The Rise and Fall of a Medium Legend

A forgotten icon shuffles to the street in stocking feet, an unlit cigarette dangling between cracked lips.

He opens the mailbox and sighs as he runs his fingers through tufts of unkempt beard. Inside he sees what he expects but not what he is looking for. He closes the lid, leaving its contents still inside, and shakes his head while mumbling something only he can make out.

“Fucking Greg Gueldner.”

And then he turns and heads back inside, not to resurface until tomorrow when this whole dog and pony show plays out again.

This is the life of a once bonafide blogging legend. A comedy blogger whose flame burned so hot so quick that you can still smell the stink of promise in the smoldering ash.

He tucks the cigarette back into the pack with the rest of its Marlboro companions. He doesn’t smoke but carries around a pack of cigarettes because the imagery in reflective pieces like these is too fucking powerful to ignore. When you’ve been labeled a one-post wonder you’ll do anything to get an edge on that next hit.

His daily walk to the mailbox is less of a trip these days and more of a quest. Long ago he gave up on the idea that the Medium shirt he was promised would one day arrive but he goes out there anyways because, in his words, “What the hell else would I do?”

And so the quest continues, each day to the mailbox in hopes of finding free Medium schwag. But even though he talks so much about that shirt, this isn’t a quest for clothing. This is a tale about a meteoric climb and a catastrophic tumble. This is the death of the American dream. This is about capturing lightning in a bottle and then spending the rest of your fucking life trying to capture it again.

This is the rise and fall of a Medium legend. And I am that legend.

October, 2014

I was getting gas in some shit hole rest stop in Indiana when I realized I just might become a blog star. As I pumped unleaded into my rental car I scrolled through my phone and saw in my email that a number of people had recommended a post I wrote a month before called “Why taking a dump in a Kohl’s dressing room is never a good idea.” I thought it strange something more than 30 days old would suddenly get a dozen recommends and then realized it was because the post was now featured in the Comedy Corner section. Top of the page. They had something like 8,000 followers and all of them could read what I wrote. I was stoked.

By the next night the traffic on Medium kept growing — growing to the point where I had 12,000 some reads on the post. The most I had up to that point on anything was like 500 so I knew something special was happening. I bragged about it on Facebook to my friends and included a link to the Medium article.

The link I posted on Facebook was shared and then shared again. Thousands of times. Friends of mine in other states would tell me they saw people posting it that didn’t even know me. People were messaging me from all over the world and flocking to my Facebook page. I jumped from a couple hundred Facebook followers to over 10,000. I was getting phone calls from people in Virginia who just wanted to say hello. I was getting threats from people in Wyoming and love letters from chicks in Texas. It was incredible. Almost overnight I was the Justin Bieber of Medium. I was Justin Mediumber.

But you’ve heard this story before, haven’t you? Go ask Webster or ALF what they think about overnight stardom. Go ask whoever wrote the Harlem Shake song or made that Gangnam Style video what life is like for them these days. Three months ago the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was suddenly everywhere and now just as sudden it’s nowhere at all. The great thing about social media is that it helps create momentum. But the problem with momentum is that when it’s gone, it never comes back.

I learned that the hard way.

November, 2014

One of the cool things about Medium is that at the end of every month they produce a list of the most read posts from the month before. On November 1, 2014 I awoke excited to see where I landed in that mix.

I was probably in the top 100, I thought. I was at something like 1.7 million views by then and figured that was a pretty good number considering the post didn’t even take off until the end of the month. But when that list came out I wasn’t just in the top 100.

I was second.

I had written the second most read post on all of Medium for the month of October and it was about a guy shitting in a Kohl’s dressing room. Mitt Romney wrote something and was 18th. I was more read than a guy who almost became president.

It’s little surprise, then, that I got so caught up in the hype. The problem with most one-hit wonders is that they always think there’s a second hit on the horizon. They live life like their next meal ticket is just squatting over a changing stool in a department store waiting for them to come along and write a blog post about them. I’m no different.

It would be nothing for me to walk into a night club and order three or four bottles of their finest champagne. And by “champagne” I mean Bud Light. And by “night club” I mean 7-Eleven.

It didn’t stop with the alcohol, either. When you become popular in late fall, allergy season is in full force. You want to be able to put on a good show for your fans so suddenly you’re doing all kinds of drugs. Most work days I’d be three or four tablespoons of Dayquill in before lunch time. Most nights I was so soaked in Vick’s Vapor Rub that my friends and family couldn’t stand to be near me. Literally.

I couldn’t stop. I moved from Dayquill to Claritin and when the Vick’s stopped doing the trick I’d just dab a little Bengay on my upper lip to take the edge off my stuffy nose. Some nights I was so out of control that I went into downtown and bought meth just to reverse engineer it back into Sudafed.

And don’t get me started on the sex. Oh, the sex! I had it eight times with my wife in November. That’s a new record for us. I felt like Wilt Chamberlain — if Wilt Chamberlain was short, fat, and white and wrote comedy blogs instead of playing basketball.

That’s about the time Greg Gueldner got in touch with me. Greg works for Medium and left a note on my Kohl’s post congratulating me on the run my post had. He said he wanted to send me some Medium Schwag and to email him with my address and size.

I emailed him back and was excited when he replied. We exchanged a few more messages and he said the folks at Medium would be keeping an eye on me. The shirt was on its way.

The shirt was on its way….

December, 2015

When you’re falling from Heaven, the worst part is trying to figure out if you’ve landed in Hell yet or if you’re still tumbling.

My wife left me this morning. She went to work. I don’t expect her back until later this evening because she has a holiday party.

The Medium stats have also dried up. After my Kohl’s post, I spent weeks posting new material in hopes of catching fire again. I’m still waiting. The recommends have disappeared, the new followers have stopped trickling in, and I’ve heard nothing from Greg Gueldner in weeks.

Last month I was the toast of the town and now I’m nothing. The posters of me that aspiring bloggers everywhere probably had up on their bedroom walls have been replaced by empty space with flecks of Scotch tape still present in the corners. I used to walk into the grocery story and it would be nothing for three or four people to walk up to me and say, “Can I help you, sir?” or “Do you have any bottle slips or coupons?”

Now, they ask me nothing. It’s as if they don’t notice me at all.

There are days where I try to be optimistic. I think maybe Greg did put in an order for that shirt and whoever he gave it to just got confused. After all, if someone told you to get an XXL Medium shirt, wouldn’t that blow your mind, too? I think maybe there’s an intern somewhere still digging through boxes with a confused look on his face.

But mostly I’m coming to terms with it all. I had my 15 minutes of fame and I try to remind myself that’s 15 minutes more than most people will ever have. Still, that doesn’t stop me from hanging around outside dressing rooms hoping to find the next Dirty Randy. So far he hasn’t shown himself. And in most cases store security ends up asking me to leave.

I’m not sure what’s next for me, but I believe there are life lessons buried somewhere in my story. Hopefully the next Jason Wolverton is out there right now hammering away at his keyboard and he’ll stop for just a minute or two to read this. That’s all I need. Just a minute or two.

I just need you to know that all those people who say it’s lonely at the top don’t have the whole story. Because it’s even lonelier at the bottom.

Jason Wolverton is the creator of the Web site BigFunnyBlog.com. You can follow him on Facebook at Facebook.com/BigFunnyBlog. He’d also appreciate it if you hit the recommend button below so he doesn’t fall any further into his wasteland of pain.