Category: The Great Social Media Experiment

2022 Content/Short Stories/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing as Therapy/Writing Projects

The End

On Saturday morning I posted the last part of a ten-month-long opus to Twitter. A lot has changed since this began in March, most notably on Twitter. With the way things are heading, I won’t be posting any more original work on the platform again. The risks do not outweigh the rewards any longer. Still, it was a cracking experiment.

It seems a long time ago, too, and the idea did alter significantly as we went along: the key however was it was written daily. Therefore, if it were ever collated as a Thing, there’d need to be some significant editing along the way. However, that wasn’t the point. I’m here to push my own creative boundaries, and that’s what this did. Nobody uses social media as creatively as they can, with a very few exceptions. In 2023 the job here is to make sure I keep pushing the boundaries.

Innovation does appreciate a bunch of risk-taking.

If you enjoyed this adventure in storytelling?

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Here is the News/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing as Therapy

Beautiful Day

Everybody I know is glued to CNN. Suddenly all proper work seems to have stopped mattering, except before we started here two events were booked on Zoom to attend next week, both to help me focus on creative practice and work out WTF I do about making money going forward. The second one, let’s be honest, is the one that matters most and I will be taking copious notes. It isn’t just about throwing stuff out and hoping someone cares any more.

NaNo has reminded me that I am a very capable fiction writer, who can create a compelling narrative with drama and human interest, and maybe once this is done that Amazon publishing account needs to be used more than it has been of late. There will be a poetry book in the next few weeks, sure, but maybe some of my other work deserves a platform too. A growing body of quality output grants potentially more ways to bring in some cash.

The video projects are also the gifts that keeps on giving, and hopefully if I keep chipping away at things, we might have a realistic chance at making that successful too. It requires me to be ruthless as well as artistic, which is a combination that is already providing some fascinating results. This weekend I launch a weekly VLOG on the YouTube Channel. It will be interesting to see how people respond to this and whether there is any traction in ‘educational’ content.

Watch this Space.

General Writing Post/Internet of Words/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing Projects

You Can Fly

I am part of the first generation of digital natives: in my teens, computing stopped being something that happened on campuses or in massive rooms with punch cards. The personal computer defined my teens: ever since the world has embraced both good and bad in technology. Social media has become both those worlds, and more beside: right now, anything goes. Somewhere, as I type, someone will be decrying it as an evil that is destroying free thinking whilst restricting constructive discussion.

Except I know differently. For me, a particular brand of social media has quite literally altered my existence. No, it’s not hyperbole, sorry, but genuine praise for a platform some people will tell you is both a waste of time and energy. Without it, my life would be considerably less interesting, entertaining and enlightening. I’ve met what are now my closest friends via the medium of Tweeting.

Without it, I’d be considerably less of a person.

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Over the last couple of years I’ve written poetry to thank those people online for being awesome. This year, the process moves on a stage further. From a woman who couldn’t see the point of this platform when other people adopted it, I am now almost evangelical about the benefit of free speech. How can I say this with a block list that now reaches into three figures…? Not everybody will be your friend in life.

Expecting everybody to like you is a waste of everybody’s time.

Starting Monday, December 2nd on my personal account (@MoveablePress) I’ll be tweeting my thanks to the people who have changed the World for me in 2019. It has been genuinely tough this year to pick the list, but were it not for every one of these individuals, this year would not have been as transformative as it undoubtedly has. I’ll use this post as a repository for the tweet-threads when they’re done.

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I’m not a great fan of buying useless Christmas gifts: this year all close family will be receiving cards detailing how a lump sum donated to Oxfam will be used to fund charity projects worldwide. Altered Paths allows me to thank and give, all at once, is eco-friendly and comes with no wrapping paper to feel bad about recycling. It ticks all the boxes too: don’t just take, remember that giving is what matters most of all.

Thank you to these people who have helped me evolve and grow in 2019:

December 2nd -25th’s Twitter links will go here

 

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Blogging for Noobs/Instagram/Nerd Culture/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing as Therapy/Writing Projects

Was It Worth It?

Once upon a time, I got quite obsessed over the number of people who followed me on social media. This coincided with Twitter’s public and high profile attempts to remove the legions of robots and fake accounts from their platform. The reality of this change is pretty stark: I’ve seen zero follower growth since April 2018 on the ‘other’ account. Ironically, this was the exact period that this project began to gain momentum: interest here is far and beyond what was ever thought possible in such a short period.

In my lessons and observations of Social media over the last few years, there’s been a veritable legion of people in the background, advising me how to ‘influence’ in all its forms. What is abundantly apparent is that the best success stories, people who genuinely deserve all the plaudits and numbers on their teams are those individuals who do, in fact, put in the hard graft. It doesn’t have to be sitting on Social media, either. The right combination of immediacy and backroom work pays massive dividends.

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I do love me some good organisation, but in the end none of it is worth the Post It notes you wrote it on unless summat budges. I’m pretty sure now the path that was originally trodden with what’s now very much a personal Twitter is the absolute opposite direction things need to head: if anything, I’d be going backwards. So, it is time to stop selling myself, and to start ‘selling’ myself. Those two quote marks are actually quite vital too. Before it was all far to serious. Now, if summat good happens, it’s a bonus, but honestly I’m not fussed.

Last time out, there was an agenda and I HATE THOSE. I’m not an influencer, just a woman with stuff to say and her own shit to sell. Not anybody else’s mouthpiece or spokesperson, just my words and stories that need to be told and might well find a larger audience if I push them. So, here we go. Gonna give it a year and see where we go. If all else fails, I might luck out and get summat published in the meantime, who knows?

It gives me something to do apart from the housework and exercise, if all else fails…

Blogging for Noobs/Internet of Words/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing Projects

Who are You?

Twitter have been working hard over the past few months to clean up their act: removing fake accounts, discounting locked accounts from follower numbers and all manner of tomfoolery is being employed in an attempt to make our timelines more representative of reality. Except all this work is largely pointless when you think all a robot is made up of is automated code and all anybody on a sock account wants to do is to spread hate speech. My feed is teeming with robots, and it is time to start weeding them out.

This account is typical of many that are quite possibly advertising a real person, but it is most certainly not them using their account in a fashion that would be considered as ‘normal.’ The Follower (singular) that we share is the biggest giveaway: an account with massive follower numbers that retweets only scheduled, curated content. These are not ‘people’ I could have a conversation with, but they provide the filler which increasingly is holding sections of Social media together.

Their output, almost exclusively, is retweets of other accounts that pick up hashtags and then send them onward. In this case, the #amwriting and #amediting snared me. I did honestly go back more than a week to try and find evidence of actual humanity but none was forthcoming, and a look at the followers? Nobody I had in common except that single account. They’re a MASSIVE red flag and I want nothing to do with them.

After a while it becomes really easy to separate the reality from an automaton. Even if Liam is a real person, he’s using robot software to like simultaneously, and that’s an instant turnoff. It’s like when I follow someone and they then immediately DM me a thank you which is clearly an automated response. If I can write and curate every tweet, so can you.

When the person who follows you tweets in another language, it should not be an obstacle to communication. I follow lots of people for whom English is not their tweeting language of choice, and it really is not an obstacle to understanding. Not reading my tweet and (again) only following that one account? Your language of choice is irrelevant. SHOO.

I can do this all day and night. Let’s see who blinks first.

#Narrating2018/General Writing Post/Here is the News/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing Projects

Why

To kick-start my Internet Month, it seemed like a good idea to start asking questions of the place in which we all live. I’ll be honest, it has begun better than could possibly have been expected.

Reading my feed today, someone made the comment that generalising about the bad in people seems to have become a fairly predictable means of guaranteeing retweets and follows, and I think he’s spot on. Outrage generally appears to be the order of the day for some, and responding to that fallout a predictable (and often just as pointless) upshot for many others. After one person’s made the point for you, there is no need to keep recycling moral indignation, yet that is exactly what happens. Looking for an antidote to this, I’ve decided for the next month to let the impetus out of my hands, trusting those around me to interact.

