Viral

It was a quiet afternoon at the Bateman residence. Despite it still being autumn, snow began to accumulate in inches outside, the pure white reflecting the grey sky above. Things were kept very lowkey, as fire crackled in the grand fireplace in the living room. Aubrey was at a friend’s house for a sleepover, and was due home later that day. This gave her mother a chance to do her own thing, and indulge in her latest obsession- her instagram.

Being that the veil over the island was slowly becoming more inclusive of incorporating in the popular culture of the outside world, Loralei began to return to the things she missed being both isolated here and the realm in which she became a genie. So, on lazy days like this, she was usually on her phone, while her husband tended to his studies.

"Nope, nope, trash, barf." The genie muttered to herself as she lay on the couch, done up in an oversized sweater and leggings and yet still somehow looking put together. Must have been the eyeliner. "Nice." Her evaluation came from the several pictures she took of herself, each with miniscule differences that made the clear distinction from swamp demon to instagram worthy. To her, at least. With a few swipes of her thumb, she uploaded the picture to her page- accompanied with #sweaterweather #snowday #blessed- all trivial tags, but hey, it got her hits.

When the photo was uploaded, she took the chance to look at her feed- mostly consisting of her face, various magic tricks, food, videos of her daughter, pictures of friends…

But something was missing. A major part of her life wasn’t being broadcasted to the world.

That needed to change.

Loralei floated up from her seat on the couch, tucking her phone in her pocket. She exited the living room, moving down the hallway that seemed to go on forever. At the end was his study. A devilish, cherry-red lipstick smirk crossed her face.

Without a sound, she floated up behind him, orienting her body so that she was floating upside down. She spoke suddenly.

"Watcha doin’?"

Time to teach this 5,000 year old dog some new tricks.

@Fletcher
​

It looked like she spooked him. Oops.


She looked around at the mess that was being made, floating over to plop on the pile of books. She looked down on him, folding her arms over her knees.


"Hm, looks like some pretty heavy stuff." She picked up one of the books, flipping through it. It was completely incomprehensible, so she left the reading up to him. "I’m surprised you don’t have these things memorized. These books are probably as old as you." She teased, before sliding down the mound to stand next to him.


"Why don’t you take a break? I mean, unless the world is gonna break in two, I think taking a few wouldn’t hurt." She asked, before grinning slyly, running her hand along along his backside before hopping in front of him. "Come on. Breathing all this dust can’t be good for you."

​

Loralei listened, resting her hand on her chin and nodding occasionally during his tirade. Well, she mostly listened. She learned throughout her time living with him that when he got worked up he tended to ramble on about one or two words that set him off. Fair, she was the same, so it worked out. But good lord was he strung up. Even if he was immortal, she couldn’t help but to worry about his blood pressure.


"Yup. Uh huh." She occasionally interjected. She humored him for a few minutes, letting him blow off some steam he obviously had pent up. Once he seemed to get a thesis’ worth of ranting out, Loralei grabbed his shoulder suddenly. "Alright Mister type A, that’s quite enough. You’re coming with me." With that, she squeezed a bit, and the two pooped out of the room in a cloud of silver smoke.


In just a few moments, the two were in the courtyard in the back of the estate, standing on the cobblestone as snow pattered gently down. Sure, it was kind of chilly, but the lighting was nice with what little sun reflecting on the snow. Perfect.


"See? Now isn’t this better? You could use the fresh air." She said, turning to look at him. She snapped her fingers, making a scarf appear on him out of thin air. "Just in case you’re cold." She pulled out her phone from her back pocket, opening up the camera with a swipe of her thumb. "Now, have you been keeping up with the times? Do you know what a selfie is?"

​

Loralei snickered. He did look a bit grumpy, but it was hard to take his scowl seriously at snowflakes gently landed on him. It was kinda cute, honestly.

Of course, she should have predicted the type of answer he gave. He usually bluffed when he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, but didn’t want to swallow his pride and admit that the beacon of enlightenment himself was about as hip as a corporate twitter’s account desperate for millenial attention.
But that was okay. She expected that he wasn’t completely caught up with the times. And with her presence on social media, combined with their daughter’s recent interest in video games, it was about time that he was brought somewhat up to speed.

