WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU INVITE 100,000 TWITTER FOLLOWERS FOR A DRINK

For many fans of Scroobius Pip, the highlight of 2014 would be his final set with Dans Le Sac to a huge crowd at Bestival in September. But for Gigwise one of our favourite moments of the year was seeing the MC, poet, DJ and hip-hop aficionado offer to buy his 100,000 Twitter followers a drink.

To mark the most impressive round of drinks of the entire year, we talked to Scroobius about going viral, fan entitlement and how it ended up not costing him anything.

You tweeted back in April 2013 about having a drink to celebrate if you reached 100,000 Twitter followers. How much thought did you put into that initial tweet? 
Very little. It’s a beautiful thing! I was looking at that original tweet from April 2013 and I don’t mention buying anyone a drink at all. I say 'I'm going to arrange drinks in a pub'. But then I got to 100,000 and I said I’ll do this, it it’s fine.

As soon as The Lad Bible, Buzzfeed, the Metro and ITV News reported it, I was getting so many texts off friends and family laughing at me saying I was going to be bankrupt and homeless in a week because I had to buy 100,000 people a drink. But I loved it. Number one it’s marketing for just trying to do something nice. And number two it was completely unplanned - I didn’t expect people to jump onto it like that.

How did it actually work? Did you set up a tab?
I lucked out, man. It benefited from everyone reporting it – I had pubs emailing me saying "Come and have it here, we’ll do a deal." The Bedroom Bar [in London's Shoreditch] hit me up because I used to do my club night there. I’ve got a really good deal with this really good lager called Pistonhead – you don’t have to put the name in, I’m not paid or sponsored by them. Pistonhead put forward a couple of hundred cans just to take the edge of. It was perfect because it ended up genuinely not costing me a penny. 

The thing is that when all my mates were texting me and laughing [about going bankrupt]... this is going to sound arrogant but I know social networking works and how the internet works. So I wasn’t expecting 100,000 people to turn up. Sure enough, the right amount of people turned up for it not to be raging but enough for everyone to come and have a chat. I got to spend five minutes talking to every single person who came along. On the way there I bought a book of raffle tickets and I arranged with the bar if someone brings a raffle ticket up they got their free drink.

Roughly how many people showed up?
100-200. I announced it with just over 24 hours notice and my thinking there was: I need to keep it to the actual fans. Not in a mean way but I just don’t want it to turn into something that goes crazy wrong. To be fair Buzzfeed and Ladbible were really cool – they only reported about [full details of the event] the day after, so they didn’t do a big thing on the time, date and location. That was cool of them because of the exposure they gave but they clearly just didn’t want to screw someone over. A lot of websites would have gone “Look it's here! You can go and get a free drink! Fuck this guy! Come on! Wahey!” It was nice they were cool about it. It all worked out beautifully.

How was the evening itself?
It was great, really nice. It was a bit awkward because you don’t really know when a thing like that starts. I got there with one mate and sat down but I couldn’t tell whether anyone already in the pub was there to come have a drink with me and hang out! It was a weird thing: there were candles on the tables and there was a couple there when we arrived. I walked past them three times. After I’d been there about an hour just touring around and saying hello to everyone and chatting and having photos, they stopped me and said ‘Could we quickly get one as we’ve been waiting ages?” I had to apologise hugely I just thought they were on a date! 

How did you feel the morning after - was it a heavy night of drinking?
I was drinking water. For me, I was feeling absolutely fine and triumphant. It was good fun. This is why I’m possibly not an ideal Ladbible person, because I’m not a big drinker anyway. On my most recent tour I basically propbably only drank twice in four months. Because I used to drink a bottle of wine on stage in every show and I’d get through the whole bottle. You wouldn't feel drunk because of the adrenaline but then it occurred to me: I’d do 25 shows a month so I’d be drinking 25 bottles of wine a month – which is not a good thing! So I’m always been in the habit of when I’m not on tour, not drinking anyway. Now I’m just incredibly boring!

Did you have any odd conversations?
Genuinely they were all quite lovely. The start of the night it was an Irish guy and a girl who came and sat with me and the guy I’d brought with me. When I left to go and talk to people by the time I came back at the end they were all become really good friends after talking and drinking all night. It was nice to see that with me out of the equation, everyone just seemed to be making friends.

In a weird way you’ve all got a connection as you’re into similar kind of music I guess. A couple of guys came down who work at UFC UK and I’m a massive UFC fan – so it was good to meet some of them. Because on Twitter I talk and interact a lot so it’s easy at things like that – there are some people there who know I’m into UFC and Brazilian jiu jitsu. So one minute I’m having a discussion about Brazilian jiu jitsu  and the next person I’m having an indepth conversation about the music industry.

A lot of people we did spend a lot of time just talking about how weird and hilarious it was that when I announced [the event] the amount of people that complained that it wasn’t near enough to them or wasn’t convenient for them or that it wasn't enough notice, or that it was on a week night or that they didn’t get paid till Friday. Dude I’m trying to do something nice! I don’t have to do this! It's hilarious!

People were saying that it was so out of order but you get used to it being a musician online. With Gigwise I’m sure you know but as soon as tour comes up you get 90 per cent people complaining about where the band isn't going and 10 per cent going 'Awesome - can't wait to come to that'. I’m been doing this for years and I knew that as soon as I announced it, everyone who didn’t live within a five minute walk of the Bedroom Bar would be furious that they’d have to go out of their way to come and hang out.

In your Reddit AMA you talk about an American fan complaining your Facebook updates are keeping him awake as you are updating them too much
That was genuinely the pinnacle of the weird way: I genuinely think it's a serious thing, it's the weird way. If it wasn't a natural thing that I'm that chatty and open online, I'd change it. It's weird how I remember when I was growing up all bands had a certain mystique and that's gone now. There's now a level of entitlement that if someone messages you and you don't reply within ten minutes then you're a prick. That was the ultimate example of the level of entitlement that there is. The person wasn't joking and I don't think was trying to be a dick in any way: just genuinely thought it was perfectly acceptable to ask me to not promote my stuff so much because of the notifications waking them up. It's a worrying thing of how the internet is changing us all.

What have you got planned when you reach 200,000 on Twitter?
I'm thinking of making one up when I make 100K on Instagram - I'm at 35K on that so I'm never going to get to 100. I've not got any plans for next ones: it was a natural thing. It was never thought out and planned. It stemmed from a few years back when me and Dan had a tour and our Newcastle show got cancelled quite late. The promoter pulled it and we're like 'We've got a hotel booked in Newcastle, we planned to go past there and I've got a mate who runs a pub called The Dog and Parrot and we'll do the thing there". I said "Look if anyone was hoping to come to the show, obviously you get a refund but we also did this. We sat there for the evening, had a drink and one of the lads who came ended up coming for a curry with us. Which was kinda weird but that's how it goes. It stemmed from that I guess.

The thing is that it's genuine: this is going to sound arrogant but 100,000 of my Twitter followers are worth 2-300,000 of other people's twitter followers. It's because on the web statistics, me and Dan have always had such a high percentage of people who willl respond or react to anything that we post. If you've got 500,000 but it's all just promo stuff people often aren't clicking on that but because we've always been really interactive with our fans when we are promoting something they will get behind it repost it and push it. It genuinely means a lot to get to 100,000 of you lot. It's not just a statistic or a number on there. Let's go and have a drink and let's celebrate that.

Originally published on Gigwise.com in December 2014. Read the original here.