Enchilada Ed

19

Ed woke a little before noon to the sound of incessant buzzing.

He tossed himself across his bed and stared at his iPhone. 5 missed calls, 65 unread text messages? And all the notifications: 998 from Snapchat? 1,072 from Twitter? 6,339 from Instagram?

Ed rolled onto his stomach and covered his ears with his pillow. He was clearly still asleep. He would start over, and wake up in a few more minutes.

The buzzing did not stop.

Ed grabbed his iPhone from his nightstand. He ignored his social media and checked his text messages. It appeared that every acquaintance, friend, and relative who happened to have his number had texted him at least once. Emily had sent 13.

Ed quickly read her messages:

Check Twitter

Check Buzzfeed

Check the front page of YouTube.

You're TRENDING on a Twitter.

You're a MEME

You've got your own Know Your Meme now

You're still sleeping, aren't you?

WAKE UP

YOU'RE VIRAL ASDFGHJ

THE BIGGEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU AND YOU'RE SLEEPING THROUGH IT SMDH

Typical.

Ed opened Safari. As he loaded his own Know Your Meme profile, his vision blurred, his hands trembled, his head felt heavy. He first saw a picture of himself: a screenshot of somebody's snapchat, simply captioned Ed. His eyes were downcast, and he held an enchilada platter just above a ceramic tabletop. He wore (of course) the extra spicy chili pepper costume. Beneath this picture was the heading: Enchilada Ed / #EnchiladaEd.

Enchilada Ed is a nickname given to an American teenage server / restaurant mascot, Edward Mariño Fenchel, who rose to global viral fame on Twitter for his apparently handsome visage despite wearing a ridiculous mascot costume after a customer tweeted a picture of him serving an enchilada platter. A commercial staring Fenchel uploaded to his place of employment's YouTube account went viral shortly after Fenchel's Snapchat and Twitter fame.

Farbod's El Gringo's commercial was embedded below. Ed tapped on it. When his YouTube app opened, Ed checked the video's stats. 1,248, 602 views. 15,184 likes. 1,722 dislikes. He scrolled down to the comments.

MY BOY ED!

Awww, ed's so uncomfortable in this

i love him so much i'm crying

omg the chili costume XD XD XD

does anyone actually think this is funny?

i hate my generation if i was the king of youtube i'd delete this video right awya

wtf the king of youtbe? It's a kingdom now? u dumb

this kid is so lame

rude

HAVE MY BABIES

Ed tapped back to his Know Your Meme page. The origin of the meme was reportedly a tweet, embedded just below Farbod's video. It read:

just ed serving enchilada realness and heating up my ovaries in a chili pepper costume, nbd.

Attached was the Snapchat screenshot that would launch fifty-thousand retweets.

Ed examined the tweeter's profile picture. A brunette. Hip-length, wavy hair. Two fingers up in a peace sign salute. A tongue sticking out. Wayfarer sunglasses. And a familiar Captain America crop trop.

Ed dropped his phone onto his bed.

***

Gina texted him a minute later.

So, are you part of the Illuminati now? If not, fantastic snapchat marketing campaign for El Gringo's. 100 great success.

Ed realized he hadn't responded to anyone's attempts to reach him.

He quickly texted Gina back:

The snapchat thing wasn't part of the marketing campaign. I'm confused.

Gina responded immediately.

FAKE.

Ed massaged his temples. Before he could protest, she sent another text.

ILLUMINATI AF

Ed ignored her.

He really didn't feel like responding to 66 (and counting) text messages. For one, he didn't know what to say. Thank you? He didn't exactly feel grateful. Ed wasn't sure what he felt. His stomach rumbled. He hadn't even eaten dinner last night. Ed decided to go to the kitchen and make some avocado toast. Before he climbed out of his bed, something compelled him to open Twitter. He hardly ever used Twitter, but somehow his follower count had spiked from 126 to 68k. Gina sent him another text. All triangle emoji. Ed thought that maybe if he tweeted an acknowledgement of his new fame, everyone would stop texting and snapping him? It was worth a shot.

He typed a tweet, deleted it, and then retyped it.

So I just woke up...

It was a stupid tweet, Ed admitted. But he wasn't witty enough to come up with a self-aware quip that was actually funny, so he left it at that. He pressed the send button and watched as those stupid five words earned him 43k likes and 12k retweets.

***