Twitter – A Motley Vision

And Earth will appear as The Garden of Enid

In honor of Enid’s recent (and rapid) rise to popularity, I give you the following: Continue reading “And Earth will appear as The Garden of Enid“

Gadianton Self-Help Titles, a mini Twitter meme

Yesterday I had this sudden urge to play on Twitter and so posted: “Who moved my treasure? #GadiantonSelfHelpTitles.” For those unfamiliar with Twitter adding the pound sign to a word or phrase designates it as a “hashtag”, which means other users can search for it and see all the posts that use that hashtag. It also acts as an unofficial invitation to others to post in theme with the hashtag. Now, I can’t claim that this idea is originally mine because I have a vague recollection of something similar to it coming across radar at some point in the past. But I was very pleased to see that this iteration of it took off. And it proved once again that Mormons on Twitter are hilarious. Although the ultimate proof is the juggernaut that was #mormonpioneertweets, which produced an amazing number of tweets, many of them completely hilarious and all of them, sadly, no longer available when I search for that hash tag. I guess we’ll have to wait until we can pull them out of the National Archives. It will, no doubt, be the subject of a dissertation one of these days.

And so because Twitter is terrible at archiving, I grabbed screenshots of all the additional #GadiantonSelfHelpTitles posts that happened in the two hours after I started it. To view them, visit the motleyvision flickr set. I’ve posted the first screenshot below — there are ten screenshots in total and more than 40 punchlines contribute by more than 10 Twitter users. Many thanks to all those who participated — you all amused me greatly. If I missed one or you have one to add, give us a shout in the comments below.

LDSfic1stlines

Back in 2005, I posted a semi-humor piece called First lines for Mormon fiction. Back in June or somewhereabouts, it occurred to me that that same concept would be fun to use the motleyvision Twitter account for. I created the hashtag (a way to tag posts in Twitter) #LDSfic1stlines and started posting. A couple of other Twitter users thmazing (otherwise known as Theric Jepson) and chosha also got in on the act.

Twitter’s search functionality is kinda messed up (a bit ironic since the service just signed real-time search deals with both Bing and Google), but I was able to painstakingly grab most of the LDSfic1stlines that have been posted so far and have reproduced them below (not necessarily in chronological order). Here they are for your enjoyment — feel free to post your own in the comments or on Twitter (just make sure to use the hashtag so I’ll see them — or direct them to @motleyvision):

Wm: One fateful year, the Nielsens, as a show of solidarity with their Lutheran neighbors, gave up Jell-O for Lent.

Th: Porter Rockwell took a swig of his nonalcoholic whiskey and shyly waved at a lovely (yet modest) professional dancer. Continue reading “LDSfic1stlines”

How to follow AMV

The great yet often bewildering thing about how the Internet has evolved is that there are now many more ways to deliver and receive content. I thought it would be useful for readers to present all the different ways to follow AMV, including comments, and analysis of the merits and limitations of each method. Even if you already have a method you like, consider reading through the whole post — you may just discover something you like better or learn something you didn’t know.

Continue reading “How to follow AMV”