The Comment That Went Viral

I subscribe to the online edition of the New York Times.  There's a feature in it -- the comments section -- of which I'm particularly fond. Roughly half the articles, and nearly all of the Op-Eds and Guest Essays, have a comments section.  On any given day there are thousands of comments from readers -- in fact, sometimes a single article by itself may receive over a thousand.  It's like the old "Letters To The Editor" of the print era on steroids. 

It's easy to make a comment.  Here are the rules of the game:

-- comments are moderated for being "on-topic" and "civil"; 

-- they cannot exceed 1500 characters;  

-- each article which permits comments has a time limit for submissions.  If you get to it too late, it will be closed;

 -- you can make a comment to a comment (a "reply").  Thus discussions occur among commenters.

-- comments can be "flagged" by readers as inappropriate.  They may then be removed by moderators.

-- you can click "Recommended" beneath a comment if you really like it.  These "Recommended" comments can then be viewed in a window of their own when you click on "Reader Picks".  They're listed in order of which got the most.  This creates a popularity contest of sorts among the readers.  

-- there's also a section called "NYT Picks".  Click on that and you will see the comments chosen as most deserving of attention by the moderators of the Opinions Section. 

-- and finally there's an icon for "All" comments, listed in chronological order.

Because the Times is one of the most widely read and respected papers in the U.S. (and the world), it attracts readers who are often quite well-versed in the subjects being written about and their comments may offer a new perspective that had been overlooked by the author of the article.  It tends to be a smart crowd.

I consider myself well-versed in certain areas: New York City in general; taxi driving and the taxi business; transportation; and, of course, my own experiences with the human race as a longtime NYC taxi driver.  If I feel I have something relevant to say to an article in these zones, I will often make a comment using the pen name "Old Yeller".  

So here's what happened...

On August 24th last year the Times ran an Op-Ed by Jerry Seinfeld called "So You Think New York Is 'Dead' (It's not.)"

In his piece Jerry came down pretty hard on "some putz in LinkedIn" (the owner of a comedy club in Manhattan who, after relocating to Miami, had written what was basically an obituary on the city.) Jerry kicked the guy's butt, so to speak, and made a good case for the city's resilience and revival.  Before the comments section was closed it received a whopping 2,740 comments. One of them was mine.  And thus began the journey of a comment...

-- I started my day on August 24th as I always do, reading the Times over breakfast.  And after breakfast.  I did not see Jerry's Op-Ed.  

-- Later in the day I received an email from my buddy in the U.K., Jodie Schofield, alerting me to Jerry's article and providing a link.  How could I have missed this?  I read the article, loved it, and immediately wrote this comment:

"I've been a NYC taxi driver for many, many years. My favorite type of ride is the rare one of picking up a man who has just emerged from a hospital following the birth of his first child. It is the best day in his life and I usually find it difficult to hide my own tears of joy as he tells me all about it.

My second favorite ride is similar. It is a young person with a dream who is coming to New York City for the very first time. I am the taxi driver taking him or her to Manhattan from the airport. I insist on the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge as our route. Excitement grows as the city grows larger and larger as we approach Manhattan. Finally, almost at ground level, the ramp takes us so close to the surrounding buildings that we can actually see the people inside. Touching down on E. 62nd Street, my newly minted New Yorker is experiencing for the first time the "energy" that is so often spoken of. It's like watching a child approaching a roomful of birthday presents. All things are possible. It will take more than a crumby pandemic to change that."

-- About 15 minutes after I submitted the comment I received an email from the Times telling me it had been approved. (Normal procedure, they do that for every comment they publish.)

-- An hour later I checked the comments section of Jerry's article to see if I'd received any "recommends" or, better yet, if my comment had been chosen as a "NYT Pick". It had received a handful of recommends but was not a NYT Pick. Oh, well.

-- After another hour, I checked again. I discovered that my comment had miraculously been switched from the "All" section to the "NYT Picks" section! Wow, that never happens, at least not to me. Wondering what could have caused this momentous turn of events, I found that a reader named Flaminia from Los Angeles had made this reply to my comment: 

"@Old Yeller, THIS should be a Times pick."

Apparently a moderator agreed. In the contest of Which Comment Gets The Most Recommends, this is a big deal. The elite "NYT Picks" comments are seen by more readers than the ones in the "Reader Picks" and "All" parts of town. More views means more Recommends.

Unbeknownst to me, a fire was being lit. I'm not sure of the exact timeline, but as far as I can tell it began in the morning of Aug. 25th with a tweet from Morgan Von Steen (@mvonsteen, who tweets about "design & technology in government, especially New York"). She tweeted:

This comment on

@JerrySeinfeld

's piece in

@nytimes

made me tear up.  

And then she posted the comment itself.  

