Picture this: A freshman in high school with uncomfortably tight braces and pimples that aligned on my forehead like stars in a constellation (Preferably the Big Dipper).
With this power duo, having low self-esteem was inevitable. The only way my esteem was secretly boosted was through my keen sense of humor that my friends praised through comments to me in person, my Facebook statuses, and the most obvious of them all, the retweets on Twitter.
With a whopping 600 followers on my personal Twitter just my freshman year, I felt empowered and as popular as a girl can get while being a solid 4.7/10. One day in the car, I had a eureka moment:
Without telling any of my friends, I was the anonymous mastermind behind the Twitter handle @UglyPeopleUnite. I began with tweets along the lines of "The bottom of my laptop is hotter than me," "you are that ugly person that people mention whenever they try to boost their friend’s self esteem", etc. etc.
With a grand total of 13 follows on UglyPeopleUnite after 7 days, I was finally exposed.
"Max..", my friend Haley said next to me in the car "..what the f*** is this?"
D*mmit. She knew it was me. They all did. I sheepishly and kind of jokingly explained that they won't be questioning how dumb the account is once I had a thousand followers.
So, let's fast forward a few months and a couple hundred cheesy tweets later:
Each day, my phone was bombarded with notifications from UPU. Hundreds of retweets from strangers, sometimes my close friends, occasionally a retweet from LOHANTHONY, and once a favorite was tossed from Kendall Jenner. Yes, the real one. Not sure how any of my tweets applied to her in any sort of way, but I'll take it.
My sophomore year of high school approached, and unexpectedly my self-esteem had a sudden surge. My orthodontist blessed me by removing my braces, and the acne on my face decided to peace out. The slightly more I moved up from a 4.7 to a decent 6.8, my followers increased as well. In eight short months of acquiring my Twitter alter-ego, Ugly People Problems had gained over 75,000 followers.
Summer vacation gave me some time to reflect on my creation. At this point I was tweeting ten times a day. It was not all fresh material. Sometimes I recycled old favorites and other times I shared comments from supporters (I legit had a fan club....one of them drew my cover photo for me). It became difficult to think of new jokes, but I felt an obligation to my followers, all 75,000 of them. It was a surprising amount of pressure, and you know what, being funny was not that fun anymore.
So, it wasn't out of the ordinary that one of my followers slid into the DM's, and occasionally I would be kind enough to answer like I actually cared about their really-not-funny-at-all tweet suggestions. Lately, some of these DM's came from other big accounts, such as Spooderman, a Workaholics parody, and World Star Daily, all with over 100K followers. Each of these accounts asked if they could buy my account from me, each with offers ranging from $250-$1200. My first thought was why the hell would these people pay that amount of money for a username and password, and then that question didn't even matter once this Canadian man offered me three thousand dollars to run this account. I accepted this offer faster than Usain Bolt can run a 100 meter race with rocket powered roller blades on. It was time for me to retire with a grand total of 78,543 followers, 870 tweets, and 0 ugly jokes left to tell.
In August of 2013, Ugly People Problems was no longer in the hands of its creator. It was bittersweet. The $3000 was a nice bonus, but no amount of money could come close to what it felt like to make people feel better by making jokes that applied to them. Moving forward, I will always help others find their confidence, it just will not be 78,543 people at the same time.
Author's note:
