The Internet President

Chapter 9 Remixed

Chapter 9

Remixed

Maria wheels a dusty whiteboard into her living room. It partially obscures a few bookcases along the wall. She wipes dust off the board.

James looks at the board with a gleam in his eye. “You still have it? Like old times, you, me, and a lot of hard work.” He tests the markers. They’re dried out.

“We’ll need lots of coordination when we get serious about the campaign.” James takes a deep breath, to gather strength for what he knows is a big ask. “We should co-locate.” He exhales, still tense.

“I have some big cardboard boxes in the garage you can live in.” Maria holds a serious expression until a smile breaks through. “You could do odd jobs for room and board.”

James assumes a mock fight pose with a grin. “I’ll be your bodyguard.”

“The thought that I would need a—” She can’t finish the sentence without laughing.

“It wasn’t that funny,” James says. “You’re not invincible.”

Maria averts her eyes and motions for James to stop. “OK. OK. The guest bedroom is all yours, bodyguard.”

She helps James move anything he can salvage to her place. A lifetime of possessions condenses into a carload. A few trash bags of clothes, broken computer equipment, and random odds and ends isn’t much to remember his old life by.

After the move, Maria and James work at adjoining laptops on the unbroken table.

James sifts through search results. “We went viral because of another video with forty million views linked to us.” He clicks. The video plays on the TV.

The mega-viral video remixes their footage. It begins with the brief moment in the original where Maria’s outfit distracted James. A single lecherous gaze draws out with camera tricks for eternity, or at least that’s how five seconds feels like when your dignity is roasted on a campfire spit. A poorly imitated Asian accent is dubbed in. “Oh. Very clever outfit, sexy girl.” A loud gong reverberates.

James looks horrified, then sneers.

Maria giggles.

“Aiya! You’d think I’d never seen a girl before. I’m a player, not a loser,” James’ face turns red from embarrassment and anger.

The main section of the original upload is heavily edited into sound bites. Every time the words “none of the above,” or “more jobs” are used, a cartoon version of Maria flies through the air to dropkick an election poster.

One section remains unedited. James wobbles in the video as he speaks. “We can fix America. We will fix America. Internet, how would you fix America?”

“Unleash the Internet!” Cats and animated babies stampede through the living room in the video, as he belly flops onto the table in slow motion. Splat. The sound is sped up, high pitched, like drunk chipmunks, as he says “fix the table.” The video ends as he passes out to another gong sound.

James says, “A gong? I could do without the Sixteen Candles homage. That’s a part of the eighties I’d rather forget.” He stares at the screen.

“I liked it. I’m a superhero.” Maria kicks, imitating her cartoon self. “It was funny and short. They didn’t mess with the core message, voter engagement. People want to feel heard. It’s the whole point of billions on social media.”

James paces in frustration. “Thousands have taken the mantle of none of the above. I can’t outshout all of them. This guy has his own gong. I’ve lost control of the message. It’s a runaway train.”

Maria says, “No, James, you did it. The Take Back America Movement just changed their endorsements for president and vice president to ‘none of the above’ and ‘more jobs.’ They took us literally.”

James points his finger at Maria. “If there were a little more James Wong, and a little less none of the above we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Maria purses her lips. “You’re right. Otherwise, the video would never go viral. Twenty people would click on it and ask ‘who’s James Wong?’”

Reality is a slap in the face. “I’ll tell you who James Wong is. I know what to do.”