During his summer in China it had rained of course, it would be strange if it hadn’t. The cloud was there as always but he never really noticed it on rainy days as it was obscured by the larger, darker rain clouds. As far as Joseph could tell, the rain was also falling from his cloud on those days. When the weather was sunny however, his cloud was always light and fluffy. Soon after moving back from China, Joseph noticed that things were changing. His cloud gradually became darker and heavier and with that his mood became more melancholy. He couldn’t quite tell if his mood was related to the darkening of his cloud or if the cloud was becoming darker due to his mood, he just knew that the two things happened simultaneously.
One day in late October he felt the first rain drop. It was a partially overcast day, the sky a patchwork of pale blue and light gray, his cloud a shade darker than the rest. It could just have been a normal rainy day but he knew, instinctively, that the rain was only falling from his cloud. It only took him a short walk to confirm it; the rain was only falling in a small area centered on him. Since it was only drizzling Joseph didn’t mind too much and went about his day like normal. It didn’t take long however, for him to realize that the drizzle wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, so he bought himself a folding umbrella which he started to carry around with him wherever he went. Most of the time he didn’t need it but if he stayed outside for a longer period of time the drizzle would eventually soak through his jacket, and on such occasions the umbrella was nice to have.
As was typical of the season, it was often cloudy and it wasn’t entirely uncommon for some rain to fall during the day, so people didn’t pay too much attention to the fact that it was constantly drizzling on Joseph. One day, about a week after the rains started, Joseph needed to run a bunch of errands downtown. It happened to be a bright sunny day, his cloud the only one in the sky, and wherever he went people would stare at him. Seeing the opportunity, he took a break from running errands to film a short video of himself – the only person in sight with an umbrella. What made the video extra spectacular was that he managed to find an angle where he constantly had a rainbow in the background.
He posted it to Youtube and the effect was almost immediate; his view count, which had been stagnant for a long while, started ticking upwards again. One of his commenters mentioned that the style of the video, specifically the rainbow in the background, would be suitable for Instagram. Joseph hadn’t posted much to Instagram at all but he had to concede that the commenter was right, and posted it there as well. This caught the attention of Repel, a company producing umbrellas, who contacted him with an offer for a partnership. Usually he would say no, but they sold a product he actually used daily so he agreed.
At first things went well. Repel sent him an umbrella and he made a post with it saying “It rains on me every single day. I rely on my #Repel #umbrella to keep me dry.” He got paid a decent amount for that post and followed it up with a similar one the week after. He made one fatal mistake however, he forgot to disclose that these posts were a paid partnership. Several of his followers noticed this and criticized him for it in the comments section. He issued an apology but it was already too late. A radical leftist influencer on Twitter got involved in the story, claiming Joseph was exploiting nature for financial gain. Another radical leftist joined in the same Twitter thread by bringing up Joseph’s trip to China and digging up a bunch of his posts from Sina Weibo. He claimed that what Joseph had done in China was perpetuating colonialist beauty ideals. This whipped up a perfect storm of outrage, and hateful comments started flooding into Joseph’s accounts.
At first Joseph tried to defend himself, claiming he wasn’t exploiting nature anymore than anyone posting photos of beautiful sunsets, and that it was the Chinese people themselves following the beauty trends, he had nothing to do with their choice to do so. Strange enough this only made things worse; people claimed he was trying to shift blame instead of apologizing which was apparently also a sin. He started blocking the people sending hate but there were just too many of them. As the comments kept flooding in he could feel his self-esteem being eroded. He kept telling himself he shouldn’t care what a bunch of random people on the internet thought of him, but when there were so many of them he couldn’t help but be affected by it. As his mood grew darker so did his cloud, and the rain falling from it became heavier. Eventually the situation became so bad that he had to shut down all his social media accounts in order to avoid the nasty comments.
Even though he was no longer receiving hateful messages every day, his mood didn’t improve much. It was partially due to the fear that if he logged back on to any social media account he would once more be bombarded. It was also partially due to the nasty weather; every time he went outside, even if the day was sunny, he would end up in the pouring rain. In fact, the rain falling from his cloud had become so heavy that his small folding umbrella was no longer sufficient to keep him dry. That Saturday he drove out to XXL Sporting Goods and bought himself a golf umbrella. Normally he would go as quickly as possible from the store to his car to avoid getting wet but now he stayed outside for a good ten minutes to give the thing a try. As he had hoped he remained dry. He drove home with a smile on his face.
The downside to using a golf umbrella was of course that it was so gigantic it became difficult to carry around when he was indoors and it only took him a few days to start reconsidering the foldable one. That evening he was watching an episode of The Witcher on Netflix and got inspired. With the help of some of his Chinese hiking equipment he created a kind of strap that allowed him to carry the umbrella across the back like a longsword. He felt a little dorky, as would anyone in that situation, but at least he would be dry no matter what the, by now rather annoying, cloud would throw at him.
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