Years of toiling away at my craft has finally paid off. My work on guns has lifted me to a level of fame that I could not have imagined 5 years ago. Evidence: My daughter saw a story in VICE about gun violence that quotes fairly extensively from an interview I gave to the author.

While the fact that a journalist would interview me blew her mind, the fact that she found the story on Snapchat “Discover” blew my mind.

The story she found is actually an old one that I have mentioned before on this blog. It is also abbreviated from the original and the title of the Snapchat story — “Understanding Gun Violence” — actually differs quite a bit from Mike Pearl’s original story: “How scared should I be of my own gun?”

Be that as it may, I was pleasantly surprised that other young people in addition to my 20 year old daughter saw the story because it means they are actually getting some information about what is happening in the world. Even though I would never think to use Snapchat to curate my news, people like a recent Wake Forest graduate saw the story and texted me about it.

And a current Wake Forest student doing an internship in Belize this summer saw it and emailed me.

Socially, these responses suggest something significant happening with young people, social media, and news/information that I wasn’t aware of.

Personally, for this weekend at least, I will bask in the glory of being GUNFAMOUS on SNAPCHAT. As my wife would say, it beats a stick in the eye.