I walk back into the club, trying to catch up with Myrah to apologise, but people keep bumping into me. Some of them are tapping my shoulder. I’d forgotten how rough the club scene is. But then I realise that they’re doing it on purpose.
They’re shouting stuff like, “It’s him!” and “Get a picture!” and “Sing for us!”
That last one caught on. A bunch of them started chanting, “Sing, sing, sing, sing!”
What. The. Flip.
“Hands off the man!” I hear Mervin and my other two friends’ voices shout. They get a hold of me and lead me out of the club. Once we are in the cool outside, we started to laugh.
“What was that?!” Vusi says.
“I told you I was famous!” I yell.
“I knew it was true,” Mervin says.
Kent is on a high. “Freakin’ awesome!”
My friends and I gush about how insane that was.
Then I look around. “Wait. Where’s Mervin?”
“He was here a moment ago,” Vusi says.
“There he is!” Kent points. He’s leaning on someone’s car and a blonde girl is pushing herself onto him.
“Yo, Mervs!” I call. “Get a room.”
“You’re sick guys,” he jokes. The blonde girl steps away, blushing. We catch a glimpse of a phone he’s holding. “I was just enquiring of this nice young lady if she knew why those people thought they knew you.”
“And?”
“You are famous, bru,” he says. “Take a look.”
He shows us the screen and we see a video playing.
“Hey, that’s …” I trail off. “Me. 999 000 views,” I say, holding my head. “That’s how many views I’ve got.”
“Actually, it just jumped to one million views now,” Mervin corrects.
“You’re viral, dude!” Kent shouts.
I can’t believe it. I’m standing and watching myself on YouTube, singing Forever Love on stage, in a drunken stupor.
“This isn’t possible.” I can’t hold back my smile. Someone had recorded me and uploaded the clip and now I am at a million views.”
“Geez, JT, just imagine if you asked all of the people who viewed your video to give you just one rand – you’d be a millionaire,” Vusi jokes.
I was busy reading the comments under the video. They were a mixed bag; some good and some nasty.
Who’s dis guy, tho. He can’t sing 4 peanuts.
Omgee I luv him!! Wish all guys cud be like dat.
His drunk. Get him of d stage sum1 pls!
So sweet he is
Who is he??? Am in love
Where is this
Does anyone know who he is?
He goes to my gym!! Oh my God
He’s adorable
Just another karaoke singer
Song gone wrong
Dat gurl who broke his <3 must be kickn herself
This sucks! Just wasted my data.
They went on and on.
“This is great. We’re friends with a celebrity,” Kent says.
“Google how many hits you need to go viral,” Vusi tells Mervin. He does.
“Argh, it’s some long complicated crap that I’m too tired to read. Can we just go celebrate? We’ll read it tomorrow.”
“Celebrate what, though?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Vusi agrees. “What do we do with one million views?”
“Erm,” I think. Not being a techie, I didn’t know about this stuff in depth. “I’m not sure. I don’t think you can do anything.”
How wrong I was.
***
Tell us: It’s nice to hear good things, but would you be able to take people saying nasty things about your work publicly, like this?