So we started filming a series of videos where I’d get drunk at my desk—an entire bottle of wine in only a few minutes—rant about one thing or another, then hastily edit a five-minute cut together, often still drunk, and post it to Facebook. In a matter of weeks, those videos got millions of views, and they soon became our very own version of must-see Internet. Karaoke on the biggest stage. Maybe not the biggest stage, but a much bigger one than I was used to. It was exciting but terrifying. Drunk moms from Minnesota started stopping me in the street. I was interviewed by a Canadian news station. It was all happening.

And then, one afternoon in late 2015—about a year into posting videos—I got a tweet from a random stranger asking if I knew I was nominated for a People’s Choice Award. I had no idea. I didn’t believe it. People tweet me a lot of shit, and of all the shit people have tweeted at me, nobody had ever asked if I was nominated for a People’s Choice Award. I was understandably suspicious. But then I looked it up. And it was true! I was nominated for a People’s Choice Award for favorite social media star. Granted, this was only the short list, some twenty people who might be nominated if all their followers voted for them, and the other people in my category were people who, in some cases, had tens of millions more followers than I had. There’d be no way in hell I’d make it beyond the short list. And sure, like they tell you, it’s an honor just to be nominated—or short-listed—but nobody wants to be short-listed when they could win. I wanted to win.

But I’m not lying when I tell you I have no idea how the hell this shit works. Nobody tells you anything. I didn’t even know I was on the short list until some random person on Twitter told me. They don’t send you an e-mail saying, “Hey, this is how shit works.” You just have to figure it all out yourself. But I made a half-assed effort to try to get people to vote for me. And they did.