"The Big Zuckerberg" - using Facebook to "Go Viral"

"Let's make it GO VIRAL."

It's the phrase that's replaced Mickey Rooney shouting to Judy Garland, "Let's put on a PLAY!"

The idea is that you create some lame comedy piece, sing some ridiculous novelty song, or hoist some "cute" video of your pet to YouTube...and then NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK on Twitter or Facebook and magically get infected. Uh, "go viral."

Let's see. You can have 5,000 Facebook "friends," most of whom never look at your page because they just collect "friends" to have, not to read. But those 5,000 are going to...watch your video and push it to the "viral" level of 100,000? 500,000? A MILLION HITS?

Sorry, "The Big Zuckerberg" (annoying your friends on Facebook) is not going to make it. Tweeting isn't going to do it, either. Most of the YouTube videos I see don't even get 50 hits. 2,000 (which I don't think even reaches "monetization" level) is probably the average. Steal somebody's song and post it, and maybe 20,000 people will check it out, if it isn't already on Spotify.

It seems pretty naive to think "networking" will make it so. Yet every day a brief glimpse at Facebook posts yields some giddy, pie-in-the-sky post that's the equivalent of crap on my shoe:

How awfully cynical, too, that big corporations are using this ploy: "Make a commercial for us. If yours GOES VIRAL, you WIN." Win what? Well, you win the contest, that's all. It's like the Jimmy Kimmel game: "Tell your kid you ate all his candy. A thousand kids will be crying and howling in agony, but we might pick five that pout and are funny. Those five...get bragging rights."

Not that I want to crush anyone's inane dream. It goes like this:

"Let's all get together and help somebody we don't even know BECOME A STAR! Let's watch somebody's TV commercial. Bad song. Awful comedy routine."

"Hey gang, Old Blind Pew wants to be a movie critic. If enough people watch his demo review, I just know we can persuade "Entertainment Tonight" to sign him up! Come on, gang! Make it GO VIRAL!"

This is the new paradigm: reach for the brass ring by throwing your time and effort into uploading something onto YouTube. The odds are 50 million to one, but "you got to be in it to win it."

What can you do? You hit the BLOCK button. If you want to be dishonest, you say "Thanks, I'm doing it RIGHT NOW." If you say you don't appreciate blatant "networking," or point out the long odds and the waste of time involved, you'll get a torrent of abuse for being a spoilsport, a killjoy, a bastard..." all the synonyms for A REALIST.

You sure can't let 'em know: "I think it wouldn't interest anybody, outside of a small circle of friends..."