So in my free time outside of Twitter I experiment a little bit with telling stories online, experimenting with what we can do with new digital tools. And in my job at Twitter, I actually spent a little bit of time working with authors and storytellers as well, helping to expand out the bounds of what people are experimenting with. And I want to talk through some examples today of things that people have done that I think are really fascinating using flexible identity and anonymity on the web and blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
在推特之外的闲暇时间 我对在线讲故事 做了一点实验, 看看我们能用新的数字工具做些什么。 我在推特的工作, 实际上是花了一点时间 与作者和讲故事的人合作, 一起扩展 人们正在实验创造新媒介的疆域。 我今天想谈一些 人们在网上所做的事情, 我认为那实在是够吸引人的, 人们在网络上运用灵活的身份或匿名 使事实与虚构之间的界限逐渐模糊。
But I want to start and go back to the 1930s. Long before a little thing called Twitter, radio brought us broadcasts and connected millions of people to single points of broadcast. And from those single points emanated stories. Some of them were familiar stories. Some of them were new stories. And for a while they were familiar formats, but then radio began to evolve its own unique formats specific to that medium. Think about episodes that happened live on radio.
但我想先从1930年代开始。 在推特这件小事发明之前, 无线电带给我们的是广播 它以单点广播 连接了数以百万计的人们。 而从广播中播放出来的故事, 有一些是我们熟悉的故事。 有一些是新的故事。 有一段时间这些故事是以熟悉的方式来述说的, 然后电台就开始进化成 自己独特的模式。 想想在广播电台现场直播发生的情节。
Combining the live play and the serialization of written fiction, you get this new format. And the reason why I bring up radio is that I think radio is a great example of how a new medium defines new formats which then define new stories.
结合现场表演 和书面小说连载的模式, 就变成了一种新形式。 我以收音机作例的原因是我认为 电台是证明一个新的媒介如何 运用新形式去讲故事的很好的例子。
And of course, today, we have an entirely new medium to play with, which is this online world. This is the map of verified users on Twitter and the connections between them. There are thousands upon thousands of them. Every single one of these points is its own broadcaster. We've gone to this world of many to many, where access to the tools is the only barrier to broadcasting. And I think that we should start to see wildly new formats emerge as people learn how to tell stories in this new medium. I actually believe that we are in a wide open frontier for creative experimentation, if you will, that we've explored and begun to settle this wild land of the Internet and are now just getting ready to start to build structures on it, and those structures are the new formats of storytelling that the Internet will allow us to create.
当然,今天,我们有全新的 媒介可供使用, 那就是互联网络世界。 这是使用推特的认证用户 以及他们之间是如何连接的地图。 有成千上万的人。 每一个点 都是自己的广播站。 我们已经来到了一个很多人需要发声的时代, 对连接彼此介质的使用权成为了广播的最大障碍。 我认为我们应该开始看到 随着人们学会如何在这个新媒体上讲故事 许多新模式正在应运而生。 我相信我们是在广泛开放 创新实验的前沿, 我们已经探讨并开始定义 互联网的这个广阔的土地 并要开始准备 在互联网上建立框架, 而这些框架就是互联网使我们创造 新的说故事的模式。
I believe this starts with an evolution of existing methods. The short story, for example, people are saying that the short story is experiencing a renaissance of sorts thanks to e-readers, digital marketplaces. One writer, Hugh Howey, experimented with short stories on Amazon by releasing one very short story called "Wool." And he actually says that he didn't intend for "Wool" to become a series, but that the audience loved the first story so much they demanded more, and so he gave them more. He gave them "Wool 2," which was a little bit longer than the first one, "Wool 3," which was even longer, culminating in "Wool 5," which was a 60,000-word novel. I think Howey was able to do all of this because he had the quick feedback system of e-books. He was able to write and publish in relatively short order. There was no mediator between him and the audience. It was just him directly connected with his audience and building on the feedback and enthusiasm that they were giving him. So this whole project was an experiment. It started with the one short story, and I think the experimentation actually became a part of Howey's format. And that's something that this medium enabled, was experimentation being a part of the format itself.