She smirked. "Alright, bet." She said simply. Before she gave him the chance to respond, she swiftly moved to his side, resting her head on his shoulder. She raised the phone in front of them, taking a brief second to kiss his cheek before snapping the picture before he had the time to react.

She let go of him, and moved to stand in front of him. "Well ain’t that just precious." She chuckled a bit, showing him the picture before getting back to her phone.

#snowday #blessed #thugwife…

"So, master of selfies, I gotta say- even when you’re scowling you are pretty photogenic." She noted, still looking at her phone. "My instagram followers are gonna love this. Maybe I should post it to twitter too…. Pretty sure people are convinced I made you up or something."
​

Oh my.

Loralei watched as Carl began to lecture her about what he seemed to think was some sort of evil force that stole personal information and stored it for all of eternity. Well, he wasn’t too far from the truth. But in the grand scheme of things social media was relatively harmless.

"Carl,relax. Everything’s fine." Of course, she couldn’t help but to smirk a bit. Turns out there were still some things he didn’t know after all these years. Then again, the internet must have been a droplet in the pool of his time. "It’s a website. Like on the internet. For your phone." She held her phone up, pointing to the screen. She may have needed to explain further.

"Look," She tried to show him her instagram. "This is instagram. You just upload pictures of stuff, like food and selfies. Which is just a picture of yourself. Then other people like it or comment it. I dunno, it’s kinda fun." She explained. "It’s kinda like your books. If you record everything you won’t lose it. Except this is more for small menial shit and not like, earth shattering spells."

​

Of course he knew about this the whole time. He was only just pretended to be clueless, her mistake. She had to actively try not to laugh, because at this point any more blows to his pride might have set him off. So she let him have this one. Admittedly, she kinda enjoyed that about him. He was a man of his convictions, and she couldn’t knock him for that.

"Why?" She answered his question with another question, so that she could explain herself further. "Because yeah, you have a lot of portraits. But how good are they if you can’t use them to affirm how great you are?"

She had a way with convincing.

"I mean, sure, you and I see them a lot. But if your face isn’t in other people’s faces, then how are they going to know who they’re dealing with?" She asked, raising a brow. "I don’t do it for approval- God knows I don’t need that. But if it’s a way to put my best self out there, I’m not going to complain if people like what they see." Her nail clicked on the follower tab, which displayed a few thousand. If there wasn’t this magic veil over the island, she expected there would be more.

When he asked about libraries, she thought for a moment. "Well, social media like this isn’t just for pictures and stuff. It’s an archive for whatever you want it to be. Information from across the world at your fingertips in less than a second." She snapped for emphasis, before going back to her phone in order to look for something to show Carl. It was some witches’ instagram from the island, with hundreds of pictures from spellbooks. "See? And once something’s on the internet, it never really goes away."

She put her hand on her hip. "So yeah. I’d say it’s pretty nifty."
​

Well, it didn’t take long to convince him that her little pastime was worthy of his attention. But…

Oh my.

She was quiet throughout most of his declaration, but couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He only found out the brief synopsis of the inner workings of social media not even a minute ago and… Now, it appeared he was the expert of it.

After he was finished his speech, Loralei cracked a grin. And begin to laugh, akin to that of an anime villain. She placed a hand over her chest, and looked up at him with a raised brow.

"Is that a challenge?”"

Now it was one thing to take interest, but he believed he would somehow surpass her, a born-and-bred millennial, in the art of social media? Please. Could he even learn how to work an algorithm?

But she did love a good betting game...

"You know what? I actually wanna see you try to surpass me. You may have all the knowledge of the cosmos at the palm of your hand, but I know what the people of today want. But hey, I’m all for teaching an old dog new tricks. Hell, I’ll even be your first follower."

She could see the look in his eyes. He wasn’t playing. Good, she liked commitment. She folded her arms, her phone in her hand.

