Today
marks the anniversary of “Thirst Responsibly: Finessing on Social Media in the21st Century with ThatDude” I still remember that night like it was
yesterday.
I
was in my apartment just waiting for the clock to strike midnight so that I
could publish the post. I was on the phone with Eddie throughout the whole
night. Minutes before it came out I called every friend I had who used Twitter
and asked them for a favor. As part of a last second promotional idea I asked
everyone to post a tweet with the following: a link to “Thirst Responsibly,”
followed by a #HappyBirthdayTaleen, and finally a tag to Taleen herself. The
plan was to get her followers to retweet this and do the same. Much to my
surprise, it didn’t take long for Taleen to respond. She was confused at first
as to why “an article was written about her” but I quickly clarified the
situation so that Eddie and I didn’t look like creeps. The idea was a great
success. She retweeted everyone but Eddie—much to his chagrin—and she tweeted
about Thirst Responsibly telling everyone to read it. We got 300 views within
the first hour and once I saw that I fell to the floor. “We did it!” That’s all
I kept saying to Eddie over the phone. I felt like I won the NBA Finals, a
Grammy and an Oscar all at once.
The
inspiration for “Thirst Responsibly” came after I stumbled across a girl on
Twitter. I’m sure most of you know the story by now, if not read the Dedication
section. Anyway, what made Taleen the spark of all this was the fact that I was
crushing on someone who didn’t know me and lived on the other side of the
country and I wasn’t alone. She had a legion of fans whom she doesn’t follow
back and we’re all okay with that. Some of them are grown men. The whole thing
is sad and kind of funny. While is nothing necessarily wrong with following and
admiring the Taleen’s of the world, there is a way one must conduct themselves
in order to retain a sense of self-respect and respect for the one admired.
That’s is the dogma of Thirst Responsibly. The title “Thirst Responsibly” came
to us after days of conceptualizing. I wish I could tell you where and when it
was first brought up but I honestly don’t remember.
I
shouted out Andre’s blog post on Twitter in the beginning because I drew a lot
of inspiration from it. To me, that is a perfect post. Not only does it get its
point across eloquently its content is relevant to this day. That post is
almost two years now and it still holds truth. After reading Andre’s blog
numerous times I knew I wanted to create something that had a clear and
elaborated message and can withstand the test of time.
Eddie
and I put a lot of time into the making of “Thirst Responsibly.” We didn’t know
how we were going to tackle the subject at first. We originally planned on
doing a “Do’s and Don’ts” type article but what we had to say was too long for
that kind of format. The Seven Deadly Sins of Thirsting was inspired by the
movie, Se7en. I wanted to create
something along the lines of the Ten Commandments for social media, but we
couldn’t think of ten things. Plus, we figured doing a Ten Commandments was a
bit sacrilegious. So Seven Sins it was!
We
added all of those pictures to back up what we were saying. Otherwise you
would’ve thought we were making it all up. It also wouldn’t make sense for us
to have no evidence of something in which we actively participate in. I added
my own follies to show you the realness of it all. We too have stumbled and
committed these sins. Not all, but most. Eddie was behind editing most of the
pictures. We accumulated a decent folder of screenshots and a week before the
release I drove to Gainesville and we put the finishing touches on the post. It
took nearly half the day to crop the pictures and add them to the post so that
they complement the words and visually look appealing.
The
day “Thirst Responsibly” came out was easily one of the greatest days of my
life. There are few things I have done which I am as proud of as this. I wouldn’t
hesitate to do it all over again despite the trouble it got me in with Sunshine
(love you, babe!). On behalf of DudeFresh, we thank you all for being a part of
something special and hope that “Thirst Responsibly” still makes you smile when
you read it. Here’s to one year and the many more to come. Keep spreading the word
and educating the masses.
Much love,
Deion
ThatDude here,
The release of “Thirst Responsibly” is one of the proudest moments of my 20 year career and will probably continue to be so for years. Even the birth of my first born son would stand second behind the release of this ground breaking article. I remember the day it was released and the mix of emotions that came with it.
When we first released it, I was excited, overflowing with anticipation. Like my good friend Deion, I was asking each of my friends to tweet the article link, with #HappyBirthdayTaleen and tagging her in the post. Then, Deion called me saying that Taleen had responded. I was so sure that it was something positive, saying “Thank you guys” or something along those lines. Nah. It was “so there’s an article written about me…” or something along those lines. My excitement had done a 180 and become dreading and nervousness. Was she thinking that we were creeps? Was the article not going to be received as well as Deion and I thought it was going to be. My uneasiness then turned into suspicion. Did she even read the article?
For all of you that have read it, you’ll agree that it’s long. This isn’t something you skim on the bus on the way to work. This is something you put a robe on for, light a candle and sit in a LazyBoy type of reading. There’s no way she read the article in such a short amount of time, she probably saw the tweets and was confused…fairly enough too. Fortunately, Deion was able to clarify the real point of the article and she responded. WE GOT RETWEETS OF THE ARTICLE…SHE GAVE ALMOST EVERYONE A RETWEET. You get a retweet! You get a retweet! Everyone gets a retweet!!!! Everyone except…the co-author of the post who got nothing. I was (and still am) salty about that. I bring it up to Deion randomly to this day. I get it, I don’t use Twitter that often, and my 30 something followers is less than impressive, but dammit I co-wrote that so where was my retweet?! (Note: I could have gone onto my twitter to see how many followers I do have, but this better shows how little I use it.) So Taleen, if you’re reading this, a long overdue shout out to @Imthatdude1218 would be well appreciated. The first day was crazy, we got 300 hits within no time. If any of my other blog posts even gets to 200 within a lifetime, I’ll double click my heels in midair while doing a fist pump. Never have I slept so soundly on a college dormitory mattress until that day. This was a much greater experience than I could have imagined.
The creation was a long process. I don’t think I’ve spent more time on a project than I have for “Thirst Responsibly.” It didn’t take hours, it didn’t take days, it didn’t take weeks, it didn’t even take fortnights (2 weeks). It took months, ladies and gentlemen. But like any good project, being able to put my name on the final product was well worth it. Even gathering photos was a time consuming process. Finding comments to screenshot was the easy part. The hard part and time consuming part was that there was so much thirst going on in the page, it was hard to pick just one and the right one. If I wanted to, I could have done a 100 picture slideshow of some of the comments that goes down in Instagram, alone, let alone with Twitter. It was during this search of pictures that I really understood why we were doing this. It gets aggressive in the comments section. If some of these people’s mommas saw what they put, they would drag them by the ear, take them to the nearest church, and bathe them in holy water. It doesn’t just cross the line sometimes. It spits on the line, stomps it, and laughs at its face. “Thirst Responsibly” was written for these people.
“Thirst Responsibly” will be a ride that I’ll one day tell my grand kids all about as I pull it from my bookshelf with a Pulitzer Prize Award right next to it. Within a year, we got 1,000 hits with very limited advertising. We got the product out, and now it’s time to get it published. The journey of “Thirst Responsibly” has just begun.
Dude out.
