NonSteader Blog: communication

What's up with Twitter?

Has anyone else noticed that getting followers on Twitter is getting more expensive every day?
Every other thing I see is how to gain followers fast, buy followers, automatic tweets and follows and unfollows and promoted tweets and... I just don't know.

Back in my day...

When I first found Twitter, back in mid-2009, everything was so pure and honest. No one "bought followers", you just made friends, connections. If people liked your content, you had lots of followers. If you were just so-so, you didn't have as many.

I see accounts that have thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of followers. How many of those accounts are bots? Do the people with those follower numbers even care? Is their brand or message even reaching real people? Does that eve matter - if you have enough followers to start a small city? These are questions I care about!

I didn't really have anyone on separate lists, beyond maybe really funny people getting their own list, or really scary Tweeps, or pretty or cool, etc. But those were mostly lists that other people followed. Those lists were curated to direct attention to people based on their strengths or personalities.

When I logged in last week, I saw someone had added me to a list. Well, that's nice, I thought! I noticed the list had several thousand members and was followed by maybe 12. I'm extremely grateful, obviously. I love when people interact, however they choose to do so. I began to think about the point of the list. Was it just to organize and collect names? Were people actually seriously interested in whatever the list was for and it was just a small group? I still don't know what I did to earn my place. On Twitter, I even asked "is putting me on a list but not following me" was some sort of commitment phobia. I still don't know. But I care about the answer.

How would you feel if you found out you were Muted or on a list people never checked?

I would think, probably weird right? Shouldn't the goal be to write things that people ultimately want to read? Or at least to find the people who want to read what you write?

My favorite Trivial Pursuit, for example.

I'm a huge fan of games, be it board, console, PC or other. One of the pluses about being a gamer is the ability to really take off into a world that is not your own, live another life. Games have the ability to communicate those stories, just as books do. What is being a writer, after all, if not a storyteller? Writing is a skill that we take years to develop in most cases. We hear from an early age that reading is essential to our craft, that the more we read the better we will become at capturing our stories, be they fiction or non-fiction. Lately, books have gotten cheaper, and people read more on computer screens than paper. But in making that shift to reading on the screen, we should remember that there is another new medium that should not be forgotten. Video games.

We think of them usually as a few mindless hours to distract a child or a fun way to kill time. Some make money streaming their games for others to watch (reminiscent of the days we used to go over to our friend's houses to gather around one N64, PS or dual each other at Pong) or record their gameplay for uploads to YouTube. These mostly focus on the technical skill of the game, how to beat a boss, how to kill faster, more efficient travel, tips and tricks. But playing a game yourself, especially a well-crafted game, with a story you can get invested in, that can be a transformative experience. There are some games that suck you in just as deftly as a well-written novel.

Modern video games have the potential to be just as epic, enthralling and engaging as the storytellers of old. Modern writers should consider playing games to see if there's anything they could absorb that may make them more effective storytellers. Most importantly, they can be an important bridge to the older forms of storytelling which relied more on verbal and visual communication, less on written words. Video games are the visual and verbal storytellers of our time. They are the modern equivalent of the shaman dancing around the fire, the old fisherman with his tall tales of giant creatures, the mother soothing her children with fairy tales. They are showing us who we are, and who we have the potential to be. Like any good story, video games fill a void within us.

Therefore, since it is #NationalVideoGameDay, I'll be giving you my: