Dropping Heat

A short story

Photo by Chase Chappell on Unsplash

Kyle sampled his Americano and, from a cozy corner of the local brutalist coffee spot, observed the half-dozen college-age, minimum-wage, ploy-of-the-day soybrains lined up on either side of the cash register and felt like a king. How many of these incapable cave dwellers could say they had no boss, no debt, thirty-five thousand followers—er, students—and more than one viral tweet? How many had a God-given formula for business success they could iterate over and again to four-figure fortnights and share with the world? Few. But Kyle could. He was a digital writer. He could do what he wanted and be a king indeed.

Lately, the timeline had found its insightful sovereign to be quite adept at dropping heat.

🤡 Ishaan Reddy | The Productivity Dude
@Ishaan_Ready
Replying to @TheKyleGrossman

Thank you for so much value 🔥🔥🔥

1:37 PM · Jun 1, 2022 · Twitter for iPhone

🤡 Luke | Performance Books
@PerformanceBooks
Replying to @TheKyleGrossman

Truth! Threads are dumbbells for your Twitter gym 💪

11:19 AM · Jun 8, 2022 · Twitter Web App

1 Retweet 5 Likes

🤡 Zain Harmon
@ZainHarmon99
Replying to @TheKyleGrossman

Amazing observations, thanks for sharing. No way I could make them myself. Not as I am now… #grindset

10:08 AM · Jun 17, 2022 · Twitter for iPhone

🤡 Leo | Leo Mindset
@TheLeoSalgado
Replying to @TheKyleGrossman

@readlater
#SaveThread

9:28 AM · Jun 6, 2022 · Twitter for iPhone

1 Like

Kyle was a provider of pointers, a vendor of value, a sutler of sales supremacy, and a titan of threads. He trained his students on copious lists, on chains of tweets, and reamed them in such exhaustive detail thrice weekly, always for free.

🤴 Kyle Grossman
@TheKyleGrossman

I devoured over 150 podcasts last year (remember: 2x speed).
Here are 8 episodes that taught me mad wisdom about the power of making money online 🧵👇

8:25 AM · Jun 6, 2022 · Twitter Web App

388 Retweets 18 Quote Tweets 1,134 Likes

🤴 Kyle Grossman
@TheKyleGrossman

10 reasons (backed by science!) why writing more threads will 10x your overall output in life 🧵👇

10:05 AM · Jun 8, 2022 · Twitter Web App

278 Retweets 25 Quote Tweets 905 Likes

🤴 Kyle Grossman
@TheKyleGrossman

I read 4 hours a day.
Most books WILL waste your time (and that’s being generous).
If you want to 10x your writing online, read these 7 killer threads and put those hardbacks in the bin:

11:05 AM · Jun 1, 2022 · Twitter Web App

372 Retweets 24 Quote Tweets 1,490 Likes

The class-community-clientele lauded his beefy bangers, quote-tweeted without mercy, and crawled back for more (without fail, one could say, but then failure is a necessary step on the path to success).

His most popular and controversial (and therefore popular) thread began as follows:

🤴 Kyle Grossman
@TheKyleGrossman

Yesterday, Steph won Finals MVP and got the Warriors their 4th title in 8 seasons.
With no KD.
In 2020, Golden State was the worst team in the NBA.
This run should have been impossible.
Here are 30 thoughts I had watching the most revolutionary player in basketball:

8:35 AM · Jun 17, 2022 · Twitter Web App

577 Retweets 68 Quote Tweets 3,660 Likes

There was no weapon more powerful than a thread for driving the engagement you needed to live life online. Singular tweets and isolated hot takes could similarly stir the pot and get you a round of replies, a few followers (students!) too, but the almighty algorithm favored nothing more than longform content—threads, that is—for sharing among the many lost souls who didn’t already know they needed what you had. You simply suffixed a suggestion to share or a link to your wares and you were right as rain. If you as a business owner, freelancer, coach, or some other sort of solopreneur wanted to explode your follower count and make sales into the stratosphere, there was no reason to look further. Kyle tweeted on this from experience and had a course, website, and sales funnel all about it. The art of writing threads was his offer to the hungry legions, a year now his bread and butter. For less than the cost of a phone bill ($69), the PDF could be theirs too. And unlike most schmucks, he never followed up with tweet nor email saying something about “9 left”.

Sure, some tweeted in the comments that Kyle was a LARP, relentlessly talking out of his ass. No way in hell he walked fifteen thousand steps a day. But these fools couldn’t fathom the effort he put in. It was easy to talk shit behind an anime avatar or an NFT. It was far more perilous to create, to compile insights and share them globally and have skin in the digital game, to bet your livelihood on your own image, your own name. Kyle wasn’t a LARP. Kyle didn’t pretend. He scoured texts, scribbled observations, and distilled what he learned. He hopped on calls and interviewed gurus who made multiple times what he did or more, then transcribed the results for the world to read. He drafted and revised every tweet he ever sent. The shit Kyle wrote was real. It was all real! Wasn’t it?

