A quote from The Love of Three Oranges has gone somewhat viral and I feel weird about it

There’s this weird spam-bot like Twitter account called AdvisorIsIn that just tweets the same messages over and over again (it seems like about once every two days or so it repeats its cycle). I’ve tried writing to “Eve” multiple times but it seems that there is no human behind the account.

What does anyone gain from the account? I sure as heck don’t know. I guess it was set up as some kind of auto-promotion for the website it links to.

That said, the reason I care at all is that one of the tweets in her rotation is mine. She’s truncated a quote from The Love of Three Oranges and tweets it every few days. Over and over again, there among a variety of very famous inspirational quotes, is a line by yours truly.

Here’s the quote in context from the play as said by King Silvio at the very end of Act 3:

My loyal subjects! May we take something away from all this silliness, some message from all the chaos. There is no greater power than that of a laugh and happiness is a force which can save a person from the horrors of the world.

The last line is the one that’s become the most popular line from the play.

I feel very weird about all of this. For starters, this Twitter bot isn’t the only person who’s gotten a hold of this quote. I don’t know who first posted it online but I see it all over the place, sometimes truncated, sometimes in full and have for years. It’s become a staple for the pro-happiness/life-coach crowd and is quoted with more frequency every day. I’m flattered, especially when I see the quote on a page with lines from a variety of people far more famous than I. I’m also flatted that people think it’s worth sharing.

This theatre company has it on their homepage for goodness sake!

But the whole thing feels so weird to me. For starters, it seems odd to attribute it to “Hillary DePiano.” OK, yeah, I’m the person who wrote it and those are my words but that’s not me talking. That’s King Silvio talking aka me playing a character. It’s bizarre to me that it’s all over the place with just my name on it when I, personally, have never actually said those words aloud in my life.

It would be like seeing this on inspirational quote websites:

“I havest decided that thou dost suck most verily and no longer will I layth the smackth down in thine name but will rather let such gentlemen as these go free of themselves.” -Hillary DePiano

Because, you know, that’s from the same play. And I wrote that too. (Watch that go viral now just to mess with me.)

But I decided, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em and I put it on Goodreads a few years ago when I realized it was becoming a thing. Because, let’s face it, people usually write…

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” -J.K. Rowling

and not…

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” -Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

So I need to just get over myself. In fact, I should really try to capitalize on this and dig through all my stuff for quote worthy lines to post to Goodreads just to see what else strikes a chord with people like this.

And, yes, I realize that is this what happens. That, at some point, people get ahold of your content and spread it around and do whatever they want with it because they like it. And that’s a GOOD thing.

I get all that. I really do. My inner marketing person is PSYCHED about it. Complete strangers are sharing my content of their own free will and that is nothing but positive for me and my stuff. We’ve got no where to go but up up UP!

But I can’t help it. The part of me that is just a normal person feels completely and totally weird about this tiny little toe dip into being a “famous” person and finds it terrifying.

You know what I mean?