"I know you’re up to something. What’s cookin’ in that big brain of yours?"
​

This was fun. Who knew a lazy afternoon could shift into a little game on something that in retrospect seemed so miniscule. There was never a dull day here, that was for sure.

His plan seemed sound. Well, minus the abduction of her followers into his own as if people didn’t follow multiple accounts. But, it was a learning process, so she let him have the benefit of the doubt. She couldn’t help but to laugh, stifling it a bit with a hand over her mouth. Not at him per se, but how enthusiastic he was. Even if this didn’t work out, she still wanted to see what he could accomplish.

"Well if you want people to dote on you and do whatever you say, Instagram is the way to go." She said. It was true for really famous people, though usually the extent of influence just covered being bought things off amazon wishlists.

When he asked her how to gain followers, a wide grin crawled across her face. She chuckled, her own mind coming up with a scheme or two. "Oh, that’s the easy part. All followers want is content- your face, your interests, what you eat. But the thing is, you gotta know what they want" She smiled slyly. "Trends come and go. What people are into, what they want to see. The important thing is to be yourself, but it doesn’t help to cater now and again. You’ve got a big personality. People love that shit. If you gain these peoples’ trust, and drop a bit of fan service here and there, you’ll get an army of fanboys and girls who will do anything for you at the drop of a hat. You should see my messages. I’ve already got people offering to buy groceries for me."

Hm… How else could he give him a boost…

”What else do you have going for you… Well, you look young. You do magic. People really seem to like intellectual types. Also you’re married. There’s been a push lately for people to follow couples. And dads. For uh, weird reasons." The internet sure was strange. He’d learn that quickly enough. "So yeah, you may stand a chance to surpass me."

​

He had a point. Though she loved being online and putting herself out there, she couldn’t help but to feel there was something vapid about it all. Still, indulgence here and there never hurt anyone. Of course, there was also the darker sides, like the dozens of men that threw themselves with their unimpressive nether reasons. If it wasn’t so pathetic, she would probably be mad.

"I can see it now. You’re gonna go viral." Well, there was hoping anyway.

When he asked her to set up her account for him, she took his phone and looked at it, dangling it in front of her face with a slightly disapproving look. "Good god Carl, what did you do to this thing?" She asked, observing the poor old busted thing. She expected the camera was junk too. No, this wouldn’t do at all.

"You need an upgrade. Hang on." She took the phone, clasping it in both of her hands. She closed her eyes to focus, clenching it tight. In a puff of smoke, a newer phone appeared. It was technically an illusion, but since it was for her master, she could hold it for longer until she could physically buy him an upgrade. "There. Don’t go breaking this one now."

Now, for the important part.

She went to downloading all the essentials- Instagram in particular. When she opened the app, she was brought up to the create an account page. Huh. This might be tricky.

"Alright, so all you have to do now is to come up with a handle for yourself. It’s a name people know you by online. But it’s gotta be unique, so think hard on that." She handed him his new phone. "After this, you’re good to go and start posting things."

​

Oh my god.

She watched him physically struggles to grasp the concept of a handle. He seemed visibly frustrated, confused, and even went to think that she was somehow fucking with him. If only.

"Carl, no, it’s-" She was going to say username, but would he get that either? Hm. Looks like she was going to take this heavy responsibility into her hands.

"Nevermind, lemme see that again." She took the phone that he was grasping at like some sort of technologically illiterate mime and held it in front of her. A handle, he needed a handle…

Hmm...

Her thumbs glossed over the touchscreen in a swift motion- “King_Carlicious”

Good enough, he could change it later, but he needed something catchy. With a few other presses of a button, and a bio that read “Kickin it since 3000BC | The world isn’t the only thing I can destroy ;)” his profile was set up.

"There. It’s all ready to go." She moved to stand next to him, showing him his new screen. "You press here to take a picture, and here to upload stuff. If you click on any pictures you can see comments, which are good. Mostly."

She handed the phone to him.

"You now have the power of the islands entire social media presence. So, future king of instagram, what’s your first post gonna be?"

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