MFOL had broken all the rules of sustaining the national spotlight. For now. The media was notorious for having attention deficit disorder. It would go gaga for the march and then forget these kids the next day. What was their strategy for life after media?
You mean old media, Matt said. “We’ve already established our platform. We’re on social media, we have these speaking engagements. I taught Emma how to use Twitter. She still gets things wrong. She’s using the wrong terminology and she gets more impressions per hour than the president now.” The network cameras had helped them amass their following, but their own cameras had greater pull now, he said. Ten million would watch the kids on 60 Minutes that Sunday, but the group believed they beat that online every week. Emma was up to 1.2 million Twitter followers. David, Cameron, and Sarah Chadwick had another 1.1 million collectively, and the count was expanding fast. With the multiplier of retweets, a single hot meme could draw millions of impressions. Twitter had been their biggest platform, but they were pumping out clever, shareable content that could be customized to Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, and they were prepping a YouTube launch. “That’s where our generation lives,” Dylan Baierlein said the next day. Dylan had been the kid asking about the anime explosion. Dylan was MFOL’s secret weapon online.
“What a lot of my generation does is basically come home from school, eat a snack, and watch whatever’s in their subscription box from YouTube,” David said. “That’s how they get a lot of their information and build this into their daily routine.”
A powerful platform requires two big elements: attract an audience, and satisfy them. Attracting was complete. Sustaining massive numbers meant great content. This group was born to meme. Every teen in America is now a content creator, churning out posts on Instagram and Snapchat—without a second thought, they would tell you, but actually employing tremendous thought. They have grown so skilled at it that it can seem effortless. The Columbine kids could have never done something like this. Several Columbine survivors went to Hollywood, and at least two of them created stellar films. But that was a decade or more down the road. The Parkland generation was prepared on day one. Some more than others. Most kids can amuse their friends online, but only a few are truly gifted. For most of the MFOL kids, content creation was a way of life.
“We’re the communicators,” David said. And they were communicating on two wavelengths—emotional and intellectual—which was the key to their appeal. “They’re actors, they know like how to communicate human emotion,” David said. “I’m news director, and I’m educated in this area from speech and debate.” He excelled on the rational side.
MFOL had a deep bench. Cameron could also pull the heartstrings, Sarah Chadwick, Delaney Tarr, and later Matt on the head—but the power of Emma González was her gift to pierce both organs simultaneously.
Everyone was worried about the cult of personality around Emma, though, especially Emma. And they rolled their eyes at the central tenets of the cult. “We have this celebrity culture that would love to say Emma is this trailblazing feminist hero,” Matt said. “I’ve known her for a long time, and I’d say she’s one of the more down-to-earth people I know. She does have this way of evoking emotion from just being an artist and being in spoken word.” We discussed the power of her authenticity, and he asked, “Why is that rare?”
Reason and emotion were crucial. So was a third element: humor.
From first sight of him, I had a sense Dylan Baierlein played a big part in that. On my way out, I asked about that anime explosion. What was that about? He gleefully showed off the GIF he had found, and the meme he had assembled while I was talking to Matt. He stopped midsentence, with a concerned look. “Do you know what a meme is?”
I did.
OK. He plunged ahead—couldn’t wait to show me what he was working on next.
I didn’t want to risk the wrath of David, so we agreed to meet there the next afternoon. He had class in the morning, then several MFOL meetings, but he could squeeze me in for an hour. It was late, and I picked up Indian takeout across the street.
5
I texted Dylan for the address the next morning, and he said he couldn’t give it out. He knew I had