Then we see how many of that number are willing to have a discussion.

This message (and follow) today was as good a validation of the process that I could possibly have wished for. Sometimes, it isn’t simply about spewing random facts or ideas into the ether in the vain hope someone will be interested. What matters more is to find out what it is that motivates people away from the reasons they use Twitter in the first place, and to remind others that it is just as important to take part as to stand on the sidelines and watch.

Now all that has to happen is for me to provide the questions which will stimulate healthy debate and not start fights …

#Narrating2018/Here is the News/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing Projects

The GSME: Back in Time

On March 14th I decided, after a fair amount of consideration, to sign up for Twitter’s Promote Mode beta. I’ve spoken about this in previous GSME articles, that it could be a great idea for someone like me in order to advertise myself without having to worry about micromanaging a bunch of stuff through often unwieldy UI selection screens. I’m just over halfway through my first month, and honestly?

I’m beginning to grasp how much will have to change in my own feed to make this exercise worthwhile.

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In basic terms, this is exactly the same deal as Co-Promote used to offer, but for a lot more money. That system offered me a ‘vague’ target audience based on what was, at times, pretty inaccurate interest tagging. Twitter allows me to pick the part of the globe I can promote in, and 5 ‘areas’ in which these tweets get promoted. After that, I have no control over what gets picked. The algorithm then selects tweets, from my timeline, and off they go into the wider world: this has resulted in some quite amusing exchanges with random members of the public.

I might get some people take interest in my feed, I might also get the odd random follow, but I’m more likely than not to get someone tweeting me directly to ask ‘WTF is this tweet being promoted by Twitter?’ That’s been the overriding thing I’ve noticed. I might have 14% more people looking at my Tweets, but when most of the actual engagements are people calling me a c-word or telling me to fuck off? This is not either relevant or helpful. It means that ANYTHING I say or do in my timeline has to be an advert, or a way to sell myself, or indeed a combination of the two, and here’s where the bigger problem lies.

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I cannot say ANYTHING that isn’t targetted specifically at my audience, and lose the vital (and rather importantly) organic nature of how my growth took place initially. Sure, if I’m cute I can stack things up, and I can cut out the ‘irrelevant’ nattering that does often take place. However, this isn’t a true reflection of my feed either. Sometimes it is the spontaneous and brilliant which defines me, and having no say at all in what gets thrown out into the world is, quite frankly, less than brilliant.

However, the interactions I’ve had with WTF Joe Public are a demonstration that yes, people do read their feeds. So, this month I am considering the potential of exploiting this randomness, with full knowledge given to you guys well in advance. I should be turning a negative into a positive and using the bizarre nature of the algorithm to start selling my own random nature. It is time to find out whether I can begin to use the platform to promote myself, in a manner that befits the truly organic nature of Social media.

It is time for some new ideas.

#Narrating2018/Oh For Goodness Sake/Social Media Asides/The Great Social Media Experiment

I Think We’re Alone Now

Last week I got a couple of shocks via Social media. All of them involved people having conversations where it was abundantly apparent they’d forgotten the Internet is public.

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We’ve all experienced a moment in our lives when something’s been posted on the Internet we wish hadn’t. Once upon a time, there were no delete buttons. You did not get the chance to reverse your decision. However, crucially in current conditions, even deleting an offending post will not mean you’re off the hook. All those people I watch remind themselves ‘I must delete all that stuff I said in the morning’ are already far too late to fix the damage done. If someone else can see it, they can screencap it. Sure, there are ways to spoof Twitter to make it look as if someone said summat they didn’t, but this is largely beside the point.

You should not be saying in public anything you will regret, ever.

