About B.J. Mendelson: The Professional Version
B.J. Mendelson has contributed to The Huffington Post, CNN, MTV’s O Music Awards, Mashable, Forbes, the Eisner-nominated ComicsAlliance, and other national outlets. He currently contributes to SocialTimes and The Wall Street Journal’s Accelerators blog.
In the Fall of 2001, B.J. started a business at the age of eighteen, operating it out of his dorm room at Alfred State College. The business was called, “Earth’s Temporary Solution” and was a live entertainment business that booked concerts across New York and New Jersey.
In February of 2003, B.J.’s “Universal Break-up Card” was featured on BoingBoing, Fark, GorillaMask, College Humor, and many other websites. This would be the first of a long string of viral success for him which include helping to spread the game Humans Vs. Zombies, placing his cat in the 2007 YouTube / CNN Presidential election coverage, and getting a show syndicated into forty million homes on ABC.
In 2006, after a few years of getting emails asking how to make stuff “go viral”, B.J. took on clients in order to pay for his growing student loan debt.
B.J. is a graduate of the State University of New York at Potsdam where he completed a degree in Political Science and did some graduate work in Organizational Leadership. He is also the first student and youngest individual in the near 200 year history of SUNY Potsdam to create and endow a scholarship named for his grandfather, Oscar Cohen. The scholarship is given out each year to an incoming freshman or transfer student enrolled in the Music Business program at the world-renown Crane School of Music.
After college, B.J. was the architect of the wildly successful “High Five Tour” for Wounded Warriors Family Support, and wrote a syndicated college survival columnist with CBS College Sports. He has also been quoted and featured in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Smart Money Magazine, and other national and International outlets.
B.J. has talked about the myth of social media at such colleges as Columbia University and has given talks at the United Nations, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit (WOMMA), South By Southwest, and Social Media Explore about the myth of social media. Each of B.J.’s presentations have received rave reviews, all of which you can read here.
His first book, Social Media Is Bullshit, was published by St. Martin’s Press on September 4th, 2012. You can see, hear, and watch all of the press coverage surrounding the book here. If you’d like to talk to B.J. for a story, you can send an email with PRESS in the subject line to BJ [A T] BJMendelson [D O T] com or call 518-832-9844.
Most questions about the book, Social Media Is Bullshit, can be answered here.
B.J. Mendelson currently resides in New York and is working on his next book.
About Brandon Mendelson: The FUN Version That Everyone Likes And Demanded I Bring Back
I grew up in Monroe, New York. My family moved there in 1988 to get away from the assholes that inhabit Long Island.
The only thing I kept from the Island was my love for the New York Islanders, a team that embodies mediocrity.*
I barely graduated from Monroe-Woodbury Senior High School in 2001. I had no commitment to academic success, didn’t want to be there, and hated everyone I went to school with. I did; however, hold the stupid belief that being involved in a ton of extracurriculars would get me into NYU, despite a piss-poor GPA of 77.0
Alfred State was the only college that accepted me, and I didn’t even apply there. My Dad sent them an application after I told him I wasn’t applying elsewhere and that other colleges were “bullshit”.
That was a rare moment between my Dad and I because my parents were not always around. My older sister, Melissa, raised us.
For every good thing Melissa did, my older brother Brad undid. Born dead and later revived through magic, Brad has issues, many of them, including severe OCD.
Brad’s daily routine consists of throwing everything out, putting what’s left away to be thrown out later, going through your stuff, checking the mailbox twenty-seven times, and carrying conversations with himself. If you did anything to disrupt his routine, Brad would get angry, Hulk-angry, so none of us did anything.
Between the MIA parents and Brad, I was functionally retarded until college.
5 Things I Want To Accomplish Before Pulling A Hunter S. Thompson
1. Fuck Gina Carano, while she’s dressed like Wonder Woman, on one of the park benches located on the Santa Monica Pier.
Why? Because it’d be awesome … but also because doing so would present an opportunity to hear some kid go, “Daddy … what is that man doing to Wonder Woman?” And that would give me something laugh about it for the rest of my life.
2. Have Social Media Is Bullshit Dracula And Kittens reach The New York Times Best Seller sList.
3. Make enough “Fuck You Money” where I can donate the excess to supporting public education. Why? Because I’m tired of talking to people who sound like they’re a cast member of The Jersey Shore.
