen insisted on redoing my hashtags. Tbh, I think she went a little overboard.
Windmill (by Claudia Tapper)
214 Views
claudaroo #Songs #Songwriters
#SingerSongwriters #SongwriterSingers
#NYCSongwriters #NYCSongs #Hits #HitSongs
#SongHits #BestSongs #GreatestSongs
#GSOAT #Music #GoodMusic #GreatMusic
#AwesomeMusic #AmazingMusic #Video
#MusicVideo #GreatMusicVideo #Breakup
#BreakupSongs #SongsAboutBreakups
#SongsAboutBreakingUp #BreakingUpSongs
#Heartache #Heartbreak #Sad
#Bittersweet #MovingOn #GirlPower
#Girls #Sisters #StrongSisters
#SistersAreDoinIt #BoysSuck #Claudia
#ClaudiaTapper #TapperClaudia #Carmen
#CarmenGutierrez #CarmenGutierrezDirector
#CarmenDirects #Windmill #Windmills
#SongsAboutWindmills #Pinwheel
#PinwheelVsWindmill #WindmillVsPinwheel
#CanAPinwheelBeAWindmill #Rooftop
#Ro
oftopVideo #VideoRooftop
#VideosOnRooftops #NYC
#NYCRooftop #RooftopNYC
#NYCRooftopMusicVideoWithPinwheelInIt
CARMEN
You can NEVER have too many hashtags.
CLAUDIA
I’m not sure that’s true.
Anyway, the hashtags were not exactly a game changer. And neither were all my ClickChat posts. After a week online, “Windmill” was stuck around 300 page views, and it looked like it was never going to take off. Ed. Note: (1 week after posting)
Windmill (by Claudia Tapper)
293 Views
claudaroo #Songs #Songwriters
#SingerSongwriters #SongwriterSingers
So I got desperate and did what Parvati had been begging me to do all along: I Blurted it.
CHAPTER 4
BLURT—THE WORST/BEST SITE ON THE INTERNET
CLAUDIA
In case you’re like my parents and have no clue what Blurt is, it’s a “microvideo” Ed. Note: “microvlog”? (not sure) social network. The only things you can post on it are two-second videos.
Depending on who you talk to, this makes Blurt either insanely cool or totally ridiculous. For example, I think it’s ridiculous. Because pretty much nothing fits into a two-second video except things that are completely stupid—like riding your bike into a swimming pool or pulling your pants down at a McDonald’s.
REESE
Blurt is AWESOME! It’s a whole site of nothing but dudes riding their bikes into swimming pools and pulling their pants down at McDonald’s!
It’s off the hook hilarious.
SOPHIE
Blurt is officially the dumbest thing in the history of the universe.
PARVATI
I LOVE IT!!!
Seriously. If it weren’t for Blurt, I wouldn’t know who Tyler Purdy is! Or Marcel Mourlot, Austin Flick, Luke Vivian, Cody and Cody, Jimmy Wallinger, Oscar Gonzalez, or Brian Messer!
CLAUDIA
Parvati has crushes on about twenty different Blurt stars. Which I do not really get. I mean, some of them are definitely cute. But they don’t DO anything. Most of their Blurts are just them making dumb jokes or staring into the camera and going, “HEEEEEEY BAAAAAAE…”
PARVATI
Okay, first of all—Tyler Purdy doesn’t HAVE to do anything except stare into the camera. HIS EYES ARE SOOOOO BLUE! I could seriously watch Blurts of Tyler’s eyes for WEEKS.
Second, it’s not true that none of them do anything. Marcel Mourlot’s inspirational Blurts are helping millions of people live their best possible life!
And Brian Messer’s a huge pop star. AND he got his start on Blurt! Just like you should!
CLAUDIA
I personally am not a big fan of Brian Messer’s music. But it’s true he’s gotten pretty huge. AND it all started with him posting tons of Blurts with little 2-second clips of his songs and a link so you could listen to the whole song on MeVid if you liked it.
I always thought this was crazy, because how can you tell if you like a song in two seconds? But after a week of watching “Windmill” go nowhere online, I finally took Parvati’s advice and started Blurting clips from it.
I posted about thirty Blurts in total. I would’ve done more, but it’s pretty hard to cut a song into two-second clips that make any kind of sense.
PARVATI
They’re not SUPPOSED to make sense! I feel like you’re missing the whole point of Blurt.