As the day went on, Morgan Von Steen's tweet generated over 9,000 retweets, more than 1,400 Quote Tweets, 76K likes, and a swarm of comments, many reminiscing about their own first ride into Manhattan, their ride in a taxi on the day their first child was born, and especially about their love affair with New York City.  

We were off to the races.

-- Upworthy.com on Instagram posted Morgan Von Steen's tweet, generating another 53K likes:

-- The attention the comment was generating got on the radar of the NY Times Opinion Section people.  They highlighted it on LinkedIn:

-- My daughter, Suzy, and my nephew, Sanjay, alerted me that my comment was apparently going viral.  That was exciting, but, wait! People reading it would only know that some cab driver in NYC calling himself "Old Yeller" had written it.  I want people to read my book and my blog, of course, and they don't know that "Old Yeller" is me.  Some clever way to identify myself was needed...

-- I went back to the replies to my comment in the NYT Picks.  I discovered that Patricia Caiozzo from Port Washington, New York, had written: "@Old Yeller.  Your post is excellent.  Perhaps you write in your free moments?  You should."  

Perfect!  

-- I replied: "@Patricia Caiozzo. Thanks, Patricia.  In fact, I do.  I have a blog called 'Cabs Are For Kissing'.  Hope you'll stop by."  And then I added a link to my blog.  Now not only readers of the Times could find me, but the moderators of the Opinions Section could, too.  And for the next few days, presto, the hits on my blog went out the roof.

-- At the same time Suzy got on Twitter to inform commenters who were wondering who this "Old Yeller" guy is and shouldn't he write a book or have a column in the Times or something, that Old Yeller is her father and he did write a book, and here's the name of the book, and he has a blog, too, and here's the link to that.  (This is why you have children.)

-- Jodie in the U.K. did the same thing, except for the part about me being her father.  There is no truth to that rumor.

-- A few hours later Sanjay alerted me that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had retweeted Morgan Von Steen's tweet and had added: 

Governor Andrew Cuomo 

August 25, 2020  · 

The naysayers have predicted the “decline” of New York before. They have always been proven wrong — and they will be again.

Read this beautiful comment written by a NYC taxi driver on Jerry Seinfeld's New York Times op-ed.

#NewYorkTough

-- My head was beginning to swell.  Governor Cuomo, wow!  It was almost enough to make me forget that he had renamed the new Tappan Zee Bridge after his own father.  

-- And my head-swelling problem was not helped when an article from the online business magazine Fast Company was brought to my attention, claiming that "the best thing about about Jerry Seinfeld's 'NYC Is Not Dead' article is this cab driver's response" (click here for that.)  Could my comment have upstaged the great Jerry Seinfeld?  Is that possible?  I'm thinking I may need to have the doors in my house widened so my head can fit through. 

-- To make my head-swelling matters worse, there was this from supermodel Bella Hadid, with 32 million followers on Instagram:

-- And then her sister, Gigi, another supermodel who has 50 million followers on Instagram, did the same. 

-- On Aug. 26th, more media attention in this article in the Daily Mail in the U.K. 

-- After that it became difficult, if not impossible, to figure out the numbers the comment generated.  If there's some way of calculating this I'd like to know about it, but I guess it's safe to assume it must have been in the millions.

 

NY Times Interview

On Aug. 27th I heard from Shannon Busta, an editor on the NY Times Opinion Desk, informing me that as far as she knew this was the first time a comment to an article in the Times had ever gone viral, and asking if I'd be interested in being interviewed.  I was.  It was half an hour, live -- which is the interview equivalent of walking on a tightrope.  

Click here to see the interview.

Why Was The Comment So Popular?

For one thing, it was short and to the point.

It was written at a time when virtually the entire human race was suffering from a mutually shared reality, and with no end in sight.

More than that, I think, it was because it has the power to rehabilitate the personal purpose line lying dormant in the minds of those who read it.  There are certain people -- you could call them dreamers or creatives -- who at some point in their lives have had an epiphany.  They have discovered exactly what their purpose is in this lifetime.  They have made a promise to themselves to pursue that purpose, no matter what it takes.  For many, this means coming to New York City.  The skyline of New York, one of the great sights of the world, is symbolic of that dream.  To recall that first moment they ever laid eyes on it is to blow apart the barriers that have been holding them down and bring their purpose back to life.  

You could just about raise the dead with that.

Two Concise Paragraphs

I've been asked where the full versions of the two stories that are tightly packaged into the comment can be found.  The story of the "newly minted father" is in this blog.  It was published on March 16, 2013.  Go to The Best Day of Your Life.

The story of the dreamer coming to the city for the first time and seeing the New York Skyline as we approached Manhattan was published in my book, Confessions Of A New York Taxi Driver.  I am including it here in my blog for the first time.  Go to From JFK or just scroll down.  It's right below this post.