Kyle sipped his coffee again and relaxed in his seat, swimming in numbers and sums. Thirty-five thousand followers, so many students, and so many likes. The metrics were astral beings glowing in the ambit of his headspace, and the people around him, insignificant though they were, ceased to matter at all. The only creation Kyle saw was content, reams of it and the results they produced. A beautiful butterfly effect that ended in bills. The interplay of our parallel lives: personal brands interacting with audiences, platforms propitiously predicting our moves. The digital was a galaxy, a goldmine, glorious, and goddamn if Kyle knew how to game it well.

Then all of sudden his bowels called, and his posterior picked up the phone. Last night’s cauliflower and sweet potatoes had ballooned in his gut, aided by morning whole grains. Kyle girded his loins and gathered his laptop, folding the latter into its bag. He left his coffee and crossed fields of asphodel to the place where relief lay in wait. The hour was upon him, the dread sit of death. It was time to make a deposit, take the Browns to the Super Bowl, release the kraken and such. To blow mud, endure fecal harassment, reverse the oil rig and choke the chocolate cobra as well. A voluntary loss of stool, to slay the brown dragon as JBP would order you do. Life is suffering, yes, but dropping the kids off at the pool makes it all worthwhile.

Kyle ducked into a bathroom stall and sat, satchel down at his side. He strained and performed what was prophesied, hunched over and possibly red in the hide. Ripping and roaring, inside and out; so he produced the boneless brown trout.

In four stall walls, Kyle had room to think. The pot proffered ponderance beyond his bated breaths and the stink. The metrics came back in their mellifluous array, the shimmery satyrs in social media’s play. Seductive they were, productive were they, how they rewarded compliance and enticed us to stay.

Kyle closed his eyes, still straining, and briefly wondered if he could keep this up. He’d come so far and done so much, created so much content and written so many words. He had threads from his threads, he made good money, and he’d make so much more. He was young, and it was up to him when he quit. His followers, students, or whatever would cry, bleat, and kill to be in his house shoes. Just a little longer, he thought, and perhaps he could pull the plug. Then he could be content.

But the wonder was brief, the vale come quickly to close it down. Kyle felt his feces come easy, and he endeavored to check in on his Chipotle children. It seemed their pool time was up. Kyle made to wipe, but then more came to the aft, not easy but breezy how it slid out his ass.

Kyle was stunned by the runs, at how his shit coiled in-toilet and spun. It was one long solid, a winding brown mass, ever the slender as more came to pass. It rose to his legs and poked through the gap, with a serpentine cranium made completely of crap. It swayed and entranced, a snake out of hell, then wound and bound Kyle in much more than a spell.

He stared at the encircling horror, that which had slipped into paradise inside the stall, and he felt as if he could do nothing but tremble in awe. The shitviper cocked its head, exuding mischief and squalor, and Kyle clenched—only to find that he could no longer. The horror was rooted in him, muter than him, but all the same the greater of them and loud. It had analyzed him, paralyzed him, and now it dropped, as if imploring him to follow its sightless crown.

He looked down. The shitviper had twined his member tight, and Kyle was already this hard from tweeting hot shit. It tugged him till he came all over the stall, a matter of seconds and effusive white spit. Slowly through the fog that followed, it dawned on Kyle to scream, or maybe the fact that he could, but already the chocolate cobra was on him and flaring its hood.

Many were on him, the viper their liege: little limpid shit snakes designed to lay siege. They’d come from the tail and snuck up his shirt, and the ones at his neck did shut him up first. They entered the mouth and obstructed his throat, but only to quiet him, not to kill but to choke. Their plan grew apparent as the viper drew near, Kyle to tearfully follow till it arrived at his ear.

The emission king emitted no dulcet tones nor susurrant din, but through canal and cochlea dove headlong till Kyle’s skull it was in. Once enthroned, the viper absorbed its eaten brood till the brain folds had browned, and Kyle, contented, stood from his seat to flush the empty bowl down. He shouldered his bag and came out to wash, but only as much as needed his newfound panache.

The digital writer returned to his coffee and found it tasted quite dim. He set it aside, opened his laptop with new words to enhymn. He navigated the browser and banged out a tweet, then thought of a thread and—voilà!—he knew he’d drop heat.

💩 Kyle Grossman
@TheKyleGrossman

I’m at grandma’s birthday party (she’s 73) and have some time to kill.
Here are 73 lessons on making FU money you should learn (and apply) while you still can 🧵👇

11:10 AM · June 20, 2022 · Shitter Web App