我相信这起源于对 现有方式的变革。 短篇故事,例如, 众人所说短篇故事 因为电子书阅读器和数字市场的产生 正在经历一种复兴。 作家Hugh Howey试验了 在亚马逊网站上 发布了一个非常短的故事叫"羊毛"。 他说他实际上根本没打算 把"羊毛"变成一个系列, 但读者那么喜欢第一个故事 他们要求续集,所以他给了读者续集。 他又写了“羊毛2”,比“羊毛1”篇幅长一些, "羊毛 3"更长一些, 最终在"羊毛 5 ”达到顶峰 一个 6万字的小说。 我认为Howey能够做到这一切都是因为 电子书的快速回馈功能。 他能在相对较短的时间内 撰写以及发布。 在他和他的读者之间没有中介物做阻碍。 他和他的读者 通过读者给予的回馈和热情 直接连系起来。 所以这整个项目是一项实验。 它开始于一个短篇故事, 我觉得实验实际上成为了 Howey模式的一部分。 这就是这一媒介所赋予的, 并在成为这一个媒介的一部分。
This is a short story by the author Jennifer Egan called "Black Box." It was originally written specifically with Twitter in mind. Egan convinced The New Yorker to start a New Yorker fiction account from which they could tweet all of these lines that she created. Now Twitter, of course, has a 140-character limit. Egan mocked that up just writing manually in this storyboard sketchbook, used the physical space constraints of those storyboard squares to write each individual tweet, and those tweets ended up becoming over 600 of them that were serialized by The New Yorker. Every night, at 8 p.m., you could tune in to a short story from The New Yorker's fiction account. I think that's pretty exciting: tune-in literary fiction. The experience of Egan's story, of course, like anything on Twitter, there were multiple ways to experience it. You could scroll back through it, but interestingly, if you were watching it live, there was this suspense that built because the actual tweets, you had no control over when you would read them. They were coming at a pretty regular clip, but as the story was building, normally, as a reader, you control how fast you move through a text, but in this case, The New Yorker did, and they were sending you bit by bit by bit, and you had this suspense of waiting for the next line.
这是Jennifer Egan的一个短篇故事 叫做"黑箱"。 它起初是 明确与推特有关的故事 Egan 说服纽约客杂志 启动一个纽约客小说帐户 在这个账户里他们可以通过推特发布 所有她撰写的故事。 推特当然有140个的字符限制。 Egan直接用手写的方式在 写生簿上涂写 运用这些方框里 物理空间的限制 写入每一个独立的推文, 而这些超过六百篇的推文最终都变成了 纽约客杂志上的连载。 每天晚上八点,你都可以调到 纽约客小说账号的短篇故事。 我认为这是很令人兴奋的: 收看文学小说。 Egan的故事,当然, 有很多种方法来实现它。 你可以回看它, 但有趣的是,如果看这个故事的直播, 它本身造成了一种悬念 因为当你阅读他们的时候 你是没有办法控制这些推文的。 他们在一个平均的剪辑速度上进行, 但是随着故事逐渐的推进, 通常,作为一个读者,你可以控制阅读文本的速度, 但在这种情况下,纽约客杂志所做的是, 他们给你一点,一点,再一点, 让读者有悬念并且期待下一行。
Another great example of fiction and the short story on Twitter, Elliott Holt is an author who wrote a story called "Evidence." It began with this tweet: "On November 28 at 10:13 p.m., a woman identified as Miranda Brown, 44, of Brooklyn, fell to her death from the roof of a Manhattan hotel." It begins in Elliott's voice, but then Elliott's voice recedes, and we hear the voices of Elsa, Margot and Simon, characters that Elliott created on Twitter specifically to tell this story, a story from multiple perspectives leading up to this moment at 10:13 p.m. when this woman falls to her death. These three characters brought an authentic vision from multiple perspectives. One reviewer called Elliott's story "Twitter fiction done right," because she did. She captured that voice and she had multiple characters and it happened in real time. Interestingly, though, it wasn't just Twitter as a distribution mechanism. It was also Twitter as a production mechanism. Elliott told me later she wrote the whole thing with her thumbs. She laid on the couch and just went back and forth between different characters tweeting out each line, line by line. I think that this kind of spontaneous creation of what was coming out of the characters' voices really lent an authenticity to the characters themselves, but also to this format that she had created of multiple perspectives in a single story on Twitter.
