Now the only question was how to use it. Songwriting could wait. Should he crawl back under the covers and grab a few more minutes of sleep?
His phone lit up again, and Eric glanced anxiously at the screen. Not another text message, thank God. Just more Twitter notifications rolling in. He wondered if the #EricThornObsessed thing hit number one yet and picked the phone back up to check. Yup. There it was. He made a low growl in the back of his throat when he saw his name at the top of the trending list.
Forget sleep. He needed to take action. He had half an hour to stop this thing in its tracks.
Should he send another tweet? It couldn’t be anything too hateful. The goal wasn’t to make the fans angry—the goal was to turn them off. Make them all lose interest and find another victim for their drooly-tongue emojis.
He needed #EricThornObsessed to generate some backlash. That was the key. He’d seen it happen to others in the past—guys who blew up too big, too fast. Invariably, they all ended up labeled the same way. Vain. Arrogant. Narcissistic. Self-absorbed. He’d seen guys swing overnight from international sex symbol to universal joke.
Then the girls would unfollow in droves. No one wants to retweet a walking punch line. Honestly, it might be the best thing that could happen to him. Record sales would fall. Maybe his label would drop him.
Eric felt a ray of hope. He could take a more subtle tack. Lay on the self-infatuation a touch too thick, and let them all have a good, long laugh at his expense. Hell, maybe he didn’t even need to do that much. The backlash might be brewing right that second for all he knew. Maybe the haters were already out there, tweeting by the thousands about what a douche he really was.
He brought up the search bar and typed in a new hashtag:
#EricThornIsADouche
0 tweets
OK, too complicated. Try again.
#EricThornDouche
0 tweets.
“Dammit!” How could it be this hard?
Eric took a deep breath and closed his eyes. OK. Think. Think like a hater.
#EricThornSucks
24 tweets
“There we go!” A smile lit his face for the first time since he’d gotten out of bed that morning. Twenty-four tweets. Not much compared to the millions under #EricThornObsessed, but it was a start. He ran his eyes down the list.
@EricThorn YOU ARE UGLY AND HAVE NO TALENT #ERICTHORNSUCKS
OK, then. Not the most compelling argument. Next.
Does anyone actually listen to Eric Thorn’s music? No? That’s what I thought #EricThornSucks Ouch. That one hit a little close to home.
It wasn’t true, of course. Eric knew he had musical talent. He never would have gotten this far on looks alone. He’d pumped out one hit after another on his first two albums, and he knew those songs were good. They deserved to play on the radio.
But lately he’d begun to wonder. Did it even matter? Would anyone notice if he put out a bunch of half-assed suckitude, ghostwritten by other songwriters? Or would he hit the Billboard Hot 100 with any piece of overproduced crap, just as long as he took off his clothes for the music video?
Eric shot his phone a dirty look. It didn’t matter anyway, he told himself. Not if his career was over. Back to the task at hand: #EricThornSucks. Next tweet.
@EricThorn I’VE HEARD WALRUS FARTS THAT SOUND BETTER THAN YOUR FUGLY ASS #ErICTHoRNSuCKS
Eric couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that one. Walrus farts? That actually wasn’t half-bad. Maybe he should use it for his next album title—or better yet, his greatest hits. What would happen if he hit Reply and said so? How many thousands of retweets would it get?
It was a tempting thought, but he couldn’t do it. The fans might find it amusing, but the record label wouldn’t. Anything coming from his Twitter account had to be squeaky clean.
Maybe that was the key, come to think of it. Eric froze as a new idea hit him. Of course! How had he never thought of it before? The label would never even know…
@EricThorn couldn’t use Twitter to jettison his own career, but someone else could.
He began typing again with renewed energy.
Create new account.
Full name: Taylor
Username: @EricThornSucks
Password: %5L$Rsw
His finger hung in the air, poised above the Create Account button, but he paused for a moment. Could any of it possibly be traced back to him? He’d used his middle name, Taylor—common enough not to raise any eyebrows. But what about that password? He’d automatically put in the same series of random characters that he used for his real account. Could that come back to bite him in the ass?
Better safe than sorry. He didn’t need to worry about cybersecurity anyway. This was one social media account that no one would bother to hack.
He filled out the form again.
Full name: Taylor
Username: @EricThornSucks
Password: password
His eyes slid down the new profile he’d created.
TWEETS FOLLOWING FOLLOWERS
0 0 0
A blank slate. It felt like three hundred pounds lifted off his shoulders. He could tweet anything from here. Total freedom. He could tell his fans what he really thought of them in no uncertain terms. And he could lead them all to the conclusion that Eric Thorn wasn’t worth their wasted time.
He just needed to get their attention first. Zero followers. That needed to change. What could he do to get noticed? He needed to make his debut tweet something good—something even more colorful than walrus farts. Something to illustrate the point that Eric Thorn was a vain, self-absorbed, pretty-boy douche canoe. And most importantly, something juicy enough to get retweeted fourteen million times.
“Come on, Eric,” he muttered to himself. “Think.”
Think vain. Think narcissistic.
He looked up from his phone and met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror. An idea had sprung to mind, and he turned his head slowly from side to side as he considered how best to pull it off. Could he get away with it? Would it work? Maybe. Just maybe…
With a well-practiced motion, he stripped his shirt over his head and switched his phone to selfie mode.
Oh man, this was going to be fun.
? ? ?
Tessa sat on her bed and contemplated the cover of the spiral-bound notebook in her lap. She should probably open it to a clean page and make her daily entry. God knows she had enough thoughts whirling around her head to fill a page or two.
Where to start? She should write about Scott, probably. Tessa grimaced, recalling the way her boyfriend had brought their visit to a halt. How could he be so dense? Even if she were ready to leave the house, he expected her to go to some overcrowded frat party? He wanted to… How had he put it exactly? He wanted to show her off.