When Viral Goes Wrong

The Bizarre Tale of My Book's Viral Moment and the Backlash That Followed

Timothée Chalamet. BuzzFeed. And Then The End Will Come. These are not words I ever expected to string together in a sentence, let alone as the foundation of one of the weirdest and most bizarre rabbit holes I’ve ever gone down.

In late 2021, I noticed an unexpected spike in sales of my 2013 book, And Then The End Will Come. To be candid, this is by far my worst book. It was written as a tongue-in-cheek jab at “End Times” mania and had never garnered significant attention. Yet, suddenly, it was outselling my latest book, What Can’t Be Hidden (a much better book), by a wide margin. Intrigued and puzzled, I investigated the cause of this sudden interest.

I searched Twitter for mentions of my book. Surprisingly, I found several tweets linking And Then The End Will Come to Timothée Chalamet’s Top Book Recommendations. For those who may not know, Timothée Chalamet is a wildly popular actor, famous for his leading role in Dune, among other notable movies. The connection seemed bizarre, but I continued to dig.

My search led me to a BuzzFeed article from May 2021, which listed Chalamet’s top 13 book recommendations. To my astonishment, my book was number thirteen on the list, alongside literary giants like Orwell and Dostoevsky. This inclusion, however, seemed utterly nonsensical, leading me to question the source of this claim. It was clear to me that Chalamet had not read my book, and yet, it was being associated with his name.

Further investigation led me to an interview with Chalamet in November 2019, where he discussed his movie Little Women. At around the 1:20 minute mark of the interview, the interviewer asked him about his favorite books. He mumbled something that could vaguely sound like “The End Will Come.” But even then, it seemed improbable that he was referring to my book. My book is not one that anyone would consider a favorite. It was self-published and intended to poke fun at the “End Times” craze, nothing more.

Then, I discovered a YouTube video from November 2021 by Jack Edwards, a popular book reviewer with one and a half million followers. The video was titled, “I Read Every Book Timothée Chalamet Recommended and His Taste is Wild.” In the video, Edwards held up my book. I died inside. Someone with a massive audience was reviewing my worst book. It’s not exactly what I’d hoped for. However, Edwards was fair in his critique. He briefly summarized the premise, critiqued the vignette writing style, and humorously noted that I was probably not someone he would want to talk to at a party.

Woof.

And Then The End Will Come was written for a niche market, not the general public. I wish I could have communicated this to all of the Timothée Chalamet fans with different expectations. The ratings and reviews have been brutal—people going beyond an honest review to outright mean-spirited criticism as if I had intentionally tricked them into reading the book. I had no part in its unexpected viral moment, yet I found myself bearing the brunt of misplaced frustration and harsh judgment. Yet, that is the nature of our faceless, depersonalized digital age, where careless and hurtful words are quickly unleashed because we don’t see the human being on the other side.

Question

How often do I consider the impact of my words, especially in the online world where it’s easy to forget there’s a real person on the other side?

Peace,

Brandon