CLAUDIA
That’s probably true.
Anyway, I not only hashtagged all the clips, but Parvati had me tag a bunch of famous Blurters in the comments so it’d show up in their notifications, and they’d hopefully Reblurt Ed. Note: Reblurt = when you share somebody else’s Blurt on your Blurt page me.
@claudaroo @TheRealMarcel @BrianMesser @CodyAndCody @PurdyTyler @FlicknAusome
None of them did. Even so, at first I thought my Blurt numbers looked pretty good. My most popular Blurt had 2,236 Blips Ed. Note: Blip = 1 view of a Blurt in its first week.
But since Blurts are only two seconds, and they play on a loop, it turns out 2,236 Blips is actually not much at all. You can practically get 1,000 Blips just by accident.
PARVATI
I left one of your Blurts running while I went to the bathroom, and I think that was good for about 500 Blips. Maybe more.
CLAUDIA
After all the Blurting I did, I wound up with a couple hundred Blurt followers. But I think they were mostly bots. Ed. Note: “bots” = robot accounts that follow you but aren’t actual humans And even if they were actual humans, not too many of them watched the full video. Even after two weeks of full-time Blurting, “Windmill” still had less than 400 views on MeVid.
I was pretty bummed about that. It was a great song, and almost everybody who heard it loved it. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get people to click on it.
Not only did it NOT go viral, it didn’t even come close.
So I decided that getting huge on the Internet was basically impossible.
At least, I thought it was.
Until my brother did it without even trying.
CHAPTER 5
REESE GETS HIS BLURT ON
REESE
It all started with me and Xander messing around on MetaWorld. Ed. Note: MetaWorld = video game where Reese spends 80% of his life (other 20% = soccer) Version 3.0 just came out, and they added this thing called a “physics engine.” Which makes stuff look WAY more realistic. Even though everybody’s still got, like, square heads and no fingers.
So when Xander threw me off a cliff during a deathmatch, instead of just dying like in 2.0, my avatar went “SPLAAAAM!” and made this awesome-looking avatar-shaped hole in the ground.
It was hilarious! So Xander and I started jumping off cliffs just for fun.
CLAUDIA
FYI, Xander Billington is one of Reese’s best friends. He’s also incredibly annoying.
XANDER BILLINGTON, friend of Reese/incredibly annoying person
Don’t start no beef with me, Clownia! Ed. Note: Xander’s nickname for me You step to the X-Man, Ed. Note: Xander’s nickname for himself I’ma bring da ruckus to yo’ door!
CLAUDIA
One of the many annoying things about Xander is that he constantly talks like he’s in a rap battle. Which is especially sad when you consider that his ancestors were some of the original Pilgrims who came over from England on the Mayflower.
This means the Billingtons have officially been the most annoying family in America for almost 400 straight years.
XANDER
No way, dawg! Dem Billingtons got MAD respect back in the day!
CLAUDIA
Xander, have you ever googled “Mayflower” and “Billingtons”? Because I did. And it turns out one of your ancestors almost blew up the ship. And another one got hanged for murder after they landed in America. Ed. Note: 100% TRUE (you can google this)
XANDER
WUUUUT?? No way that’s legit.
CLAUDIA
It is completely legit.
XANDER
Straight up? No frontin’?
CLAUDIA
Straight up. No fronting. Dawg.
XANDER
AWWWW, YEAH!! THAT’S HOW WE DO! BILLINGTONS IS O.G., YO!!! I can’t wait to tell Mom-a-saurus ’bout this at dinner tonight. She gonna be all, “BODY COUNT! Raise da roof!”
CLAUDIA
I’m getting seriously off track here. Back to MetaWorld.
REESE
Jumping off cliffs got boring after a while. But then I was like, “What if we build a giant tower and jump off that?”
So we did. And it was awesome! Especially when we tricked Wyatt into standing in front of the tower so we could crush him when we landed.
WYATT TEMPLEMAN, friend of Reese
The first time they did that, I got really mad. Because they didn’t tell me what they were going to do. But then they let ME jump on THEM for a while. And it was SO funny! I was
dying.
XANDER
Then I was all, “Yo, we should straight-up Blurt this!”
REESE
It was a perfect clip for Blurt. ’Cause it took, like, EXACTLY two seconds to jump off the tower and splat somebody’s avatar. So Xander took a video of me jumping onto Wyatt. Then I posted it.