{"id":10827,"date":"2016-08-10T00:56:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T07:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/hundreds-of-thousands-heed-call-share-first7jobs\/"},"modified":"2016-08-10T00:56:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T07:56:36","slug":"hundreds-of-thousands-heed-call-share-first7jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/hundreds-of-thousands-heed-call-share-first7jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of thousands heed Call, share #first7jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"
Buzz Aldrin has done it<\/a>. So has Monica Lewinsky.<\/p>\n Ellen Degeneres has joined in, alongside Stephen Colbert.<\/p>\n All of them can thank Juneau singer-songwriter Marian Call<\/a>.<\/p>\n With an Aug. 4 tweet<\/a>, Call started a wave on social media that\u2019s inspired people around the world. Called #first7jobs<\/a> (also #firstsevenjobs), this hashtag on Facebook and Twitter has collected the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It simply asks participants to share the first seven jobs they worked.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why the internet\u2019s amazing to me,\u201d she said of the way her brief message has collected the thoughts of the world\u2019s famous and ordinary alike.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy that if I had to have a thing go viral in the traditional sense, that it was a really positive thing that brings out something different in everyone,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not snarky, it\u2019s not mean. It\u2019s really happy and it\u2019s really storytelling and it\u2019s really personal, so I feel lucky that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Call was researching material for songwriting and asked her Twitter followers a simple question: \u201cWhat were your first 7 jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n She answered her own question to get the ball rolling: \u201cBabysitting, janitorial, slinging coffee, yard work, writing radio news, voice-overs, data entry\/secretarial.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just needed a few more ideas of how people work and how people work when they\u2019re kids,\u201d she said on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n The answers didn\u2019t have to be in any order, and if someone didn\u2019t have seven jobs, that was OK.<\/p>\n As she went to bed, her question bounded around the world. Answers came first from friends and acquaintances, but others seemed to like the idea and ran with it.<\/p>\n \u201cWow, my #7firstjobs question took off overnight,\u201d she wrote the following day.<\/p>\n On Aug. 6, Twitter listed the hashtag among its trending topics, drawing thousands more people to the subject.<\/p>\n Like a desert arroyo, it collected scattered raindrops and turned them into a flash flood of information.<\/p>\n Regina Spektor added her thoughts<\/a>, and so did Lin-Manuel Miranda<\/a>, the mind behind the Broadway musical \u201cHamilton.\u201d<\/p>\n The Twitter account behind Lava Beds National Monument in California offered its contribution<\/a> (\u201cMolten lavascape\u201d was among its \u201cjobs\u201d), and so did the account dedicated to the Tyrannosaurus rex at Chicago\u2019s Field Museum. (Its career started with \u201cEgg.\u201d)<\/p>\n Call even said she\u2019s had an offer to help her sort through the many, many responses that have answered her, well, call.<\/p>\n \u201cI just got a call from IBM and some folks who work with Watson and they want to help me filter the data, so I\u2019ve got to talk to them right after I talk to you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Some of the most common answers she\u2019s seen? Paperboy, lawnmowing and babysitting. \u201cI\u2019ve seen paperboy like a million times,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Call isn\u2019t a stranger to having her work spread across the internet. Last year, she published a parody of David Bowie\u2019s \u201cSpace Oddity\u201d with lyrics containing only the thousand most-common English words<\/a>. Designed with absurd humor, it\u2019s garnered 210,000 views on YouTube.<\/p>\n The following of #firstsevenjobs has passed even that, however.<\/p>\n While she knows the experience will be \u201cfleeting,\u201d she hopes the wave she started will get people to stop and think.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been some celebrities tweeting out their seven things and the thing they\u2019re famous for is nowhere on the list, and I think that\u2019s really encouraging,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the natural impulse to share, let me share my experience, is what drove social media at first, and now it feels like it might be getting drowned out by political news or by crazy stuff or people trying to make their cat go viral or whatever, but that original impulse, just to share everyone\u2019s experience and that everyone\u2019s experience is interesting. \u2026 I think that\u2019s still the better corner of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact Empire reporter James Brooks at 523-2258 or james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com or @AK_OK on Twitter.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Read more local news:<\/strong><\/p>\n Channel Construction plans new barge landing next to DIPAC<\/a><\/p>\n One of Juneau’s oldest bars is getting a new name and new look<\/a><\/p>\n