On Monday, actor and poet Charlie Sheen posted a job ad seeking a paid social media intern–generating 95,333 clicks in an hour and more than 74,000 applications.
Here’s more about the job: “The #TigerBloodIntern is expected to be proactive, monitor the day-to-day activities on the major social media platforms, prepare for exciting online projects and increase Charlie’s base of followers. You will learn how to promote and develop the social media network of Hollywood’s most trending celebrity.”
What does this mean for writers? As the recession continues, book advances dwindle, and paying writing jobs fade away, these social media jobs might become bizarre careers for writers–churning out thousands of tweets and Facebook posts for famous people. Novelist Cornell Woolrich described a similar lifestyle as a Depression-era pulp fiction writer in his story “Penny-A-Worder.”
Here’s an excerpt from Woolrich’s story: “The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thing gray ghosts, in good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.”