另外一个在推特上关于小说和短篇故事的 一个很好的例子是, 作家Elliott Holt, 他写了一个故事叫《证据》(Evidence)。 这个故事始于这则推文:“十一月二十八日, 晚上十点十三分, 一个女人,认定为米兰达布朗, 四十四岁,来自布鲁克利, 从曼哈顿酒店屋顶坠楼身亡"。 开始是Elliott的声音, 然后Elliott的声音褪去, 我们看到的是Elsa, Margot和Simon, 这些Elliott在推特上特别创建的角色 专门来讲述这个故事, 故事从许多个视角进行讲述 最终引领读者到达了晚上十点十三分, 也就是这个女人坠楼身亡的时间。 这三个角色使这个故事从多方视角进行述说, 给读者带来了一种真实感。 一个批评家说Elliott的故事 是“名符其实的推特小说,” 因为她做到了。 她捕捉到了那个声音 并且她有许多角色, 这个故事也发生在真实的时间内。 有趣的是,这不仅仅只是 将推特作为一个发布故事的机制。 也将推特作为一个产生故事的机制。 Elliott后来告诉我 她用她的大拇指写了整个故事。 她在沙发上坐定,也就只是 在不同的角色间来来回回 一行一行的发推文。 我认为这种同步性创造 故事中角色们的推文 赋予了这些角色本身的真实性 并且也对这个她在推特上创造的 用多重视角讲述一个故事的方式赋予了真实性。
As you begin to play with flexible identity online, it gets even more interesting as you start to interact with the real world. Things like Invisible Obama or the famous "binders full of women" that came up during the 2012 election cycle, or even the fan fiction universe of "West Wing" Twitter in which you have all of these accounts for every single one of the characters in "The West Wing," including the bird that taps at Josh Lyman's window in one single episode. (Laughter)
当你在网络上运用灵活的身份, 并与真实世界开始互动的时候, 它变得越发有趣。 就像在2012年选举期推特上出现的 “隐形奥巴马”(Invisible Obama) 或者著名的“装满女性简历的档案” (罗姆尼竞选时回答男女薪金公平性的引语,被推特、脸书上的网名调侃) 甚至是“白宫风云”(电视秀)在推特上的粉丝专页 在这里,你能找到在"白宫风云"里 所有角色的推特账号, 甚至包括在某一集里 停在Josh Lyman窗口的一只鸟。(笑声)
All of these are rapid iterations on a theme. They are creative people experimenting with the bounds of what is possible in this medium. You look at something like "West Wing" Twitter, in which you have these fictional characters that engage with the real world. They comment on politics, they cry out against the evils of Congress. Keep in mind, they're all Democrats. And they engage with the real world. They respond to it. So once you take flexible identity, anonymity, engagement with the real world, and you move beyond simple homage or parody and you put these tools to work in telling a story, that's when things get really interesting.
所有这些都是关于一个主题的复述。 他们是一群有创意的人 对于在这媒介上可能性的探索。 你可以看到在“白宫风云”推特上 这些虚拟角色 与真实世界进行互动。 他们对政治进行评论, 与国会的邪恶进行抗争。 请记住,他们都是民主党人。 他们与真实的世界进行互动 做出反应。 所以一旦你采取灵活的身份, 匿名,与现实世界互动 你就超越了简单的敬意或模仿 而把这些工具都用来讲述一个故事, 事情就变得有趣起来。
So during the Chicago mayoral election there was a parody account. It was Mayor Emanuel. It gave you everything you wanted from Rahm Emanuel, particularly in the expletive department. This foul-mouthed account followed the daily activities of the race, providing commentary as it went. It followed all of the natural tropes of a good, solid Twitter parody account, but then started to get weird. And as it progressed, it moved from this commentary to a multi-week, real-time science fiction epic in which your protagonist, Rahm Emanuel, engages in multi-dimensional travel on election day, which is -- it didn't actually happen. I double checked the newspapers.
