The 24 Words I Can’t Escape—Or Let Go Of
My much recirculated viral “tweet” from two years ago took on a different meaning after an Instagram user reposted it without proper credit.
On August 6th, 2022 I casually sent twenty-four words out into the ether, and I haven’t been able to escape them since. That day, I “tweeted” the following on the platform formerly called “Twitter,” since renamed “X”:
Sometimes, after I’ve completed a task that wasn’t on my to-do list, I add it, then cross it off for the free dopamine boost.
A succinct line of dry observational humor, it struck a chord with many readers. The post went viral, garnering over 117,000 likes, and more than 10,000 reposts, with countless commenters exclaiming their recognition with some version of, “I do the same thing!” Then influencers on Facebook and Instagram started sharing screenshots of my tweet, their posts in turn garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and reposts—all of them with my name and photo clearly displayed.
Having never had a post take off quite like that before, I was stunned. Over sixteen years on Twitter/X, a few of my other posts had gained respectable traction—to the tune of a few thousand likes—but none had ever succeeded to the same degree.
I also found it sobering. That one throw-away line of mine had had more eyeballs on it than anything else I’d ever published. I worried I'd be known more for those 24 words than for my books or magazines, Oldster and Memoir Land. Each time a friend or follower tagged me in the comments of some influencer’s post, I’d kid, “Please don’t let this be the only thing I’m ever known for,” or “If only I had a dollar for every like and share of this one line I wrote…”
Having never had a post take off quite like that before, I was stunned. Over sixteen years on Twitter/X, a few of my other posts had gained respectable traction—to the tune of a few thousand likes—but none had ever succeeded to the same degree. I also found it sobering. That one throw-away line of mine had had more eyeballs on it than anything else I’ve ever published.
In September, 2023, after X announced it would feed users’ posts to artificial intelligence so it could mimic writers’ voices, I deleted that post and the more than 15,000 others I’d made since first joining in 2008. I’d be damned if I was going to help a bunch of bots impersonate me, least of all at a time when journalism, publishing, and digital media have been in free-fall, making it nearly impossible for writers like me to earn a living. As an additional safeguard I locked my account, and for the most part, stopped using the platform. (I’ve backslid a bit in recent months—it’s addictive!)
But deleting that viral tweet in the process didn’t stop the thing from continuing to travel far and wide across social media. Two years on, my sentiment is still being widely shared, mostly on Facebook and Instagram. Friends alert me to it when they see it crop up again, and I keep performatively rolling my eyes in the comments. This silly little thing is still making the rounds? followed by the laughing/crying emoji.
But last week, for the first time I’m aware of, my little quip was shared without attribution, and I was shocked by my reaction. An Instagram user with more than half-a-million followers posted my words, but neither my photo nor my name. A friend brought it to my attention by tagging me in the comments and writing, “Hey, @SariBotton, isn’t this yours?”
I became instantly upset—which surprised me. Wasn’t this just a throw-away line? Why did I feel I owned an apparently common thought, one so many others said they’d had, too?
One of the commenters on the offending post inadvertently helped me figure it out why I cared—by arguing with me that I had no claim to the thought, insisting it’s so common, no one owns it. I thought about it for a moment, and then this distinction came to me: It wasn’t the thought, or the behavior described, that I owned; it was the particular phrasing of it—the precise way I’d put it, which I’d like to believe had something to do with so many people relating to it. What writers do.
I thought back to when Twitter was still fun—the time before November, 2022, when Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and started messing with the algorithm so that it deprioritized legitimate journalism and writers. What had often made it entertaining, for me at least, was observational humor, perfectly phrased punchlines and aphorisms written by my compatriots in corners of the platform commonly referred to as “literary Twitter” and “media Twitter.”
Last week, for the first time I’m aware of, my little quip was shared without attribution, and I was shocked by my reaction. I became instantly upset—which surprised me. Wasn’t this just a throw-away line? Why did I feel I owned an apparently common thought, one so many others said they’d had, too?
I used to joke that many of us were doing a 288-character version of standup. I feel both wistful and ashamed recalling how much time and energy I spent during my many years on Twitter/X trying to nail the exact right combination of words to make others laugh, or identify—for free. Well, there was a pay-off, other than just a fun way to procrastinate on bigger projects: Like all of my colleagues, I was building “platform,” something writers are advised to do—build an audience on social media that will come to know your name and your voice, and then because of that, at least theoretically, purchase your books, and the periodicals containing your work.
There are whole accounts, like @CountsAsWriting, dedicated to the notion that, well, just about everything “counts as writing”—that whatever writers do in the service of their writing, including, say, napping, counts toward doing the work. In my mind, crafting and posting jokes on social media meets the criteria. Not only did it help me build platform, eventually reaching over 11,000 followers, it also helped me hone my voice. The voice that was behind that viral tweet. The voice I didn’t want bots to steal—nor humans, like the Instagram user who’d dropped my name and image.
Then I thought back further, to the years I freelanced as an advertising copywriter, a job that often meant whole days—sometimes weeks, even—workshopping single lines of copy, short phrases, and two-word calls to action. We sought to achieve the greatest impact with the fewest words—almost a kind of poetry. It was a difficult exercise that paid well. Ironically, I was paid exponentially more per word in advertising than I’d ever received while writing for newspapers and magazines.
But here’s an even bigger irony: I happen to have have tattooed on my arm a much misattributed bit of poetry. In October of 2012, the day before my 47th birthday, I had inked on my skin the following words:
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
I chose that popular quote—which appears frequently on candles, mugs, and other inspirational doodads—under the misapprehension that they belonged to Anais Nin. That’s because nearly all of the objects bearing those words credit Nin for them.
But six months after I got my tattoo, a writer named Elizabeth Appell came forward and claimed the quote. It constituted one stanza of “Risk,” a poem she’d written in the ‘70s when she was working as a publicist for an adult-ed college in Contra Costa County in California, and went by the name “Lacey Bennett.” When I found out about it, I reached out to Appell and interviewed her. She told me she’d hoped that stanza might inspire more adults to sign up for classes, and so she put it on one of the school’s flyers—without crediting herself.
One of the commenters on the offending post argued that I had no claim to the thought, insisting it’s so common, no one owns it. I thought about it for a moment, and then this distinction came to me: It wasn’t the thought, or the behavior described, that I owned; it was the particular phrasing of it—the precise way I’d put it, which I’d like to believe had something to do with so many people relating to it. What writers do.
At some point, someone must have lifted the stanza and shared it. Others must have shared it from there, making it viral, and then somewhere along the line, someone must have realized it would sell more inspirational doodads if it was attributed to a famous author like Nin.
My tattoo has no attribution after it, neither for Nin, nor Appell. But every time someone asks me about it, I tell them Appell’s story.
***
As a writer, (and someone who regularly champions other writers) I like to give—and receive—credit where it’s due. So I reached out to the Instagram user who posted my words without my name. The next day she added the words “Image credit: @saribotton” to her caption. But given how easily others can still share the photo from her account without the caption showing up, this didn’t solve the problem.
She’d also chosen the wrong language. This wasn’t some “image” I’d found somewhere on the internet and shared, that she’d then reshared. It was my words. I went back and pointed all of this out to her, in the comments, and in direct messages, but she didn’t make any further efforts to rectify the matter. I’m not happy about it.
Listen, that one little aphorism might not be my magnum opus. Nonetheless, those are my words, in my voice, that I put a certain amount of thought into stringing together. And I’d like to be properly credited for them.