I never quite understood this desire to be on television, at least in this way. This was before the Internet was anything beyond instant messaging and chat rooms, when “going viral” meant you needed to see a doctor. This was before some buffoon grabbing a local news reporter’s microphone and shouting something obscene into the camera would end up on YouTube and get a bigger viewership than the news station had gotten that entire year. Even now, I don’t understand the urge to go viral this way—not that there’s a desirable way to go viral, let’s be honest. But then, standing behind a news reporter meant, at the very best, you’d get twenty seconds of uninterrupted airtime blurring into the background.

But I suppose the idea of being on television was titillating, especially to a young, impressionable nerd like myself. Everybody watches TV! Being on TV automatically means you’re famous! And being famous is basically the coolest thing in the world. It’s the reason those annoying people at baseball games lose their shit whenever the camera pans to them for five seconds. It’s the reason the entire city of Los Angeles exists. The magic of television.

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I never thought I’d be on TV after that. In high school, I had a reputation for being a ticking time bomb of embarrassment. Whenever I’d raise my hand to answer a question, or more accurately, whenever I was called on to answer a question—I tried to avoid the spotlight as much as possible—it was only a matter of seconds before all of my blood rushed to my face and my cheeks turned an ungodly combination of beet red and fire. It would take at least another ten minutes for my face to return to normal. And this lasted well into college. In discussion sections—designed, I’m fairly certain, just so insufferable bros in beanies can philosophize about a book they’ve never read—I stuck faithfully to the minimum amount of participation required, and certainly never engaged in anything close to discussion. Honestly, I was sparing everybody the discomfort of having to be in the same room as someone who could turn as hideously scarlet as I could.

This is all to say that I never imagined myself on television, however enticing I found the idea of it, least of all as a nominee for a People’s Choice Award for a series of videos I’d made for the Internet, and least of all as the unceremonious winner.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning.

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