Internet Influencer

 Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," an old-school communication on an old-school platform! I'm your has-been host, Anne Johnson.

This technology we live with just morphs overnight, doesn't it? One day Blogger is the new, hip thing. The next day it's in the rearview mirror.

I say this because I have a colleague who started writing poetry two years ago and then decided to publish a book. I'm afraid I didn't encourage her much, because after all, Mr. J wrote two books, both with major publishing houses, and neither one earned back its advance.

But some people don't need encouragement.  (You probably know the type.) My friend got herself fired up on Instagram with her poems all done up spiffy in their own page, and then she went on Tik Tok, and before you know it she's making a profit on her self-published books. She just released her third.

Okay, okay, I'm a bit jealous. But jealousy is perfectly fine! Lots of deities are known for it, and if it's good enough for a deity *cough Yahweh* it's good enough for me.

I hate being outdone this way! I've been writing "The Gods Are Bored" for 16 years, and I can't even get it considered by a damn museum! Life is so unfair!

Then I got to thinking ... how hard could it actually be to become an Internet influencer?

I started looking into this dodge, and I learned quickly that Internet Influencers are by and large:

*good-looking

*relentless

*undaunted

This was discouraging. I needed look no farther than the first criterion to know I don't have a shot at this whole Influencer thing.

But waaah waaaah waaah! I want it!

So I looked about me, and my eyes fell on Gamma, who though past his prime, is a handsome feline.

EXHIBIT A: GAMMA

Now there's some serious sex appeal! This cat can influence a can of meaty food out of me every morning, so he has potential.

The next step was to position Gamma. I found a Facebook page called "Disapproving Cats," and I began posting photos of him, asking for people to post their cats to show me.

It's that easy. Gamma (re-named Big Red because that page already has an influential cat named Big Frank) has gotten 450 likes on his third photo and is up to 125 on a picture I posted yesterday!

I figure it's only three or four weeks before I'll be able to self-publish The Gods Are Bored Greatest Hits and sell 6,000 copies.