4. With my stand-up comedy career, I’m shooting to land between a Hicks or a Carlin in terms of success, but I’ll be happy landing above a Mencia or a Dunham.
5. Own The Los Angeles Dodgers. I imagine they’re going to be pretty cheap when California breaks off of the continent and sinks into the ocean, and when that happens? Advantage Mendelson.
Post-College Dickery
I graduated from SUNY Potsdam in December of 2006 with a useless degree in Political Science. During my transition from undergraduate to graduate student at Potsdam, I also worked for a syndicated ABC television show and CBS College Sports’s U-Wire division.
Not a great combination.
In addition to doing a weekly “college survival” column that was syndicated to the over 800 college newspapers, U-Wire consisted of me sitting around for six hours in my Potsdam, New York, apartment and making hundreds of stories from college papers across America more SEO friendly. It sucked, but it was also the perfect job because I barely had co-workers and I could watch all the superheroine porn I wanted.
Telecommuting is awesome!
The syndicated TV show? It’s something to forget, but hey, it got me a production credit in IMDB!
Between the insane workload of these two jobs, and running my own business, I left SUNY Potsdam’s graduate program in Organizational Leadership with a semester to go.
Also during that time, I flunked my LSAT. Wait. Flunk is too weak of a word. I bombed my LSAT so hard the walls shook in the scoring center and three law school admissions officers committed suicide in protest.
I avoided the GRE after vowing never to kill again.
Since my job skills consist entirely of “talks good” and “writes better”, I decided to continue with graduate school elsewhere.
Faced with limited alternatives, admissions offices like their useless test scores, I went to UAlbany to work toward a Ph.D. in American History.
I probably won’t finish that degree**. Why? Let’s just say I’m more likely to become a stripper at Score’s than a tenured professor somewhere.
After leaving UAlbany in early 2009, my ex-wife and I traveled across America to promote the early detection and prevention of breast cancer for a small not-for-profit.
Halfway through the tour, our car died in Las Vegas. You can insert your own “I guess they weren’t lucky in Vegas” joke here.
A year later, I organized and operated a similar tour for Wounded Warriors Family Support. This time, nothing died and the tour was way more successful.
With the exception of Wounded Warriors Family Support, I can’t really describe most not-for-profits in flattering terms. Because of this, I have sworn off all future charitable activities.
That is, unless you ask me to come to your house and play “Homeless Santa”. As a former mall Santa at the Aviation Mall in Queensbury, New York, I’ll be happy to defecate on your lawn and send your children a chilling message about their future as a college graduate.
In February 2011, I sold my first book to St. Martin’s Press. I’d like to think it was because I’m a good writer and have something interesting to say, but it could have very well been because I have over a half million people allegedly following me on Twitter.
The book got delayed, wasn’t sent out for testimonials for the back cover, didn’t go to half the people it was supposed to for press, had 18 typos and a wrong phone number inserted into it by a copy editor, and I can continue making excuses as to what went wrong, but what went right is that it hit shelves across the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. in September of 2012 and sold over 7,000 copies in less then a year on zero budget and despite a total U.S. media blackout because the book had a swear word in the title.
I wish I was kidding about that last part.
The people who have read the book love it despite the typos, even the guy who’s phone number in the book likes it, and the people who haven’t read the book and sell social media hate it. No surprise there.
And that brings us to today.
What Am I Doing Now?
Dying a slow, boring, death in a hotel room somewhere, waiting for the opportunity to speak or tell jokes. Or both.
I’ve also taken up praying, but not to God.
He doesn’t exist.
I pray to George Carlin whenever I feel like it. That seems like a schedule he’d endorse.
What am I praying for? For Social Media Is Bullshit to eventually sell a million copies. How do you think I’m going to make my “Fuck You Money”?
I ain’t writing another book!
So, now that you’re done reading all this, why don’t you answer my prayers by buying a copy of my book here.
*I fucking hate the Islanders.
**I’m going to finish my Ph.D. in American History. Its the first thing I plan to do with my “Fuck You Money”. The second? Buy The New York Islanders and rename them “The Skating Dicks”.