Week 10, Post 3- Storytelling on Social Media
As someone who aspires to be a writer, I find the potentials in online writing created by social media technologies to be fascinating. I meant to blog about this a few weeks ago, but I was reminded of my interest in this new potential by the online Twitter adventure from a few weeks ago, wherein you had to roleplay and keep from being fired as Beyonce’s assistant. https://time.com/5614204/beyonce-twitter-thread-explained/
The brainchild of a 19 year old who was just experimenting with the choose your own adventure aspects narratively possible on Twitter, it’s a great ideat to see what is possible in creating a scenario on a platform that wasn’t really intended to do such.
About a 15 years ago, there was a similar narrative that made use of the disaparate social media technologies of the time to create a creepy story, one that wasn’t interactive in a “choose your own adventure” style but still fully immersed you in the narrative. It did this by taking the form of an epistolary story in the form of blog posts spread across livejournal, personal websites, etc. It reminds me at this later date at the “found footage” subgenre in filmaking, like Blair Witch, Cloverfield, or Paranormal Activity. It’s called The Dionaea House, and it’s about a mystery involving a strange house and the obsessions and ultimiately disappearance it inspires in people who enter it. Unfortunately, some of those sites have gone dark now, but this wiki recreates the experience as best possible: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dionaea_House.
(It’s a very creepy horror story. It’s also pretty awesome.)
There must be several attempts to create online narratives using social media technologies. Here’s another one from 2005, http://theoutbreak.blogspot.com/, which liveblogs in real time the zombie apocalypse. That one is actually pretty interesting in how committed it is to the concept- the blogger is not privy to the reasons for the disaster nor does it really spend too much time reliving action sequences, as it is written from the perspective of a surivor and thus wouldn’t really dwell on such episodes.
There are three different means of narrative attempts in social media (i’m sure there are many many more, especially as two of them are from over a decade ago), but they are interesting as potential options in creating simulations for a learning environment as well. They all take an enormouse amount of planning and effort, but I think the potential for immersion in an online instructional setting is incredible.
The brainchild of a 19 year old who was just experimenting with the choose your own adventure aspects narratively possible on Twitter, it’s a great ideat to see what is possible in creating a scenario on a platform that wasn’t really intended to do such.
About a 15 years ago, there was a similar narrative that made use of the disaparate social media technologies of the time to create a creepy story, one that wasn’t interactive in a “choose your own adventure” style but still fully immersed you in the narrative. It did this by taking the form of an epistolary story in the form of blog posts spread across livejournal, personal websites, etc. It reminds me at this later date at the “found footage” subgenre in filmaking, like Blair Witch, Cloverfield, or Paranormal Activity. It’s called The Dionaea House, and it’s about a mystery involving a strange house and the obsessions and ultimiately disappearance it inspires in people who enter it. Unfortunately, some of those sites have gone dark now, but this wiki recreates the experience as best possible: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dionaea_House.
(It’s a very creepy horror story. It’s also pretty awesome.)
There must be several attempts to create online narratives using social media technologies. Here’s another one from 2005, http://theoutbreak.blogspot.com/, which liveblogs in real time the zombie apocalypse. That one is actually pretty interesting in how committed it is to the concept- the blogger is not privy to the reasons for the disaster nor does it really spend too much time reliving action sequences, as it is written from the perspective of a surivor and thus wouldn’t really dwell on such episodes.
There are three different means of narrative attempts in social media (i’m sure there are many many more, especially as two of them are from over a decade ago), but they are interesting as potential options in creating simulations for a learning environment as well. They all take an enormouse amount of planning and effort, but I think the potential for immersion in an online instructional setting is incredible.
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