And Then There Was This

In November a facsimile of Jerry Seinfeld's op-ed on a gigantic billboard was attached to the facade of a luxury apartment building under construction in the Upper East Side.  Unfortunately the Comments Section was not included!  Read about it here.

The Best Day Of Your Life

I wrote something in my book that already needs to be revised. 

It's what I consider to be my favorite type of ride. 

Favorite Type of Ride Number Two, I wrote, is the one with the "elderly active" passenger.  That's when you get someone in the cab who's way up there in years - like over eighty - but who's still enjoying living.  I find myself exhilarated, with hope renewed that I still have many more years to go with vitality and good health. 

And Favorite Type of Ride Number One was said to be the fare with someone who's coming in from the airport who, with great anticipation, is seeing Manhattan for the very first time.  Wide-eyed and agog, this person is like a pilgrim finally setting foot in the holy land.  His excitement is contagious - I assume the role of the embedded tour guide, but with the secret agenda of absorbing his thrill vicariously.

I had a passenger a few weeks ago, however, who brought me to the realization that there is another type of ride that trumps these other two.  It's a very specific kind of ride.  It has to have a hospital as its starting point.  It has to be a man.  And it has to be the first time this man has left the hospital after having been there for many hours.  You've probably guessed what it is - it's the father of a newborn infant returning home after the birth of his first-born son or daughter.

He hailed me at the entrance of Mt. Sinai at 5th Avenue and 101st Street a little before midnight, a thirtyish fellow en route to the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn.  Although I'm always curious, I'm usually hesitant about asking anyone about why they've been at the hospital.  After all, it could be something terrible and they may not want to discuss it with their cab driver.  So I just say hello, perhaps offer some small talk, and try to give them enough space so they know if they want to talk about it, I'm approachable.  But this guy looked happy, so I jumped in.

"Visiting hours over?" I asked.

That was all it took. 

Slowly at first, suppressing emotion, and then with an open faucet of joy, he told me the story of the birth of his daughter.  Surely there can be nothing in the realm of communication between humans that is more certain to create an instant, Krazy Glue kind of bonding than this. Here was a young man who had just been through what for many will be the most dramatic episode of their lives.  Would the baby be healthy?  Will the mother be okay?  So much of everyone's future depends on the outcome - and it had all turned out fine.  A newly minted father, if he's to be any kind of father at all, is a fountain of exuberance at a time like this. 

And my passenger was.

But it had not been easy.  In labor, the obstetrician observed that the baby's heartbeat was fluctuating between too fast and too slow, a danger sign.  He therefore bypassed the natural birth process and, with his team, performed an emergency C-section.  It worked.  And a brand new, eight pound member of the human race reported in for muster.

"What's her name?"

"Harper."

He went on to explain that all the names he and his wife liked were already the names of people they knew and they didn't want anyone to think they'd named the baby after them when in fact they hadn't.  But they liked the name "Harper" because it's the name of one of their favorite authors, Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, and no one they knew had that name.  Also because it has a nice sound - "Harper".  I agreed.

"And her middle name is Francesca," he added.  "After Dr. Francesco - the obstetrician.  Who saved her life."

Somebody tells you something like that, the beauty and the correctness of the acknowledgement is so profound - you may never forget having been told such a thing.  I guess it was that which made me realize that this was my very favorite kind of ride.

Along with one other thing.  It gives me the opportunity to spring on the new parent one of my favorite, albeit corny, jokes.

First I tell him that I'm the father of a grown-up daughter myself.  Then:

"I hope you don't make the same mistake we made."

"What?"

"Don't teach her how to talk.  Go with the deaf sign language.  It will save you a fortune in telephone bills."

Always gets a laugh.

It was a half-hour ride to his place in Brooklyn.  Along the way I was able to indoctrinate the Parent Club initiate with a few gems of observation and insight that I've gathered in my tenure as a father.  I told him there are few, if any, lines of demarcation that are as distinct in your life as the line that divides Before and After the time you became a parent. 

"In looking back, you will always see it that way."

Then I told him something about his daughter.  "That tiny little baby back there that you could pick up with one hand?  In about two years, three at the most, she's going to see you doing something.  Then she's going to tell you that you're doing it wrong.  And she will be right." 

He liked that, so I felt I'd been given a green light to expound on something else. 

"You know, there's only one kind of love that can really be called 'unconditional'," I offered, "and that's the love from parent to child.  That's the strongest love that there is. It's very powerful.  It will change you.  No matter how good a person you already are, it will  make you a better one."

I believe that to be true.

He paid with a credit card and the meter spit out a receipt.  I held it out to him through the partition.

"Oh, no, that's okay," he said.

"Take it," I insisted, "it's got the date that your daughter was born on it."

Big smile. 

He took the receipt.

And we shook hands.