Microstory 974: Weird Twitter

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A few years ago, I was trying to publish my book. Well honestly, I’ve been trying to publish my book since forever, but constantly fail, and frequently give up. During this particular attempt, an agent actually responded to my submission for representation with advice. They said that I basically already had to be famous before agents would even bother considering me. In the olden days, this meant getting published in little-read magazines, and slowly gathering a base, until you’re (inter)nationally recognized. It’s kind of like how a band has to start out playing in small town bars, because Madison Square Garden isn’t going to call them out of the blue. While the internet has changed how we access content, the dynamic has remained roughly the same. I can’t make any money at what I do until I prove I can do it without making any money. Before I had a website, I  only had two avenues for releasing my work. I started posting my microstories on Facebook, and I set up an entirely new Twitter account for fiction. The plan was to tweet extremely short stories, which sounded good on paper, but every time I attempted to write one, it just came off as humorous. Or at least it was in the comedy genre. As far as whether any of my tweets are funny, you’re going to have to decide for yourself. It took more than two years before I made any true nanofiction, and it lasted that entire year. I’m doing something similar for 2019, and then reshaping my whole schedule for 2020. Yes, I’m that far ahead with my plans. Anyway, as I was saying, what I later learned is that these “jokes” had their own special name. They’re apparently called Weird Twitter. Understand that these aren’t just one-liners like you would hear Mitch Hedberg say. His jokes were just as absurd, and often didn’t come with context, but what makes Weird Twitter so different is that they’re usually unrelatable. I have a few running gags that you would only notice if you were really paying attention. I often joke about the present condition of the hit series Breaking Bad, as if the number of seasons it had, or when it premiered, was ever in question, which it isn’t. The joke is that there is no joke, because I chose it at random, and could have chosen any other show to express the same absurdity. I also post fake conversations with my parole officer, which would make sense if he existed, or if say, there was a rumor I was an ex-con. The fact that I’m so far removed from that life is what makes it less of a joke, and more just, well...weird. I love that Weird Twitter, and other humors accounts are out there, like this one I just discovered called Tess as Goats. Look it up, it’s hilarious, and Tess-approved. I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t follow any other Weird Twitter accounts personally. My nanofiction account does, but I don’t check that feed, unless I have notifications. I only hope that other people aren’t doing the same thing, and are actually reading my stuff, because that’s why I create it. I certainly don’t do it for my health. That would be weird.

Microstory 938: Social Media

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Way back in the day, people were using social media before they were calling it that. I had an AOL Instant Messenger account when I was eleven years old, and several more over the course of the next nine or ten years, until it started falling out of favor. I spoke primarily to strangers by searching “common interests” that I realize now no one was taking seriously. Back then, we didn’t have internet safety discussions in the elementary school library. We had to figure out for ourselves that, just because someone claimed they could be trusted online, didn’t mean it was true. Most of us intuited that we were not to give out personal information, aided by the fact that AOL asked us to create usernames, rather than use our real names. These were not even the early days of internet communication. People before by time were using newsgroups, and…I wanna say, usenets? I’m not sure what they were exactly, but I can guess they were fairly unsophisticated. Come high school, people were still using instant messengers, but it was becoming hip to have a permanent web presence. Sites like MySpace, Xanga, and even Classmates.com were vying to give you their free accounts. I built a few stupid websites on my own before then, and never thought it would be something almost everyone had. But I guess it just had to become easier, and require no coding skills (I taught myself HTML, but for some reason, didn’t become the next Bill Gates, which is weird). Soon, one social media engine was seen to be moving faster than all the others. Facebook was edging out all competition to be the dominant force. You had to have a legitimate college email address, had to request your institution be added if it wasn’t already there, and it was generally expected that you use your real name. Instead of pointless blog posts, or innocuous conversations, this was designed to maintain contact with people to which you were no longer necessarily geographically linked. It was also helpful for school itself. I used it extensively to ask for help from my classmates; a fact that ultimately led me to deleting my account once I graduated from college. Facebook was only getting better, adding more features by the month, and eventually letting anyone over the age of thirteen in, whether they were attached to a school, or not. But a pattern emerged from this as well.

