One Social Media App (lication) to get your creative imaginations interested is the facility to write posthumously. Granted, social media is not that powerful that it can surmount the grim reaper, but, if you are organized you can put your thoughts down now, and have the application posthumously deliver your thoughts to whatever and when you set up the communications to happen . Although to my mind this is a step too far, it is, it has to be said, a brilliant idea. I can just see in the future writers like Martin Amis and Will Self Self using this as a futurist narrative device. Who needs the time travel trick when you can have nuggets of an individual's thoughts peppering your story arch for as long as, well, 'a piece of string'? To cap it all the app is called 'If I Die', and is a Facebook application.
Speaking of Facebook, yet another innovative use of this platform was introduced to me by Will. He as introduced me to the concept of using simulated Facebook accounts as an educational tool. A Liberian at the 'University of Navada at Reno', got herself in hot water over the creation of two fictitious student profiles. What the writer did was reinvent the life of two University students during the first decade of the twenty century. The profiles were obviously well written and subsequently victims of their creators skill as a writer, and naiveté as a user of the social media platform 'Facebook'. Basically where she had crossed the line, social media wise, was that she was creating good writing within the wrong social media space. The first writer knew of her blunder when she went in to update one of her fictitious students profiles, only to find an emphatic message from 'Facebook Admin' telling her that their rules had been breached and that as a result the profile had been taken down.
Enter librarian "From what I saw, there are a lot of people interested in learning history from simulated real people," she said – but acknowledged that the administrators had a point. Social Media profiles have got to be linked to actual people, though well sculpted the prose. From her experience she is now adapting her obvious creative talent to fit with the new technology. Hereforth, 'Joe McDonald' and 'Leola Lewis' will continue their imaginary lives, just before the world as they know it will change forever!
