Todd Evergreen is making his first public appearance. That Todd Evergreen.
The reclusive, twenty-two-year-old, overnight billionaire whose very existence has put us all in a tizzy.
Todd Evergreen, the notoriously camera-shy cyber-prodigy, is making his official debut.
If you don’t know about it, there’s a reason.
One day he didn’t exist. The next, he was everywhere.
Todd Evergreen, slam-dunking his way onto the Forbes “30 Under 30,” profiled in the Times Business section. Not even a quarter century old, and he’s already got panels of experts debating his impact on CNBC, Jon Stewart using him as a punch line.
Trump’s offered publicity-worthy sound bites of advice on FOX News, Ashton Kutcher a series of admiring tweets. Elon Musk even asked him to consult on SpaceX. (Whatever that might be!)
From what we’ve heard, Musk could not procure a meeting.
Evergreen doesn’t do meetings.
But as of this weekend, he does parties. If you were lucky enough to get an invitation.
The media throws around phrases like whiz kid and boy genius and visionary.
Todd Evergreen, we are told, is trending.
The only hitch? We haven’t the faintest idea who he could possibly be.
There is speculation, of course. Investigative teams digging in the dirt like mangy strays, panels speculating on CNBC. Nothing. Does he even have a Social Security number?
The occasional snapshot. Not via the paparazzi, whom he has eluded. Just grainy shots from mobile phones, probably snapped by some NYU students (do they ever go to class, these kids?).
Of course, you can’t make out his face. But still.
Todd on Ludlow Street, a little hunched over, walking quickly with a newspaper under his arm (the tech guru with a newspaper! How terribly rebellious of him!). Todd waiting out the downpour under a West Village awning, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Todd in Union Square, drinking coffee from a cheap cardboard cup. The kind bought from a street vendor for a dollar fifty, we suspect (not that we know from experience, mind you!).
Never without his sunglasses. Not ever. He’s like the Anna Wintour of the digital world.
Poser, according to the headlines.
Renegade, say others.
The New Breed of Internet Geek, proclaims a caption, Rockstar Webpreneur.
One thing everyone can agree on: Evergreen is way better looking than that Facebook guy. Not much of a feat, we know. But he is a strapping young man, even by real-world standards.
(At least, we think. When we see his face, we’ll revisit the topic.)
And to top it off, he’s rich. Really, really rich.
They say he signed with Wilhelmina Models. That he’s making a documentary. Starting a movie studio. Writing a book. Investing in a publishing company. Recording an album. Buying a label. Starting a theme park, a hotel chain, a line of luxury towels.
He has a billion dollars and buzz. He can do anything he wants.
Billion is an exaggeration, of course, but it makes for great headlines. Most likely, he’s in the high nine-figure range (still, nothing to thumb your nose at!).
Besides, it just adds to the mystery.
Perhaps he has some friends, we muse, though they’re probably as socially inept as he. And what are friends, really, but the people you will eventually screw over? (Not us, of course, as we are loyal to a fault. Good breeding is everything.)
As for what he’s doing with this chunk of change? Well, he bought that apartment. Those floors, to be precise. Two of them, in the top of a nondescript building on the Lower East Side. The lowest part of the East Side, we’ve been told, though we wouldn’t know the difference (going below Thirty-Fourth is such the ordeal!).
Excellent security and twenty-four-hour concierge service, but still. This is no 740 Park.
Immediately following the sales listing, we’ve heard talk at the club of new real estate ventures. The Lower East Side is the new Upper East, they say over the Sunday-brunch buffet.
(We’ll believe it when we see it. Which we don’t plan on doing anytime soon.)
The internet, we are told, is wild with conspiracy theories. Is it Bali? Kathmandu? Cleveland, Ohio?
And now that he’s sold his company, what will he do next?
Perhaps we should invite him to a cocktail party, we muse over our bridge tables. A benefit? To play doubles?
And do you think he’d consider a donation to our various charitable foundations?
(It’s a tax write-off, after all. And imagine the Society Page write-up!)
Along with the fascination come the inevitable naysayers.
He’s not that big of a deal. We’ve seen it before.
The same story, just plug in new details. We’ll call it Mad Libs for Cyber Success.
Zuckerberg wannabe, most likely lacking in social skills (undiagnosed low-level autism, social anxiety) creates start-up (social media endeavor, branding enterprise, the mashing of two previously unmashed ideas) in his basement (warehouse space, walk-up, parents’ garage, dorm room at MIT). He has a dream, most likely involving strange codes or other stuff the general population could not begin to fathom (or even want to. At least, we certainly don’t!).
Then it gets a following. The following grows. Before you know it, the young man has gone viral. (Funny word, this. A virus you long to contract! Like when Mitzi Vanden-Totter’s niece got mono the same week as that Rothbart heir. Her Poly Prep popularity ranking went straight through the roof!)
But we digress.
The rest of the story, of course, is equally familiar: along comes money-grubbing corporate entity, the big buyout, the write-up in the Wall Street Journal, the hundred-foot yacht and private beachfront property and days spent partying in Ibiza. With—if asked to harbor a guess—titans of the porn and rap industries.
We hate this story. But we love it, too.
Yes, Evergreen is intriguing, on that we are in agreement. But—just to play devil’s advocate here—how much does it really matter?
Todd Evergreen may be brilliant, but so are many of these young men. He may be attractive, but who isn’t? (And if born lacking in aesthetically pleasing features, there’s always that doctor on Central Park West.)
And as for his site—the Rock Exchange—Forbes may project a revolutionary impact, the Times may call it a breakthrough in business and music connectivity, but we are just fine, thank you very much, with Bergdorf online and the SocialDiary.com.
This James Bond act? Lacking in freshness as well. We’ve already had that Assange character, have we not? And just look what happened to him! (Hiding out on some tropical island with a harem of underage hula girls, we suspect.)
What it comes down to is this: it is simply a website. Nothing more, nothing less.
Remember that high school boy in Omaha who got 30 million for his cross-media-e-commerce-integration-thingamajig? It was plastered all over the news and on CNN. We could have come up with that, we all agreed, but we were too busy living our lives for such things. So now he’s richer than Midas, and we’re reading about his fortune in the Huffington Post and thinking he should spend some of it on zit cream.
At least we had dates for prom. That’s what we tell ourselves.
Evergreen, we are sure, is a perfectly fine young man. But the city is riddled with those, so why him? Why is his the name on everyone’s tongue? The face to launch a million Google hits? And most of all . . . why weren’t we invited to his coming-out soiree?
This, we daresay, will prove the event of the season. And Evergreen is only part of the equation.
The host? None other than Gerald Hoff. That Gerald Hoff.