I was up at work, getting ready to put a bow on the day, when I had a random idea for a TikTok video. Grabbing my phone, I filmed myself pretending to hand a customer a giant bottle of lube while lip-synching “Popular” from Wicked (“You… will… be… popular, you’re gonna be pop-yoo-OO-lar…”), posted the clip, and clocked out.
I showed my assistant manager the video before I left, and he chuckled and was like, “Cute!” which is pretty much how I felt about it, too. Heading home, I scarfed some instant noodles, watched a horror movie, and went to bed. Business as usual at chez Splitfoot Forge.
So I got up the next morning all, “Ah, yes, another unremarkable 24 hours ahead of me.” And then I glanced at my phone and was like, “Wait… why do I have 13,000 TikTok notifications?”
Turns out, the video had gone viral overnight, racking up more than a million views and a thousand reposts. Which was flattering, if not a little confusing. (It honestly wasn’t that funny, y’all.) But then someone commented, “What kills me is I know Kristin Chenoweth has/will see this,” and then suddenly everyone decided that Kristin Chenoweth desperately needed to see it and started tagging her.
(At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the state of Paganism in the world today, which is legit. However, let me remind you that Kristin Chenoweth played both the witch G(a)linda in Wicked and the goddess Easter in American Gods. So yeah, it’s pretty much the most Pagan blog post ever. This is all just science.)
After awhile, people started commenting things like, “Why hasn’t Kristin Chenoweth responded? I really thought she would’ve responded by now,” which was… concerning. I mean, I was glad people enjoyed the video, but I definitely didn’t think it was worth harassing a celebrity over. And it was giving me mild, third-party flashbacks to the Great Twine Debacle of 2012.
See, a little over ten years ago, Jenny Lawson (a.k.a. @TheBloggess) penned an open letter to Nathan Fillion, asking him to send her a picture of himself holding twine. (It was part of a campaign to combat bad PR pitches, which had launched a few months previously with a picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers.) It was mostly in jest, but Jenny’s fans really wanted to see it happen, so whenever one of them met Nathan Fillion at a convention or a signing event, they’d ask him about it. He was always like, “Not really my thing, sorry,” which just seemed to encourage everyone to try harder, which started to wear on the actor. In the end, Jenny released a public apology and politely asked her readers to simmer down and let it go.
Granted, my fanbase is nowhere near the size of the Bloggess’, but TikTok is a lawless place that often feels like that scene in a Western where one of the bad hats shoots at a bartender’s feet to make him dance, and I didn’t want the situation to escalate. So I put up another video that was just like, “Haha, we’ve all had our fun, but let’s please please please respect Kristin Chenoweth’s boundaries.”
That video got a modest number of views, and I figured the viralness (is that a word?) was over and done with. So I was back at the store the next day, hanging out with my assistant manager at the front counter, and I casually glanced at my phone, then violently seized and made a noise that can best be described as a strangled honk.
Alarmed, my assistant manager pulled my phone away from me to see what was causing my apparent aneurysm. Here’s what he saw on the screen:
And then the boarders at the doggy daycare across the street went freaking nuts, at which point we realized it would probably be a good idea to stop screaming.
Even in the midst of my hysteria, I wanted to capture the moment, so I ran to my office and responded to her comment with a third video, in which I basically just stared at the camera in disbelief and mouthed a line from her cover of the Heart power ballad “Alone” from the Glee soundtrack. (“I never really cared until I met you…”) I didn’t add any hashtags or anything to the video, but my followers found it anyway and proceeded to lose their damn minds.
“DON’T PANIC,” one guy commented.
“TOO LATE,” I replied.
So everyone was freaking out and pledging their undying loyalty to Kristin Chenoweth, and my friend Buck was like, “YOU MADE IT HAPPEN,” and a bunch of other people were like, “YOU MANIFESTED KRISTIN CHENOWETH.”
Except here’s the thing: I didn’t. All I did was make a silly, 10-second video. The differently-sane goofballs who subscribe to my content were the ones double-timing to bring it to Kristin Chenoweth’s attention. And while comparatively, it’s not really that big of a deal — just a blip in the vast sea of the Internet — it does make me aware of how much better, if not weirder, my life is when compared to this time last year.
In December 2021, I was unemployed, depressed, and struggling to accomplish overwhelming goals like showering and feeding myself. Twelve months later, I’ve got an entertaining job; I’m working on two books; and I was along for the sleigh ride as dozens of people I’ve never met made it their personal mission to get an Emmy and Tony award-winning actress to say hi to me.
And y’all, I realize this is not the most solsticey of Solstice posts. But for me, the whole situation was unexpected light during what’s collectively understood to be the darkest time of the year — it was strangers coming together to generate a little warmth.
Kristin Chenoweth trolled me, and that is the Yuletide gift that keeps on giving. And I hope the small surprises you receive this holiday season keep you steadily warm as well.
ETA
I know a lot of you are probably saying to yourselves, “It’s neat that Kristin Chenoweth reacted to your video, but does one, solitary comment really count as trolling?” And you know what? One comment does not.
Two comments, on the other hand, are getting there:
I also want to mention that I sent these screenshots to Tempest in real-time before writing this post, and she was like, “I… don’t know who that is?” So, yeah: Friends might make a social media scene until Kristin Chenoweth acknowledges your existence, but good friends will totally keep you humble about it.
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