Twitter keeps asking me to give them money so that I can be popular. My brain tells me that this is an opportunity that they offer everyone — some kind of general campaign in a desperate attempt to validate the dumbest business model since Facebook’s digital bananas. I usually just hit delete and move on.

But that’s not what my heart says. Over the months their persistence impressed me, and I decided that my account must be special in their system. I must be up there with BP and Exxon. I started dreaming about the possibilities being as Twitter famous as Elvis would have been, if only for a day. My wit and pith would change the lives of everyone who could experience it.

This is why, on July 4th, 2013 I decided to define the national dialogue by promoting a tweet of my own. I learned that Twitter charges you when people interact (click, reply, retweet) with your promoted message.

I'll stop here and tell the rest of the story through the digital communication equivalent of interpretive dance: