Category: Blog

The Staggered Transmissions Article helped me to understand that successful and intriguing fiction can take any form, even if it’s less than 140 characters. Even the author notes that “brevity does not equal lack of literary quality.” I think that a serialization of tweets/any form of social media can be just as exciting as watching films in a series. The stories keep the readers/audiences on the edge of their seat and keep them coming back each time wondering what the conclusion will be (like the Zola story). I also think that each section in Egan’s story can stand together on their own and be compelling,

I think that the takeaway from this week’s readings is that seriality, especially on twitter, can be used in a very nuanced way, despite twitter’s restrictions. I really liked how the Andersen article compared serial twitter posts to victorian book installments because that comparison made me think about serial twitter posts as works of literature, instead of just social media posts. After I read the articles and reflected on them, I thought that it was interesting how society has changed to demand that books be released at one time, yet society still finds the seriality of twitter interesting. I’m not really sure why that is, but it makes me think of how maybe society has become increasingly more inpatient, especially in the time of instant streaming and 24 hour news coverage. I see that impatience in my own life when I watch a series on Netflix or Hulu. Often, I need to binge the show instead of periodically watching it and moving through it slowly.

After reading “Black Box” and “Staggered transmissions: Twitter and the return of serialized literature,” I have been reflecting on how the writing process behind Twitter novels differs from the more “traditional” writing process that leads to novels. As Andersen points out, every installment of “Black Box” must be able to stand on its own, since there is a delay between the publication of each tweet, but it must also dialog with the other parts. Unlike most books, in which sentences function as the building blocks of some larger structure, pieces of Twitter novels must be self-contained and simultaneously leave room for live engagement from the broader audience, whose members thus become co-authors of the novel. As a soon-to-be Twitter novelist, I am still thinking through what the writing process for these pieces might look like. While I understand they cannot be mere 140-character-sized installments of a larger novel, I do not know how else to go about writing them. I am also unsure of how to balance self-containment with openness to voices from the audience, or how to bring in this engagement from other Twitter users in the first place. I hope we can discuss this more on Monday!

The Andersen article does an excellent job of showing how published authors have used Twitter to write their stories. I have not really thought about this in the past, but this is a great way to publish your views for a lot of people to see. It is free and it will allow people who do not have a subscription to their businesses to be able to read their work. It can also be good for the business, because more people will join their company if they like the work that they see on Twitter. Twitter’s accessibility makes it is so successful, and anyone looking to grow their brand should establish a base on this platform to try and succeed as a writer. This made me interested to do my own social media account so I can hopefully gain a base in the future.

I found the liberating straitjacket section of the Staggered Transmission article to be particularly compelling. The serialization occurring on Twitter and across other social media platforms is confined to this sequential, waiting style of writing, but the example of haiku’s opens up the conversation to having “Twitter” literature held in the same regard as other, more traditional forms of literature are. Constrictions apply to all different styles of writing, but the way that this straitjackets can be flipped around and become liberating is exactly what we are seeing with Twitter writing, just as the article mentions this is what we see with haiku’s. I should also add I greatly enjoyed reading “Black Box.” I thought it was a fantastic example of working within the restrictions of this new-age serialization, as it was no less interesting or descriptive or enjoyable to read than a traditional short story.

I think that the takeaway from this week’s readings is that although social media can amplify voices that otherwise would not be heard, those voices can often be capitalized on by more powerful people. For example, in the case of Aziah Wells, her twitter story about her experience with sex work drew a large audience and raised a lot of awareness to the dangers involved with sex work. However, a male writer for Rolling Stone Magazine wrote about the story and now the story is being recognized as his and not Aziah’s. Additionally, a production company is turning the story into a movie, but white male actors and producers are completely taking over the story and passing it off as their own. In this case, the entertainment industry took over a story that was important and educational and turned it into a story that the powerful could profit from. Hearing about this story has really made me think about what other media could potentially be ripping off someone else’s work. In the future, I will make sure to research media before I consume it and not support media that rips off stories from the original author.

I really thought about what makes things go viral. What makes something viral? What role do celebrities make in making something go viral? How did the Martin article change your views on how you read social media articles or posts?

The transition from the almost in-person storytelling feel that the tweets from Aziah envoke and the more mainstream article from Rolling Stone demonstrates both two different ways social media can be used, as well as the all-too-common commodification of a Black person’s story.

The tweets from Aziah come across as personable, as if she was telling the story to a friend in person, punctuated with emoji’s, capitalization, and Twitter grammar, which allows the tweets to flow into one another. On the other hand, the Rolling Stone article, as described by Veronica Wells from Madame Noire, views Aziah’s story as a commodity to be written on, expanded upon, and eventually sold. It takes an everyday individual and their story and turns it into an “easier” read, with ads and a large company inserting themselves into the story and lives of people they knew nothing of prior to the Tweets going viral. Between Rolling Stone, James Franco directing the movie, and the white writers, it seems to mirror the preying on of vulnerable or unaware people by the pimps described in Aziah’s story, commodifying her experience simply due to its ability to peak interest in readers, just as she herself saw firsthand the commodification of women in the sex-trade industry.

 

I believe the key takeaway from “How Aziah Wells Is Being Erased From The Zola Story” is that a narrative, when shared on social media, can change as a result of it being published there — for instance, it can be appropriated by different groups, resulting in different interpretations and social consequences. In this case, the “Zola Story,” by Aziah Wells, a Black woman, was transformed into a Rolling Stone article, which will serve as the basis for a script and a film produced by a group of white men, with no mention to Wells. Upon finishing this reading, I wonder if there are other stories that I have consumed and that were created through, or as a result of, cultural appropriation (the answer is probably “yes”). I am left reflecting on the forms of entertainment that I enjoy at the expense of silenced voices and whose voices these were in the first place. We like to think that because we live in a globalized world, everyone can equitably use and share their voices on social media, but the Zola Story proves that is not the case — social media can amplify the gap between those with power and those who are pushed away from it. Moving forward, I would like to continue exploring how the interaction between social media and fiction can map onto pre-existing power structures, but also be used to subvert them.

I think that the main takeaway from the articles is that social media, whether Twitter or Vine, is not an adequate platform to share deep feelings and thoughts. Both articles mentioned different reasons for why social media is not adequate to share deep feelings, but the common reason that both sources cited is the quickness of social media. In the case of Twitter, users can only use so many characters in a tweet, so users have to prioritize what they are going to say and often have to make broad statements. For vine, users are limited by a six second time limit. Although vine does utilize video, which allows for more communication, the time limit is very restrictive. I think that these two points are very good points, but something that I think is also important to the idea that social media can’t be used to fully express points of view is the nonstop nature of social media. I know in my experience with social media, I tend to scroll pretty fast through feeds and often do not take the time to fully read posts. Additionally, with so much content posted every second on social media, it is often hard to keep up with everything that is going on and it is easy to miss posts. Therefore, even if a person were able to convey deep emotion within the constraints various sites place on users, there is a high possibility that the message wouldn’t even reach people. I think that these two articles provided a good reminder that social media should not be used to have deep discussions about certain topics.

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