After Orlando left, Auggie washed his face, did his hair, tested the natural light in the room and eventually lowered the blinds and positioned a lamp. Then he got back in bed, dragged the sheet into place—internet Auggie only showed nips when he was swimming, thanks—and checked himself on the phone’s screen. He was lucky that Glasses had only hit him on one side of the face; he turned that side away from the camera, gave himself sleepy, sexy eyes, and snapped a few pics. He tried some filters, settled on one that made his cheekbones pop, and scrawled morning, boo before posting it across all his feeds. Likes and comments began to rush in.
He showered. He checked his phone. He brushed his teeth. He checked his phone again. As he searched for something to wear, a pack of smokes tumbled free from the stack of clothes. Auggie grabbed it, intending to set it aside to roll in his sleeve later. Then he stopped. These were Kools, not Parliaments. He vaguely remembered picking up the pack last Saturday night, when he’d almost hit Theo with the Porsche. He tossed the pack to the back of the drawer—in case of emergency—and kept looking.
He picked out running shorts and a tank, put them on, thought about what Theo had been wearing every time Auggie had seen him, and dug through the drawers until he found his best pair of jeans, the kind that practically looked painted on, and a salmon-colored polo. He changed, fixed his hair again, and snapped another picture. After popping his collar, he got a fun, meta shot of himself glowering into the mirror. He scribbled look out, world across the center of the picture, posted it, and then went back to his previous post.
At the beginning, when Auggie had first been building his brand, he’d made a lot of mistakes. Bad lighting. Bad hair—God, that faux hawk. Bad jokes. But one of the biggest mistakes had been taking time to reply to every single follower every time they posted. For a while, it had been sustainable, if only barely. He’d spend an hour or two after every post, catching up on comments, writing thoughtful, meaningful replies. He wasn’t sure, now, if that had helped build his brand or if it had just been a waste of time. Internet Auggie was sensitive, maybe a little vulnerable, maybe even a little shy. Internet Auggie was kooky and funny. Taking time to reply had really accentuated the sensitive side.
As time went on, though, it had become impossible. A hundred thousand followers, with five or six thousand comments on even the stupidest posts—a picture of bacon and eggs arranged into a smiley face, for example—meant that it simply wasn’t possible for Auggie to respond to everyone. He also realized it wasn’t effective. If people got a response every time, they expected a response every time—and, worse, the value of those responses shrank over time.
Now, propped up against the mound of pillows, he worked his way through the feed the way he had learned to do: after a significant number of responses from his followers, he began scrolling through the first half of the comments. He might come back and look at the second half of the comments later, but it was important to reward people who commented early, and it was also important to show that he didn’t necessarily have time to get to the end of every comment section. Out of that first half of comments, he had to find the ones that stood out. A million love u and miss ur face and ur so hawwwwwwt didn’t give him much material to work with. He liked to hit the trifecta: sad, sweet, and silly.
He found the sad one right off: thank you for posting my mom just left my dad and we don’t have anyone to watch my little bro and just seeing ur face made me smile for the first time this week so thx. He hit reply and typed: thanks for sharing that. my dad left me before I turned one, and my mom did all the work. shout out to super moms everywhere. ur gonna get through this. i’m here for u.
Sweet was always a little tricky. Auggie had to hit the middle ground between accessing his sex appeal and acting too much like a bro. His followers didn’t want an overly confident jock who knew he was hot and a heartbreaker; these people had signed up for a sweet, quirky hot boy who just might be into sweet, quirky girls. He lucked out today and found another comment early in the feed. The way this one was formatted made it sound like it’d been written by someone over twenty-five: You are so cute and funny. Has anyone ever told you that you should do modeling? I’m a photographer, and I would really love to see you succeed! Auggie typed back: thanks! checked out your portfolio link—u r really talented! can’t believe anyone would want to see this mug on a runway though. At the end, he added a skull emoji and a laughing face.
Silly came easiest to him. He found a comment near the middle where someone had tagged MikiLuvs2Sing, a girl who did acoustic covers out of Los Angeles and who was, to judge by what her followers said about her, one of the kindest, most encouraging internet personalities out there. The comment said: o my god! can u imagine if @aplolz and @mikiluvs2sing got together? their babies would be and then a series of emoji fireworks. Auggie had cultivated a one-sided, pretend feud with Miki over the last year, one that Miki liked to play on too by pretending to be innocently confused and somehow managing to instigate him further. He immediately wrote back a series of emojis, skulls and knives and guns, ending with the throw-up icon.
Ok, he thought. Morning work was done.
Now he
