I get lots of spam messages on this site, sometimes as many as 100 in one day. You never see them because they are swept away into a separate folder for me to delete. All of them are offering to help my posts go viral, and it will only cost me a few dollars. I reckon I’d do as well with paying them as I would risking my money on a game of Three-Card Monte. The card I need to win, so visible in the beginning, is simply not there when I choose from among those three shuffled cards. It’s a fool’s bet. While I may have done a lot of foolish things in my life, I am not a fool, for I hardly ever repeated them. I learned something valuable every time I foolishly allowed myself to be separated from my money. Yes, they say a fool and his money are soon parted…but the fool continues in his foolishness. If we learn, we soon stop doing foolish things, removing ourselves from the class of fool, and entrenching ourselves among the huge class of those formerly foolish.

I see posts all the time from those who have little to say, though it seems of great importance or relevance to them, who ask people to help their post go viral.

If a post, a photo, or a video is worthy of going viral, it only needs to be put out in the ether. It will go viral in spite of itself or external assistance. I’ve never had a post go viral. I never wrote in my blog with the intention of having a post go viral. There are a hundred different motivations for writing here, virality is not one of them. I can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy virality, and bask in my moment of glory, for the pride of today’s virality is tomorrow’s depression over the reversion to obscurity, leaving one obsessed with the next virality. There may be a point afterwards where nothing satisfies. It’s better just to do what I do and let the chips fall where they may. I’m sure not paying anyone on the inside-straight chance that it will help me achieve something that has no value to anything but my ego.

I said inside-straight chance. I meant Three-Card Monte chance. There is a big difference, though the results are almost always the same.

One of the spams went sort of like this, and if not actually like this, was like this in essence:

We think it’s awesome that you have the most amazing posts. You only need a little boost to help your awesome posts go amazingly viral. We can help you, awesomely. Our amazing team can place amazing links to your amazing posts across thousands of awesome websites worldwide. Follow the link to complete your awesomeness: http://www.awesomeviralityassistance.com. Enter your credit card information for amazing results, sooner then you think.

It never fails that I am suspicious of people whose adjective depth only extends through A. There’s so many more. In English, there’s twenty five more adjectival categories. I wonder why they never get past A in consideration of colorful adjectives? Maybe it’s because there’s some unwritten rule among dolts that since the word adjective itself begins with A, so should the adjectives they choose. It never made much sense to me.

What good is a viral post going to do for me? Will it make me lots of money? Will it give me my Andy Warholish fifteen minutes of fame? What happens after the fifteen minutes are up? It is then that I return from fame to obscurity, waiting for my next jackpot of virile, oops, I mean vital….dammit….VIRAL awesomeness. I already see myself as virile, as do most men, a combination of John Wayne, Chuck Norris, and Clint Eastwood, rather then the more likely Hrundi Bakshi or Inspector Clouseau (as played by Peter Sellers), a viral contagion if there ever was one. But I have yet to see myself as viral. In a funny sort of way, viral sounds about as appealing as bacterial, like an infection you’d rather not have picked up.

“I see your post went Rotaviral,” a physician friend told me. “It caused my computer to spew garbage for three days. I had to stuff a quarter-pound of red-rind hoop cheese into the SATA port to get it to stop. It was all a big mess. No more Rotaviral posts, please, or I’ll have to block you.”

Sometimes viral posts are about as appealing as the Rotaviral one described above. I don’t suppose I need to pay someone to expose millions to my Rotaviral posts.

I do like it when someone shares my posts. Who wouldn’t? But folks sharing a post is a pleasant bonus, not a goal in and of itself, though now that I think about it, perhaps a viral post would help me get as rich as Bill Gates and then I could hire someone to cut my grass this summer. I’m sure Bill Gates has someone cut his grass, though I recall no viral posts. If he did have one, it passed by me with all the swiftness a Rotavirus passes through a daycare center, but without any of the effects

Having touched upon viral, and Rotaviral, if I were you, I’d wash my hands after reading this. I did not wash mine before touching the keyboard, and among the coffee spills and cracker crumbs, and a few kipper drippings, there’s all kinds of nasty things in there, which is why my kkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeys keep sticking. Lurking somewhere in there, just waiting to get to you, is my Rotaviral post, coming to you free, without the help and expense of awesomeviralityassistance.com.

At least, you should wear safety glasses as you read this. Maybe a full face shield.

Too late….I should have warned you sooner.

©2017 Mississippi Chris Sharp