Tumblr is a popular social media site; not as popular as Instagram or Twitter, but still up there. Users are able to create their own posts, and share posts from others that they think are worthy of being on their feed. Some accounts and posts, just like all social media, can attract a lot of attention. Veronica Klenk, a now incoming sophomore at Marist College, is one of these people who created a post which gained a lot of traction. Below is a mini-interview where I ask her about this post!
Evan (Me): So you have quite a popular post on Tumblr, can you tell me a little about it? What was it? How popular did it get?
Veronica: Ok so I was in eighth grade, and I was really active on Tumblr; it was pretty much the only social media I used. I made a post one day that said: "I had a dream I was flirting with Leonardo DiCaprio and I said 'What's your sign?' and he said 'DiCapricorn' and I laughed so hard I woke up". It blew up SO fast and before I knew it it had hundreds of thousands of likes. At the time I stopped using Tumblr, yet, it was one of the top ten posts with the most "notes" (the Tumblr version of "likes") on the entire website.
Screenshot of the post from January 2016Klenk's screenshot
Evan: Did you really have this dream? Or was it something you thought was funny, and it somehow caught on?
Veronica: God no, it was 100% fabricated, sorry fans.
Evan: Why did you stop using Tumblr if you had such a popular post? Did you feel like you peaked on the website and wanted to move onto something else?
Veronica: Well this was around 2013, maybe late 2012 when Tumblr started getting REALLY out of hand. It was at the start of the social justice movement, and while there's nothing wrong with that, but if you've ever been on Tumblr you know it's not really geared towards funny jokes and silly comments anymore. After I'd been gone for a couple months, I tried checking in on my account, but my email address needed verification using my backup email, which had been deleted, so I'm locked out of that account forever. As for feeling like I "peaked", a little while after the DiCapricorn post, I made another post that blew up and got maybe half as many likes, so I knew people still liked my humor and wanted more and I kind of regret logging out forever instead of pursuing that.
Evan: That sucks that you aren't able to access that account anymore. When I try to Google "DiCapricorn," your post doesn't show up but a lot of other accounts do which copy what you originally said. Does that make you feel any sort of way?
Veronica: Oh yeah. This post has undoubtedly been seen by millions, maybe tens of millions of people across all different platforms. People who know I'm the creator see it on Instagram and tag me all the time. My family has seen it on Facebook. Right before this article, I searched it just to see how it was doing and it has its own page on meme websites. If my name was attached to it or if all the people who reposted it had given me credit, I would have a gigantic audience. Even if only a fraction of the people who saw it decided to look at my social media, that would still give me thousands of potential followers.
Evan: It would have been a good opportunity for you if that was the case, considering over half a million people have seen it. However your post and account does not show up when you search it on Google, why do you think that is?
Veronica: I think at this point, unfortunately, the reposts have overshadowed the original post, especially since my Tumblr account has been inactive for so long and honestly might have been deleted by now. There's one particular re-post that I've seen most often where the person has cropped out my URL and added a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio. It's extremely popular and that's what you'll most likely see if you look up the post. They didn't necessarily take credit for the joke, but they didn't give me credit either.
Picture which cropped out Klenk's urlTumblr
Evan: Interesting, that must be really annoying for you. Well, at least you know that you made that post and it must be really cool to see it explode in the way it did! I'm not sure if you are familiar with the show, but BoJack Horseman (a popular animated adult show) has a scene in one episode where it shows a bunch of celebrities and they label Leonardo Dicaprio's character as "Lernernerner DiCarpricorn". Have you ever seen that?
"Lernernerner DiCarpricorn" on the bottom leftScene from BoJack Horseman (Season 3, Episode 6)
Veronica: Wow I've actually never heard of that, that's really amazing! Honestly, I'm not sure it had anything to do with my post, it's a pretty easy jump to make from "DiCaprio" to "DiCapricorn" and creative thinking like that is basically a show-writers job.
