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Twitter / Mark Leidner

Author’s viral thread about rejection captivates Twitter—but it’s totally fake

Mark Leidner's satiric tweets game the system.

 

Chris Illuminati

Internet Culture

Posted on Aug 17, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 8:35 am CDT

Twitter users posted their most epic #ShareYourRejections stories on Thursday. The tales run the gamut from hilarious to heartbreaking, inspiring to just downright awful.

One thread of massive rejection stood out among the pack, likely because it was too good to be true.

Mark Leidner is a writer from Georgia living in Northern California. He’s written a few feature films and several books including his most current a collection of short stories, Under the Sea. Leidner shared his epic tale of rejection that involved making fun of his own writing, getting an agent, and possibly getting sued for editing his own work.

Here’s Leidner’s tale of tragedy, in 11 tweets.

Leidner’s tale was so captivating yet catastrophic, Twitter made it a moment. Of course, the story was a completely fake bit of satire that gamed a viral hashtag.

So many points of the story don’t pass the sniff test straight from the jump. An author not recognizing his own work and then publicly slamming another writer while guest editing at a magazine seems too stupid to be true. But Leidner’s tale was convincing enough to fool a couple thousand people—maybe he does have a career in fiction.

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*First Published: Aug 17, 2018, 9:28 am CDT