I'm not going to let anyone suffer through that. That's crazy. So, here's part 3.
Awesomeness.
I headed over to One Lounge and found myself among a ton of fantastic people. Redditors.
They were dressed, in some form or another, with Reddit garb, or a costume, they had signs... in a crowd of a 1,000, they would have been easy to find. In a crowd of 215,000, not so much.
But here they were.
I'd like to stop for a moment and give you an idea of what the majority of my encounters were, when I handed out soap.
"Hey, mind if I sit down?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Thanks. Ah... that's better." Rummage through bag. "Here."
They take the sample bar and look at it. "What the hell is this?"
Yeah. That's basically what I got from more than half the people I gave samples to. Once they knew what it was, and who I was, the mood changed, and they were quite happy to find out I was the Soapier guy.
Other encounters went like this.
"Oh my god. OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. Do you know who this IS?! This is the Soapier guy. OH MY GOD!"
I had about ten people do that. And that was awesome.
I found out that the VIP area for the party was upstairs, so I made my way and found HueyPriest up there. Erik and I had met once before at a NY Meet-up for Redditors. I met his sister and some other guys up there, but most of the rest of the admins and Reddit heavies were cleaning up the National Mall. So I took that time to relax.
I handed out more samples.
"OMG! You're the Soapier guy?"
"I'm the Soapier guy."
"Awesome! Didn't you close?"
"No, I am taking over the business."
"That's great! Hey, Chuck, check it out, it's the soap guy!"
"The what guy?"
I told our story about twenty times. I lost my voice at around 8pm, and battled through it until it was coarse, raspy and, ultimately, an indistinguishable voice from my own nasal and pinched voice.
Ok, my voice isn't nasal and pinched. Passport?
Moving on.
Admins started filling up the place. Redditors were told the place was full. I made rounds and handed out more soap.
Now, I'd like to talk about my first official introduction to Alexis (kn0thing). It went something like this.
"Hey, how are you?" I said.
"Oh, hey, you made it! Great." And back to his conversation.
I looked at him for a second, turned away and thought "He has no idea who I am, does he..." I thought that was so funny.
So I sat down for a bit. My bag was getting noticeably lighter, thank god, but my legs and feet were staging a mutiny.
I met... spez, Jedberg, KeyserSosa, Paradox, raldi, karmanaut, ketralnis, MrGrim (Alan, creator of Imgur), aaaxe (sauce guy), and the Stikkitnow.com guy. They were all very cool, very nice to talk to, and simply awesome in their knowledge of Soapier.
I ran into Raldi (who I think I took a joke too far with, sorry Raldi!) and sitting next to him was Lia, who I've been corresponding with about Reddit/Soapier ads.
Lia has been nothing but instrumental in helping us get some ad time on Reddit for the holiday season, and I cannot thank her enough. She's awesome. Her boyfriend is awesome, and we had a great time talking.
I see Alexis again, and I make my move. I grab a Reddit Alien and I hand it to him. He looks at me a second and says "We've never actually met, have we?"
"No."
"It's a real pleasure!"
We went on to have a great conversation.
Man, let me tell you. The first Soapier post is something I'll never forget. It was in August of 2007, and...
No, wait. It was in June of... was it July?
Anyway, that first post was really something I'll never forget. The movement to save Soapier was compounded by the help of Alexis and the people of Reddit. We corresponded a few times, we worked out a licensing agreement, he promoted the shit out of us for the holiday season... it was unreal. Our success was half due to Redditors, and the other half was because of Alexis and his belief in our company.
So, it was great talking to Alexis. I was able to hand off a full bar of the Soapert soap, and I told him about my wish to get them into the hands of Colbert and his people. My goal is to have them given out to Colbert's audience members. I also wanted to get some of the Reddit soaps into the hands of Colbert's writers. Alexis is going to see if we can make that possible. It's very exciting!
I was close to the end of my samples at this point. I finally had a drink, sat down, relaxed for a while, and started getting very sleepy.
It was roughly 8 at this point. I went back to the bookstore cafe, had dinner, said goodbye to Anne/Jen and Annie, went back to the party, only to find it had dissipated, and people had moved on to another venue or two.
It was time for me to leave.
I ran into Lia again, said my goodbyes, gave the last Reddit Alien soap to an unsuspecting new Redditor who said "It's bacon fragranced? In the shape of the Reddit Alien? Who ARE you?"
Said my goodbyes to a few others, and handed out my last sample to this guy. He knew who I was, too, and it was a high note ending for the party.
I grabbed a subway sandwich for the road, and went all the way back to Union Station.
The walk from Union Station wasn't that bad. My back was killing me. My head was spinning. My load was lighter, thankfully, but the wear on my body was evident. My throat was very upset with me. It felt like my body had let down whatever defenses it had, and anything foreign was going to have an easy time with me.
At the station, it was 11:00pm, and I found out I missed the early bus home by an hour.
I had two hours to kill.
Thankfully, I had downloaded Season 3 of Dexter, and watched the first two episodes on the way down to DC. Starting episode 3, I settled in.
I got hungry around midnight and found myself among a couple of college age redditors who were cool, and who knew who I was. We got to talking a bit. They had mentioned something about going to the after party, but not feeling welcome. They said that a bunch of the older people weren't taking them seriously, which, if true, is a shame. I don't know how they conducted themselves at the party. I mean to say, I was not there. I was sorry to hear that.
I also didn't have any more samples to give out. Which was also a shame.
We talked for a bit. I excused myself after a while to relax before we got on the bus, which was not for another hour.
Once on the bus, I was sitting next to one of two seats that were empty. I was able to stretch out a bit and sleep the first half. Got to the service area and the lights came on. What a bitch.
After we left the service area, the driver turned the heat on too high, and made the place uncomfortably warm. I slept what I thought was another hour but turned out to be 8 minutes.
Nodded on and off... got back to the city. It was 6am.
Got to the train, got right on a train, made it downtown, made the 10 block walk back to the apartment, and checked Reddit.
Hi, my name's John and I'm a Reddit addict.
I finally got to bed around 7:30, and was woken up at 1pm, much to my dismay. My girlfriend and my cats decided I'd had enough sleep. I wanted them all dead.
And... for Halloween, I saw Saw 3D. And it was as campy and as fun as all the others.
I'd like to share the following thank-you video to everyone I met.
That was supposed to be Colbert, not Colbiert... sorry!
Thanks everyone for reading, for supporting Soapier, and for being you. We really appreciate it.
John @ Soapier
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