I
can’t believe how many thousands of websites have gone belly up since the whole
craze started many centuries ago (or so it seems). A lot of my favorites have
disappeared and I really miss them. But one of the sites I miss the most was
called Themestream.com.
When
a writer-friend of mine, Don, first told me about it nearly 20 years ago, it
sounded like a dream come true. Basically, it was a site where people could
publish their stories, poems, articles, jokes, opinions, photographs, etc. and
actually get paid for doing so.
I
signed up immediately and was pleased to become an official “Themestream
contributor.” Then every week, I faithfully submitted my humor
column, A Slice of Life.
At
the time, Themestream was paying 10 cents per view. That meant every time
someone clicked on my column, I became 10 cents richer. At first, it didn’t
sound like all that much, but when one veteran Themestream contributor boasted
that he’d had one of his articles mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey show and ended
up getting over 4,000 clicks in one day, I quickly became gung-ho.
In
fact, I became SO gung-ho, I sat right down and e-mailed friends, relatives,
casual acquaintances and even total strangers, and begged them to read my
column. As I sent each e-mail (and I’m ashamed to admit this), visions of
myself swan-diving into a swimming pool filled with dimes kept popping into my
head.
It’s
funny how something as small as a dime can lead to greed, graft, corruption and
deviousness. OK, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but there were a few
Themestream contributors who used some pretty underhanded methods to earn their
dimes.
You
see, Themestream welcomed any and all writers, and didn’t edit their
contributions, no matter how rotten they were. So it wasn’t long before
articles with such enticing titles as: “Guess Which Famous Actress Used to be a
Man,” or “Want to See What Body Part I Pierced?” began to pop up. Readers,
eager to find out more information, clicked onto these articles, only to find
three or four hastily written paragraphs about something totally unrelated. By
the time they realized they’d been duped, it was too late. Their clicks already
had earned dimes for the authors.
Disgruntled
readers could retaliate, however, by leaving comments underneath each article
or by using Themestream’s rating system of 0-4 stars. The 4-star authors were
supposed to be the cream of the crop; the Stephen Kings and John Grishams of
Themestream. Oddly enough, just about every author on Themestream
eventually wound up with four stars…even the guy whose series of articles was
called, “The America You Never Seen.” Obviously, he wasn’t an
English major.
As
I watched the numbers on my “dimes earned” page begin to climb, I couldn’t help
but wonder where Themestream was going to get the money to pay all of us. I
mean, as far as I could calculate, there were over 500,000 articles on the
site, with more pouring in every day. How, I wondered, could Themestream make a
profit by doling out dimes to a bunch of writers and wanna-be writers? And
how were we expected to generate income for the website? I mean,
they weren’t asking us to solicit advertising for them or anything. It didn’t
make any sense at all.
Nevertheless,
I continued to write.
As
I mentioned before, it was pretty amazing what some people would do for a few
dimes. There were some writers who used several different e-mail aliases so
they could comment on and rate their own articles (which, now that I think
about it, is probably the reason why there were so many 4-star authors). They
also used their aliases to click on their own articles to earn more dimes.
Others
used a more sneaky approach. I can’t tell you how many e-mails I received that
said, “I’m a fellow Themestreamer who just read every one of your columns and I
think you are the best writer I have ever read! Could you do me a
big favor and read some of my articles and give me your expert
advice? I would be honored!”
When
I first received one of those letters, I was flattered. Then I learned that the
same letter had been sent to about 100 other Themestream authors. It didn’t
take a brain surgeon to figure out the senders didn’t really want “expert”
advice. They just wanted more clicks to earn more dimes.
And
speaking of advice, I used to laugh at some of the comments readers would leave
the authors of really awful articles. For example: “This brought tears to my
eyes when I read it…for all of the wrong reasons,” or “You have a very, um…unique way
of expressing your views.” And my favorite: “This was excellent! And
I’m sure it will be even better when the spell-check on your computer is
working again!”
Just
when I was beginning to rake in a decent number of dimes per day (enough to buy
a Whopper at Burger King), Themestream notified us that the rate of payment was
being dropped to only two cents per view. Talk about drastic. A nickel
would have been bad enough, but two cents was just a fraction better than a
“penny for your thoughts.” I figured I was going to need a few
thousand of those thoughts per day to make writing my columns worth my time and
energy.
To
compensate for the cut in pay, many of the authors figured they just would
contribute more articles. That’s when Themestream decided to limit the number
of articles each author could contribute. And even worse, a cap was put on the
amount of money an article could earn. Things were not looking good.
During
the time I wrote for Themestream, I also became interested in reading a lot of
the other articles on the site. Some nights, I would spend hours just reading
one after another, into the wee hours of the morning. Several of the articles
were enticingly written in “to-be-continued” weekly installments, and I became
hooked.
For
example, one woman named Lisa wrote about all the men she had met through
dating sites…in explicit detail. In one installment, she described her
nervousness about her impending trip to New York City to meet for the first
time, a supposedly very rich, much-older man who was paying all of her expenses
and putting her up in a fancy hotel suite. Would he, she wondered, demand any
“favors” in return?
I
couldn’t wait to read what happened!
Before
Lisa was able to write her next installment, however, the Themestream editors
dropped the bomb and informed us that due to financial problems, Themestream
was closing its doors forever, effective immediately. They also told us not to
expect to be paid the money they owed us.
I
honestly can’t say I was surprised.
But
I was, and still am devastated…not because of all the hard-earned dimes and
pennies I never will see; or even the missed opportunity to be discovered by
Oprah…but because I never was able to find out how Lisa’s trip to New York to
meet her "Mr. Sugar Daddy" turned out.
# # #
Sally
Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick
in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream
Interpretation." Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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