An app like tik-tok but for poetry and prose where your short story either goes viral or slips into oblivion
Image credit: E. Hemingway
Darko SavicMay 23, 2022
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An app like tik-tok but for prose and poetry. The text is limited to 1 minute of reading (240 words). Your story either goes viral or it fades into oblivion. There is no middle way.
Why?
High signal, low noise entertainment, inspiration, or education for people who like to read.
A way for new writers to catch a break and attract an audience to their longer prose/poetry.
Quick feedback to iterate a writer's attention-grabbing skills.
How it works
The text is limited to 240 words or 1500 characters whichever comes first. This equals 1 minute of reading. But the shortest the better. Within these constraints, people can write whatever they want. The algorithm looks for viral content only. If the test audience doesn't love your story, others will never see it.
To increase the chances of your story going viral, make it inspirational, funny, educational, shockingly honest and relatable, etc.
[1]Marc Brysbaert,
How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate,
Journal of Memory and Language,
Volume 109,
2019,
104047,
ISSN 0749-596X,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047.
Poetry app more instagram/twitter-like to avoid degradation of content quality
Michaela DMay 24, 2022
I love the idea. Given how fashionable quotes are, I see this app becoming very popular. This would come with a challenge though. High-quality pieces would compete with low-quality but attention-grabbing ones. The latter would go viral much faster (no need to think to appreciate the poem) leading to a decrease in the overall content quality. Even Hemingway would not stand a good chance in such an environment.
However, if the app is more Instagram/twitter-like and less tik-tok-like everyone would get the chance to follow the writers they prefer, even if they are not appreciated by the mass audience. Talented writers would also get the chance to shine in writer circles.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Even in tik-tok the algorithm learns what each individual likes and serves more of it. There is room for all kinds of tastes
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Some cool ones that could go viral
Darko SavicMay 23, 2022
Would you like/share stuff like this?
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Miloš Stanković3 years ago
There's a subreddit Six Word Stories with a bunch of good ones. It has a strong following, so there's definitely an audience. Plus you can always do it in multiple languages.
I also remember a prompt for the saddest story in three words: Allergic to dogs
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General comments
Miloš Stanković3 years ago
I could see the app making a marketing push by having the most liked or moderator-picked stories getting read by voice actors to incentivize participation. A lot of people would want to have their stories read out by someone with a voice of gravitas. Or get a celebrity to do it at the start as a marketing campaign and it could go viral quick.
It would be a welcomed break from the annoying text-to-speech bots on TikTok or YouTube. As videos there are often just read-out Reddit threads, that's also a strong sign that there would be an audience for this idea.
Call the app something like "Teeny Tale" or "Tiny Tale" or "Tik Tale"
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Miloš Stanković what you suggest could also be a valid strategy on actual tik-tok. Some account could find amazing short stories, hire a great voice actor and an animator, and keep posting them until the channel builds some traction. The same could be done on youtube actually
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jnikola3 years ago
What if an unknown person posts a poem and it falls into oblivion, but an influencer takes the same song and makes it viral? That's a scenario that happens on current social media. How could we stop it?
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Just like TikTok, users could follow certain themes or hashtags, and recreate pieces that are popular at the time in their own way.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Spook Louw Right. Even if they don't specify tags or follow people, the algorithm learns what kind of content they upvote/share. Authors classify their content under tags, so the algorithm has an idea of what to recommend. The algo also sees other people who tend to like the same content as you, so it recommends to you whatever they liked.
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