There are four main types of Facebook posts. One: personal tidbits/irrelevant aglets of conversation. Two: memes. Three: news. Four: fake news. I don’t care about most of it, and always found myself using Twitter mostly. Why? Not in spite of, but because of, the character limit. It was nearly impossible to go on a rant in Twitter’s early days. If you wanted to say something, you had to think about how to shorten it, thereby only expressing the most vital information. It allows me to keep up on the news, and the fact that you can’t post the text of an entire article means it’s much harder to spread misinformation. While I’m meant to connect with everyone I know on Facebook, I don’t feel bad about only following people I want to hear from on Twitter. After nearly eleven years of this, my Twitter game remains strong. I have three accounts, which are accompanied by an Instagram account I don’t use as much as I would like. I have since created a new Facebook account too, but I don’t scroll through the feed, and am only interested in sharing my original content. I don’t understand the appeal of Snapchat and Instagram stories, because if I tell you something, I want you to remember it, not limit it to your short-term memory, after which you move on to something else. I do appreciate that others are getting something out of it, though, along with Facebook. I just hope you don’t pay too much attention to that fake news. That’s exactly what the Russians want. Come on over to Twitter, where it’s fairly clear who you should follow, and who you shouldn’t.

The Odds: Eighty-Three (Part V)

Click here for the previous installment...
Click here for the entire story (so far).

I’ve already talked to you how I came up with Eighty-Three. I don’t understand why you’re asking me about it again. It just that the thing is that a four part story sounds weird, and I’ve already scheduled out one more week for this, and I’m not yet ready with the premise of my next story anyway. I had an idea for this final part, though. What was it? Dammit, I completely forgot what random thing I was going to talk about. I blame you. Oh yeah...no forgot it again. My sister’s chatting with me online. Give me a second. The lottery! Yes, that was it! Do you remember how this story started out with me claiming that I won the lottery? Well, I’ll explain that to you. Just to make sure you know, I make $11.95 in a job I don’t hate, but with very low weekly hours. I absolutely did not win the lottery, which makes sense, because I only played it once. And when I did so, it gave me the idea for what eventually transmogrified into this story you’re reading right now.

The story was originally not about me at all, and was planned as a standard novel. Think Slumdog Millionaire meets 2007’s The Winner. What’s that second one, you ask? It’s a Rob Corddry show about a guy from the present telling the story about how he was once a loser, but eventually grew to be successful. He..might have won the lottery, or he might not have. It was pretty bad, so I didn’t exactly give it much thought. The point is that my story, originally entitled simply Lottery, was about a guy who uses a special set of numbers for the lottery, and ends up winning. And the book goes over what each number means to him; why he needed to use them. Upon decided to start my website, the idea was truncated to weekly series form that I was intending to write sometime in the beginning of my second year. That ended up being what happened, but not everything went as planned, obviously. I sat down on my computer a few weeks ago, knowing what story I was about to start, but not having any clue how to actually follow through. This was the Saturday of, literally a few hours from deadline. So what was I going to do? I did what every bad writer does: I wove myself into the story. I created a fictional version of myself and laced him with exaggerations, straight up lies, and warped perspective. I just had to get something out. And this isn’t the first time its happened. Nearly any continuous series I’ve tried to write that doesn’t take place in a canon I’ve already created ends in disaster. Siftens Landing, Mr. Muxley Meets Mediocrity, and this weeklong group of microstories about a bunch of vehicular collisions. They were all bad, or worse, and those first two have been stripped from the book version I’m releasing later this year, along with this. Really, the only series I like that doesn’t belong to salmonverse or recursiverse is my Perspectives microstory series. And even that is hit or miss, depending on my mood, how much sleep I’ve had, and what I have yet to do that day.

This series was supposed to be a couple more installments long, but I’ve had to truncate it because of how little interest I have in continuing it. It’s no longer a story at all; more of just a collection of random thoughts. So the next two weeks are going to be a fairly short story, supposedly told in second person perspective. If you recall, back before I even had a short fiction website, I posted a little thing in second person on Facebook. It’s also told backwards. I considered it to be my first microstory, and reposted it here, so you can read it. If you want, whatever, no big deal *shrugs and blushes*.

I just went through thirteen years of photos, and thirteen years of calendar events. I was hoping to find an interesting story I could tell you about myself, even a fictional one inspired by my life. But the truth is that I desperately hope that no one is reading this at all. I’m just going to quit while I’m behind and end it here. I’m sorry to have wasted your time. It’s just as well seeing as I need to focus on The Advancement of Mateo Matic. I made some major arc breakthroughs yesterday and today. Eighty-Three more installments to go until we can get to August 5, 2151. What’s the significance of that one? Dunno, that’s too far in the future. Do I seem like the kind of guy who plans well? I just wanted to mention the numbers one last time. Speaking of non-sequiturs, here’s a picture of the time I jumped into the air in the basement and plugged the shop-vac into the ceiling socket. Not impressed? Let’s see you do it. But the ceiling we use has to have two and a half feet on you.

Microstory 219: Police Brutality (Part IV)

Part I: Triple Threat
Part II: Wreckless
Part III: Friendly Fire

Oh, the irony, is all I can think to myself. Yes, it’s true that law enforcement is a tough job, and not without its risks. Yes, when we’re involved in high speed chases, we are more likely to suffer damage, but that is not what happened. I was responding to a three-car pile up, but the driver of the white van involved reported no serious injuries. I didn’t so much as have my lights flashing. I wanted to get there as quick as I could, but it wasn’t what we in the business would call an emergency. I was driving the speed limit, obeying all traffic laws, and as calm as anything. I’m about to turn right on red onto the street where the call came from, and as I’m looking over my shoulder, I see that the way is clear. I expect the driver in front of me to go, but I’ve forgotten one major thing: I’m a cop. When I’m driving in my personal vehicle, I see people cut each other off, speed up through an orange traffic signal, and just generally drive recklessly. When I’m in my cruiser, though, I tend to find people to be extraordinarily cautious...dangerously so. Nobody wants to make a mistake and risk me pulling them over. I think they would rather just pull off to the side every time and wait for me to pass. The guy ahead of me should have turned. There’s a median between us and the parallel traffic headed forwards. We have a nice, smooth curve, and a long lane just for us while we prepare to merge. But he doesn’t. He waits. He’s scared of me. He may not be sure turning right on red is legal in this state, he may be worried I’m having a bad day and just looking for a reason to yell, or he may have just frozen up. I don’t know his reasoning, because as we sit here, I’ve yet to leave my vehicle. Now I’m the one who’s scared. It was my fault; I should have been paying attention, and ensured that he really had gone on through the intersection. Man, my colleagues are gonna have a field day with this one. I’ll never live it down. But I’m saved from the embarrassment, for now. I don’t have time to deal with the situation. My dash cam recorded the other driver’s license plate, so I can contact him later. Dispatch alerts me that following the accident from my original call, there was also a bus crash and a car that caught on fire. Now is the time for me to flash my lights and drive dangerously.

Part V: Bad Thoughts

Microstory 218: Friendly Fire (Part III)

Part I: Triple Threat

Part II: Wreckless

When I was in elementary school, I had a best friend. He and I did everything together in the beginning, but with each passing year, we grew further and further apart. I was more into sports, and he started not liking the outdoors so much, so we stopped having all that much in common. A few years ago, much to the joy of all my girlfriends, I finally signed up for Facebook. I don’t use it all that much, but a lot of people prefer it to any other form of communication. The other day, my former best friend, who I hadn’t so much as spoken to since early in high school, popped up on a list of people I may know. He was the only person on my list who I chose to send a friend request to. Everyone else had friended me instead. After he accepted, I browsed through his profile page, and discovered that we both ended up living in the same city. He had moved recently, and didn’t know anybody else, so I told them that he could call me if he ever needed help with anything. I didn’t think he would take me up on it, but then he calls me this morning. He’s just been in a car accident and is sort of freaking out, asking me if I know of any lawyers that would be cheaper than the ones at my firm. His license plate tags are out of date, he can’t find his registration, and he thinks his turn signal light wasn’t working. He thinks he’ll be the one at fault since his black truck looks menacing. I don’t remember him being so dramatic. I don’t have anything to do today, so of course I decide to go down and help him out, pro bono. I’m driving down the road, just as a I normally would, but I notice the heat gauge thingy is all the way up to the H. It’s not all that hot outside, so I don’t believe it should be like that, but I don’t know anything about cars, so I ignore it and hope everything is fine. It isn’t. Just as I’m turning onto the last street, and can see the accident up ahead, my feet start to feel warm. Then the floor catches on fire. The floor..freaking..catches on fire. What the hell am I supposed to do?

Part IV: Police Brutality
Part V: Bad Thoughts

New Blog, Who Dis?

This is my new blog. As you can see, I uploaded microstories in rapid succession. I used to post these to a different blog that was iframed on another blog that had no template, so that I could write my own HTML for it. I also posted them to my facebook accounts, and will continue to do so. I've been making changes in my life. I'm trying to go full force on this self-publishing situation in an attempt to get my name out there. I'm going to be more diligent about posting. I really need to make sure I keep this thing updated with content. My current plan is this:

• Post a few nanofiction tweets every day
• These are also known as LIES
• Please do not mistake these for truths
• Some of them are ridiculous
• Others sound like they could be real
• They are NOT
• Post a new microstory every weekday
• In the past, these have been one to a few paragraphs long
• I need to limit them to one paragraph, to better distinguish them from flash fiction
• And because "ain't nobody got time for that"
• Post one new flash fiction story every week on Saturday
• This will be a series entitled The Advancement of Mateo Matic
• This used to be the name of a set of novelas that I had planned
• The original story took place in another galaxy
• The premise of the original had nothing to do with time slips
• The original books were intended to belong to my universal canon
• This will now be a part of a separate canon, which frees up my slate to account for the fact that IT'S TAKING FOREVER JUST TO PUBLISH MY FIRST BOOK

Like I said above, my microfiction should appear every week day. On Saturdays, instead of a paragraph long microstory, you'll find a flash fiction piece. It will be the next installment in a series called The Advancement of Mateo Matic. Each installment takes place over the course of a single day. In the beginning, Mateo led an average life. One day, for reasons I haven't figured out yet, he jumps forward exactly one year. And every day since then, he lives for one day per year. At the end of it, he jumps forward again. Please note: title and format subject to change. This post doesn't control my future! The plot of this series might sound like "Brigadoon" or Groundhog Day. Please erase the memories you have of these earlier works. I am the originator of everything I do.

I am trying to bump up the numbers of fans, followers, friends, likes, comments, and other interactions. Please friend me on Facebook, 'Like' my "business" page on my other Facebook, follow my Nanofiction twitter account @NickFisherman, follow my Dream Journal account @IHadaDreamWhere, follow my Personal twitter account @TavisHighfill, and follow my Random Photo instagram feed for all the "WTF is that?" moments you can handle. Recognize that my nanofiction and personal accounts used to be switched. I swapped the username for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that building my fanbase from Facebook is NOT WORKING OUT. Instead of trying to get my real name out there, I'm going to try to get my pseudonym out there. Everything fictional I write is "by" Nick Fisherman. Everything real is by Tavis Highfill.

You may be wondering, "Tavis—Nick; whatever the hell your name is, why use a pseudonym? Who do you think you are, Voltaire?" The name Nick Fisherman has been with my for as long as I can remember. He was once my imaginary friend, then my alias, and now he's my pen name. I've come up with a canonical reason for him to exist, but I haven't decided to go through with that yet. The out-of-universe reason is for marketing purposes. "Nick" is a common name that everyone accepts. "Tavis" makes people wonder why my parents forgot the "r". "Fisherman" is a common word. It's easy to remember, and you're going to like it whether you like it or not!

A few more things;

Q: "If you post microfiction on weekdays, and flash fiction on Saturday, what happens on Sunday?"

A: That's God's day of rest, you heathens! LOLJK I might come up with something later. YouTube videos? Probably not. You know what they say, I have a face for radio, and a voice for books.

Q: "Who are you again?"

A: Don't worry about it.

Q: "What was the third thing; the one that justifies you using the word few?"

A: I'm also looking into posting my work on third-party sites. There are a few writers communities out there, and I need to find the best one(s) for me. I will let you know where else you can find me. I need all the exposure I can get.