Or: How Dudes Living In Their Parents' Basements Became the Horatio Alger Myth of the Internet.

Humorous Twitter account Shit My Dad Says is becoming a sitcom. Behold, a brilliant burst of light as a thousand unemployed bloggers' dreams come true, and a writer who moved in with his dad and spent a lot of time on Twitter actually profits from it:

CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star. Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker.

Thus, the Justin Halpern Myth: The fantasy that, when the going gets tough, you can always cocoon yourself in a long, humiliating period of unemployed listlessness—spending eight hours a day browsing Facebook in your pajamas, memorizing twitter hashtags and not washing your hair—and emerge, as if by magic, a few months later as a brilliant new-media mogul with a book deal and Hollywood contract to boot!

(Note: I'm pretty sure Justin Halpern didn't actually live this way. In fact, he apparently had a job. But if by some chance his life ever resembled the above description: more power to him.)

Subcategories of the Justin Halpern Myth: Girls Who Turned Their Moms' Embarrassing E-mails Into a Book Deal, A Guy and Girl Who Turned Their Gross Sandwiches Into a Book Deal, Lady Whose Facebook Update About Her Dog Became a Movie, and Guy Who Got $50K to Copy and Paste Tweets Into a Coffee Table Book.

The Justin Halpern Myth is either a really bad thing (since it fools sad, hopeless people into believing their painstakingly crafted web utterances will some day turn them into stars) or a really good thing (for the same reason, mostly). Because when you're unemployed, dead broke, toiling in anonymity and/or living with your parents, and your freelance career just isn't working out, and the whole of your social life is confined to Facebook and Twitter—well, it's not like you've got anything better to do than reach for that great, glowing Justin Halpern in the sky. Dream big!

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