"OMG SO CUUUUUUTE! Why does he have to be so cute? Adorable. I just died. Are you kidding, is this real? Man's best friend." I read the comments flowing in about the new video, while Toby lay flat on the ground, staring at the ceiling.
"See? I told you this would benefit you. You are killing all these girls with your cuteness. You just gained a couple thousand fans. I'll bet there'll be a dozen gifs from this 13 second video up on tumblogs all over the world in a few minutes." Toby sat up on his elbows and raised one of his eyebrows at me. My mother always used to do that to me whenever I was in trouble for doing something bad.
"Tumblr? Do you have a Tumblr account?" His voice got higher.
"Uhumm…I used to." I lied through my teeth.
"Oh. Could you explain it to me? 'Cause I really don't understand the point of it." He shuffled himself across the floor and over to my shoulder to face my laptop's screen. I didn't get to answer the question, I guess it was rhetorical
I spent about an hour and a half with Toby on Tumblr. Eventually, we moved to the desktop because the laptop was making our backs hurt. I taught him the few tricks and skills I've picked up over the years, as well as how to post and reblog, who to follow and who not to follow, and how to get followers. Together, we created an appropriate name and design for his new blog. I explained to him that he needed to wait a while before he started getting followers.
"Yeah…but waiting's not really my thing. What about if we tweet the name of my blog out?"
That's exactly what ended up happening. We made a large portion of the audience very happy, and he gained about a thousand new followers after twenty minutes. While we were sitting at the desktop, Toby suggested that he record some gameplay for TobyGames. I sat beside him while he did, and had to hold my breath on multiple occasions to keep from laughing out loud. In the middle of a Minecraft episode, he started talking to me,
"Why are you so quiet all of a sudden, Belly. I demand you speak!"
"But I thought you didn't want to have my voice in your videos for this channel," I responded, "I've been holding in my laughter and remarks. It's TobyGames, not TobyandBellyGames…"
Toby froze. He paused his game and spun his deskchair around to face me. He had an expression on his face that screamed, you might have something, there! I knew exactly what was coming next. I knew exactly what was coming next as soon as the words left my mouth.