Ladies and Gentleman, I give you teh Internetz!!
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels. Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the “loser,” and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round. I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world. Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment. When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3×5 card reading, “Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.” This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this “grant money.” I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion. There can be only one.
Anonymous user, 4chan
Writing wot we dun
People still write all the time. It’s just we now write on blogs, in each others Facebook feeds, as comments on instagram, on wikipedia pages, on tumblrs, subreddits and in youtube comments, through fictional reviews on amazon and deadly serious ones on trip advisor. People don’t tend to write letters to each other anymore and 'sitting in a study reading War and Peace while recovering from TB' doesn't tend to be listed as a favourite hobby on Tinder. That being said, we didn’t have youtube channels 100 years ago, or wikileaks, or 24 hour multi-media news coverage where we can read and watch 5 different sources of the same story at the same time. I think technology is changing the way a lot of people engage in narrative of all sorts. Below are some (by some I mean two) examples of how online story telling has developed in recent years.
Reddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
Reddit is funded by donations, like Wikipedia, and works like a bit like a cross between a wiki and a messageboard. Topics, and posts within topics, are voted on. The most popular, either through relevance, insight or humour, make it to the top, while the irrelevant, ranty, or offensive will be downvoted until eventually invisible. The subject matter is almost infinite, but the most popular pages (or sub-reddits) focus on pop culture or other subjects of more mainstream interest.
Subreddits:
Writing Prompts does what it says on the tin. I sometimes use this as a resource to come up with new ideas and inspiration, or to practice attempts at poetry and flash fiction. Feedback and encouragement is regularly given, and submissions are usually fairly spontaneous and unedited.
Copypasta, creepypasta consists of copied and pasted text with minimal editing. It originated first on 4chan and consists of microfiction, or user responses which were unintentionally amusing, often copied and pasted ad nauseous into unrelated discussions. Names, subject matter, objects are changed to give the topic new meaning and relevance. Over time this has evolved into creepypasta, a tradition of short pieces of horror flash fiction, shared across the internet with the intention to unnerve or scare. The popularity of creepypasta led to the creation of…
nosleep - which has become a hugely popular subreddit, spawning wider recognition of certain writers, a weekly podcast, and a reinvigoration of interest in the spoken story. The rules of nosleep stipulate that the story must be scary, and that writers must never break the illusion that the story isn’t true. Penpal by Dathan Auerbach is the most famous example, which was eventually published thanks to a successful kickstarter campaign. The weekly nosleep podcast takes the format of a radio play, showcasing a mixture of new and veteran writers.
Reddit users: There are redditors who seek out a specific narrative, like u/fuckwithducks - a man with an intense fetish for rubber ducks. Or the banned, but much missed u/explainbot who spoils jokes by writing essay length analyses of the punchline. Then there’s u/rogersimon10, who spends his time trawling random subjects giving very reasonable responses before somehow fitting in that his father beats him with jumper cables. It raises an interesting question as to suitable formats to create fictional personas. Is there an art form and craft to these characters?
When have you been blamed for something you didn't do? by KeenBlade in AskReddit
[–]rogersimon10 380 points 1 year ago
I used to work part time as a pool cleaner. One day I was sent to some old lady's house way out in the hills. When I got there the old lady led me to her back yard and told me to get to work, but there was no pool in her yard. So I looked at her puzzled and asked her "Where's the pool?" but she didn't answer, she just turned away and began walking to the house. I kept repeating the question, "Miss? Miss! Where is your pool?" and then she looked at me and simply nodded, then shut her sliding glass door, locked it, and walked out of view into her house. I called her number from my cell but she didn't pick up, and then after ringing the front door bell for several minutes I eventually gave up and left, figuring she was probably just senile. Later that afternoon when I finally made it home, my dad beat the shit out of me with a set of jumper cables because he said I'd left the garage door open, but it wasn't me.
A redditor who recently gained some mainstream attention was u/_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 who similarly cropped up on random topics posting about portals, tesla, time travel, LSD, and some terrible Lovecraftian constructs called flesh interfaces. I remember stumbling upon one of their replies in a random topic and it was deeply disconcerting, but fascinating also. The posts have since disappeared.
Podcasts and the rebirth of the oral tradition of storytelling
I know I know I know podcasts aren't WRITING. But they are filled with incredible storytellers, strong characters, narrative, gripping plot and new ideas. I honestly don't know where the craft of the written word finishes and spoken word begins. Are we merely arguing over the syntax and fine print of presentation? I'm sure someone once said that poems were made to be spoken and heard, not read.
Anyway, here's a couple of podcasts that tells stories really well. One is fictional, the other is not.
Welcome to Night Vale
A fortnightly news podcast set in the fictional world of Night Vale. It’s a bit like a Tim Burton radio play and is very easy to listen to. Now published in three volumes, so I feel like it’s still relevant to interests. They have a new podcast called 'Alice isn't Dead' which is even more narrative driven (and is creepy as hell).
The Moth
An organisation which coaches people to find stories from their own lives to develop and talk about in front of a live audience, over 18,000 stories to date. The podcast is downloaded 30 million times a year and a collection of the fan’s 50 favourite stories was recently a New York Times bestseller.