The first time I went viral was completely by accident. I wrote this in December after a night out with my girlfriend and her friends. My girlfriend immediately passed out when we got back, leaving me next to her, wide awake, sipping on wine alone while everybody else slept. Somehow, I found myself on the relationship_advice subreddit, and this was the outcome. The next day, I was shocked to find out that it had blown up on Twitter.
The title says it all. I signed up for the card in August. Threw down the $95 annual fee like it was nothing. Let my mom buy the groceries with it for a few weeks so I could hit the $3000 necessary to achieve the 120,000 bonus points.
And I just flexed on her. Not on my mom on my girlfriend. Dropped 20000 points for a night at the local Holiday Inn Express, complete with a continental breakfast.
But she just doesn't seem impressed. We walk in the front door and approach the concierge, where I slide my license that expired two weeks ago across the counter, followed by the silver, spinning IHG MasterCard that reflects every last drop of light in the room.
"Thank you for being an IHG Rewards Club member," she says, and she means it. She begins to check me into the room when I flash a wink at my girlfriend and drop the line: "I was wondering if it was possible to upgrade rooms, since I'm a, you know, Platinum Elite Status. It is--one of the perks."
She flashes me another one of those smiles out of a Philip Marlowe story and swipes another card. "I can upgrade you to the suite."
I nod.
"There you go," she says, "a suite. Room 212." I don't say thank you because I don't have to. I'm Platinum Elite Status.
The suite doesn't have a jacuzzi like I had hoped, but it does have a couch which I'm sure I'll be fucking on later thanks to my IHG card.
We go out for drinks with her friends. I open up a tab for everyone under my card, letting them know it's 4 points per dollar on everything for the first year, so load it up.
She gets hammered. Starts screaming Alanis Morissette at the karaoke bar. And finally we head back to the suite where she eats her double XL chalupa, throws up in the trash can, and falls asleep. Meanwhile I'm laying next to her like an asshole, listening to her snore, trying to decide whether or not it's creepy to touch her ass, and staring at the couch that held every possibility in the universe only hours before.
I just don't know what to do. What's the point in being an IHG Rewards member if the points and the Platinum Elite status don't turn her on?
Thankfully, this didn't go over too many heads. Most appreciated it for what it was, a satire of people who take their credit/reward card perks just a sad too seriously, although many of the details, such as my awkward attempt to get upgraded to a suite at the front desk, were rooted in real life inspiration.
There were a few gems, though:
This last guy is clearly Spire Elite, a milestone I have yet to reach.
And then, of course, there were the incredibly woke Twitter users who saw this for what it truly was: a brilliant, innovative means of guerilla marketing sponsored by none other than the omnipresent Intercontinental Hotel Group itself.
Sign up for the IHG Rewards Card today and automatically be upgraded to Platinum Elite Status. We'll even upgrade you to a room with a couch. You still won't get laid, though.
While I was exhilarated at the time from all of the anonymous adoration, I never anticipated at the time that trolling the angry, excitable and opinionated communities of Reddit and Twitter would become a thing that I do, but alas, it has. I've since gone on spawn a debate about the merits of the four Harry Potter houses, break the hearts of Animal Crossing fanatics everywhere, and incense the expansive community of internet users who like the call themselves "writers."
Some might call what I do shitposting. But I call it art.
And this is just the beginning.
Check out The Shitpost Diaries Part 2: A Bangable Bitmoji, and if you enjoyed this content, please consider signing up for my mailing list below!