所以在芝加哥市长选举期间, 有一个模仿账户 就是Emanuel市长。 这个账户给你所有你想要 从Rahm Emanuel那里了解的事情 尤其是以脏话调侃的形式。 这个满嘴脏话的账户 追踪竞选的日常活动, 随着活动的进行给予评论。 它一开始还遵守着 一个好的推特模仿账户该有的守则, 然后就开始变得很奇怪。 随着它的进展,它从评论性演变到了 一个多周的、 实时的虚拟小说 在这里面主角,Rahm Emanuel, 在选举日期间去各种旅行, 这是— — 实际上不会发生的事。 我翻阅了报纸新闻。
And then, very interestingly, it came to an end. This is something that doesn't usually happen with a Twitter parody account. It ended, a true narrative conclusion. And so the author, Dan Sinker, who was a journalist, who was completely anonymous this whole time, I think Dan -- it made a lot of sense for him to turn this into a book, because it was a narrative format in the end, and I think that turning it into a book is representative of this idea that he had created something new that needed to be translated into previous formats.
然后,非常有趣的是,它结束了。 这是一个推特模拟账户 通常不会发生的事情。 它结束了,一个真实的叙述性结论。 所以作者,Dan Sinker,是一名记者, 在这段时间内,是完全匿名的 我想对于Dan来说,这是很有意义的, 他想要把这变成一本书, 因为它是以一种叙述手法画下一个句点的, 而且我认为,把它变成一本书 代表着他创造的一种新形式 被转化到了前一种形式。
One of my favorite examples of something that's happening on Twitter right now, actually, is the very absurdist Crimer Show. Crimer Show tells the story of a supercriminal and a hapless detective that face off in this exceptionally strange lingo, with all of the tropes of a television show. Crimer Show's creator has said that it is a parody of a popular type of show in the U.K., but, man, is it weird. And there are all these times where Crimer, the supercriminal, does all of these TV things. He's always taking off his sunglasses or turning to the camera, but these things just happen in text. I think borrowing all of these tropes from television and additionally presenting each Crimer Show as an episode, spelled E-P-P-A-S-O-D, "eppasod," presenting them as episodes really, it creates something new. There is a new "eppasod" of Crimer Show on Twitter pretty much every day, and they're archived that way. And I think this is an interesting experiment in format. Something totally new has been created here out of parodying something on television.
一个我最喜欢的例子之一是 现在在推特上正在进行的事, 实际上就是那个荒诞的Crimer Show. Crimer Show讲的是一个 超级罪犯和一个倒霉侦探 像在上电视节目一样, 进行着一些非常奇怪的对话。 Crimer Show的主创说 这是对英国的一种流行表演的模仿, 但是,老兄,这可真奇怪。 Crimer,这个超级罪犯, 做的这些个电视行为。 他总是拿下他的太阳镜 或是转身对着相机, 但这些事情只是发生在文本中。 我想借用这些电视上的行为 放在每一集 Crimer Show里面 并将它们视为情节 真的,它在创建一个新的东西。 每一天推特上都上演着 Crimer Show的新一集。 并且以这种方式存储下来。 我认为这是在对于模式的一种很好的实验。 一个全新的模式出现了, 模仿电视上发生的一切。
I think in nonfiction real-time storytelling, there are a lot of really excellent examples as well. RealTimeWWII is an account that documents what was happening on this day 60 years ago in exceptional detail, as if you were reading the news reports from that day. And the author Teju Cole has done a lot of experimentation with putting a literary twist on events of the news. In this particular case, he's talking about drone strikes. I think that in both of these examples, you're beginning to see ways in which people are telling stories with nonfiction content that can be built into new types of fictional storytelling.
我认为在非小说类作品中实时讲故事, 真的有很多很好的例子。 RealTimeWWII 是一个 记录60 年前的今天发生了什么的账号, 它记录的格外详细, 就像你在阅读在那天的新闻报道一样。 作者Teju Cole 对于将新闻事件的文学性报道 做了许多实验。 比如说,这里他在讲无人机轰炸。 我认为,在这些例子里 你开始看到人们运用非小说类作品内容 在说故事 这可以以一种新的虚构故事的模式 来进行。
So with real-time storytelling, blurring the lines between fact and fiction, the real world and the digital world, flexible identity, anonymity, these are all tools that we have accessible to us, and I think that they're just the building blocks. They are the bits that we use to create the structures, the frames, that then become our settlements on this wide open frontier for creative experimentation.
所以有了实时讲故事, 事实与虚构之间的界限逐渐模糊, 真实的世界和数字世界, 灵活的身份,匿名性, 这些我们可以使用的工具, 而我认为他们只是其中的一小部分而已。 他们是我们 构造结构、框架的一小部分, 它将会成为我们在之上建立的 创新实验的广泛开放前沿。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)