Marc Jacobs Twitter Scheme: My Emotional Rollercoaster

I had first heard about it on Monday in my Senior English seminar class from my peer, @StephColpo.
"You'll appreciate this, Liz," she said. I got my Bedford Anthology out of my Marc by Marc Jacobs bowling bag (green lettering). "What's up?"

"Marc Jacobs is doing this thing on Twitter where he's going to offer job interviews to whoever can send the funniest tweet."
I had never heard of a lazier but brilliant application process.
"Like, what kind of funny tweets?" Fashion related? NYC related? Vegatable puns?
"He didn't say, just whatever's really witty."

Since it sounded so effortless, I couldn't resist but jump on this bandwagon of insanity. Witty tweets? As many as I want? It was like this was made for me. People told me I was funny all the time. For gits and shiggles I started half-heartedly sending tweets to MarcJacobsIntl.

"What I love most about NYC is that no matter how much I work, no matter how much money I make, I always feel worthless." @MarcJacobsIntl

I can only jokingly write "I'm the next best thing" on cover letters so many times til I acutally forget to delete it. @MarchJacobsIntl

(I'm aware that one is really lame)

Sometimes the apple falls from the tree and realizes SOMEONE TOOK THE ORANGE JOKE. @MarcJacobsIntl

(This one is irrelevant unless you know that I had given @StephColpo a saying I had made up: "Sometimes the apple falls from the tree and finds out it's an orange". Again, lame.)

At this point the tweets are pretty loosey-goosey, not very serious, clearly just putting my foot in the pool of young people who don't want to go through an application process and just get hired to tweet all day.

However, the idea of getting hired to work in the fashion industry started eating at me and my tweets became a little more desperate. Thus the bargaining stage began.
I tried the basic "hire me!" tweets (which is NOT what MJ was particularly looking for...) and other embarrassing tactics, mostly for shock value.

Dear @MarcJacobsIntl, even if you don't choose my witty tweets, I'll still haunt every fax machine in your office with my resume. Cheers.

Dinner conversation lulls are depressing when you can't share the time you got caught knitting in a gentlemen's club. @MarcJacobsIntl

@MarcJacobsIntl "We had a caravan until my mom blew the tranny in a ditch." @ineberated meant "transmission". Still a legit reason though.

Seriously @MarcJacobsIntl, I can handle the stressful job! I have Asian lineage meaning if I'm not stressed + handling it, I'm probably dead.

Around this time I was getting a little perturbed that I wasn't immediately standing out from the bazillion of tweets MJ was probably getting hourly. How could they not see my tweets and realize I was brilliant? I'm funny, dammit! Most of these people are probably just bimbos who own a shirt or watch from him and think they can work in the fast-paced grueling world of fashion. I'm ambitious. I'm articulate. And I am witty. I wasn't going to take this any longer. Just because I'm considered a chunky size four in the fashion world doesn't mean they can also determine that I am not funny enough.

As such, my tweets became belligerent, especially when I came across the cover of Glamour's 1991 May issue for my mini-research project. The cover featured Ebba Elmer in a bright yellow Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis swimsuit accompanied by a heinous lampshade disguised as a hat.

Hey @MarcJacobsIntl just saw your Perry Ellis swimsuit on Elmer for Glamour cover '91. Still have that hat? [pic]

@MarcJacobsIntl if you're still looking for the hat, it's probably serving as a lampshade. [pic]

I even lashed out at people who teased the masses for participating in this rat race.

TheSlushBlog: "@MarcJacobsIntl congratulations on the largest marketing plot in twitter history. #every1else congratulations on making fools of yourselves.

to which I replied:

@TheSlushBlog @MarcJacobsIntl I'd be more offended if your username wasn't "slushblog". It just boasts elitist attitude.

The anger ebbed away and I began to become more fascinated with how obsessed I was with this thing. This caused anxiety.

I really need to stop this @MarcJacobsIntl tweeting but I just CAN'T until I KNOW that someone else got the job. HIRE SOMEONE AND END MY STRESS.

Anxiety was soon replaced by a more conversational tone, as though pretending I was on a level with MJ now to start discussing this whole ordeal.

@MarcJacobsIntl I'm starting to think this is a ruse to get ppl to worship you even more than usual. Is ANYONE following the rules?

How did anyone get hired anywhere before the internet? Before Twitter? Hard work and character building? @MarcJacobsIntl

Just when I thought I was easing out of this addiction, it flared up again when my friend @PennyinaBottle thought it would be funny to remind me I had a serious problem. I barked back at his taunt:

Thought: since YOU'RE so damn witty, why don't YOU tweet @MarcJacobsIntl, @PennyinaBottle? IfyouwinI'llcutyoubtwkawesome.

PennyinaBottle: @LeParkette rational thought: Me, work for a FASHION company? What not to wear thought I was too big of a project.

Nevertheless, I found caught him following Marc Jacobs twitter. For moment in lacking reason and rationality, I felt threatened.

@MarcJacobsIntl if you offer @PennyinaBottle a job interview for a single tweet of his, you're just spiting me. Seriously.

I was later alerted to this:

PennyinaBottle: @MarcJacobsIntl, I tweet, therefore I spite @LeParkette

That was the final straw. I couldn't participate in this anymore. I was emotionally exhausted and decided to retreat back to job searching, to filling out actual applications and writing cover letters more than 140 characters.

While this application process caused me a lot of inner turmoil once I got caught up in it, in the end it was kind of fun having my role in this Marc Jacobs craze. I was brainwashed into thinking I actually connected with MJ like a love-sick school girl who thinks the guy next to her in Spanish class secretly loves her because he must have known her favorite color was red when he wore that scarlet t-shirt.

Since my retirement, my head has cleared up and humility has settled back in, fully reminding me I am just another 20-something woman in a sea of the Next Big Things. If I'm not recognized for my amazing potential in a Twitter contest, how else will I succeed in my career goals? Oh right. The old fashioned way of proving my academic and job credentials. Yikes.