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Yet I watch people who accuse others of being troublemakers when that’s exactly their own modus operandi: casual racism, sexism and all points in between. Pronouncing righteousness, reinforcing stereotypes, and the by now almost metronomically predictable subtweeting. Yeah, I get those other people piss you off. If it is that much of a problem, then remove them from your feed. Use a mute button, block them but do not sit and complain. If someone professes an opinion that you do not ascribe to, this is not a reason to hate them. It is a reason to keep them in your feed and learn from them.

The Internet is not just here for your benefit.

Tolerance is in short supply right now and is sorely needed in every walk of life. It is possible for us all to learn from each other, in so many different and surprising ways. Telling other people how to think and act has taken place for thousands of years, the only difference now is that the stage on which it happens is far larger than ever before. The sensitive and susceptible are in danger of believing everything they read as truth. It is already happening.

I wish more people would start thinking and stop posting.

Social Media Asides/The Great Social Media Experiment

Stop

It’s been a while since I lobbed this graphic on the top of a post, but you can expect to see it a bit more in the weeks that follow. It’s a New Year, after all, and that means that people are using Social media as a means to prove they are capable of change. I have to admit that the major change I’m implementing is to spend less time taking part in discussion, and more time working. It was during that period yesterday that a couple of minor epiphanies took place.

You Know I Can Hear You, Right?

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It is clearly apparent that a couple of people on my feed aren’t aware that if I’m friends with the same people they are, I get to see their conversations. If you have a dialogue directly with someone, this won’t clog up anybody’s timelines except the people involved, which is great. There’s an exception to that, but we’ll deal with that in a moment. However, if Person A posts a non specific tweet into my timeline and then Person B replies, it’s there for everybody to see. Sometimes I watch people reply to these with the belief that it’s a ‘private’ conversation.

You wouldn’t have said that in public otherwise, would you?

I watched a couple of people fall foul to this yesterday and learnt some quite interesting stuff about them that wasn’t clear otherwise. The other one is when someone does a lovely soapbox speech about X in one place when I’ve seen them say the exact opposite somewhere else to appease the friends groups they’re now hanging with. All those people who wish Social media wasn’t like High School are, amazingly, the exact same people making it just that way due to the fact they think other people don’t pay attention. You’d be amazed how many of us do, dude.

Please Don’t Include Everybody in your Replies

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As it’s Friday, I’m hoping mentioning this in a cheery, helpful fashion might have an effect. This is traditionally the day people on Twitter do #FF (Friends Friday) and shout out all the great people they interact with. The problem isn’t those initial tweets, let me be clear, but everybody that then hits reply to say than you, inadvertently cc-ing in EVERYBODY ELSE. Except, for some people, I suspect this isn’t an accident, and they enjoy the brief dopamine hit all those messages make in their Notifications.

I use Twitter to write, and communicate. I’m not here for the popularity contest, and have made a habit of force-unfollowing people when I no longer feel we have anything to say to each other (no, it’s not the main reason but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t happened.) I don’t #FF any more because of it. I also appreciate that for some people it is an important part of their existence online, but if you’re going to live here long term it might be an idea to either learn how to respect other people’s spaces or grasp how much noise thinking before posting can reduce.

You could thank the person who does the #FF in a separate Tweet. You don’t have to show everybody else you did that, just them. I won’t lie, when I end up in a #FF userpile I politely thank the person concerned, and then mute the original conversation, so I can get on using Twitter in the way that works best for me. If this flagrant disregard of your #FF motivation removes me from your Friday mantras, I will not take it as a slur or unfollow you in disgust. If you fail to communicate regularly or stay stuff I find uncomfortable, or assume that because we spoke once three years we remain friends? Then I might have reason to press the button.

In the end, you can rest assured, it wasn’t you. It was most definitely me.

The Overnight Mass CC gets you an Instant Mute

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If you cc-me in on a conversation when I’m asleep and I wake up to 100+ Notifications on my arrival the next morning which constitute nothing of value, I’m gonna mute yo ass.

Sorry, but I didn’t sign up for that when I joined.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start working on getting the poetry archived and scheduled for the weekend…

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