I normally approach reading assignments with some dread. It’s not that I dislike reading, I actually quite like it. But when it becomes an assignment with a due date attached to it, it suddenly goes from a fun way to pass time to a job with a deadline. So it was a pleasant surprise while reading through Bryan Alexander’s chapter to realize just how much of the subject matter applied to me. Maybe it’s just a symptom of growing up in the digitla generation, but I was already very familiar with the concept of alternate reality games, multi-blog collaborations, and twitter storytelling. This type of audience engagement is so pervasive in today’s online world that even corporations recognize their potential. Vidoe game developer Bioware used such a style to promote their game Mass Effect 3. Using the fictional “Alliance News Network“, they posted in-character tweets that not only detailed events that occurred before the game’s storyline, but also concurrently. This way, engaged players who wanted to experience another side to the story beyond what they’ve played can also hear what it would be like to actually be a member of the in-game universe as the war unfolded.

I appreciate the recognition of blogs as not just diaries, but pseudo-journals as well. Alexander briefly mentioned Ted’s Caving Page, a story I’m a huge fan of and would recommend to anyone looking for a fun short story. This is a great example of how blogs can be used as a creative outlet in multiple ways. One advantage blogs have over diaries and even written stories are implementations of various other media for the audience to experience. A good blog can integrate photos, sounds, videos, and even blogs written by other people. This style of multiple storytelling is unique to the blogging world. While novels could feasibly do something similar, this would be a nightmare from a publishing perspective. But on the internet, it’s as simple as posting a hyperlink on the sidebar.

Another example of using the internet to tell stories is via something referred to as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). A few years ago, a youtube channel named Marble Hornets used the video medium to tell their own story. Amateur filmmakers were able to present their artwork in an easy way that didn’t involve film festivals or producers or studios. And what separated this channel from other video series was the integration of viewer participation. All over various forums and wikis, fans of the series posted theories and analysis of what they thought was occurring. While I’m not a fan of the series, I can definitely appreciate the work and effort put into it. Marble Hornets even inspired a wave of new ARGs that utilized multiple methods of storytelling. EveryManHybrid was a mystery ARG that utilized multiple youtube channels, twitters, forums, blogs, music, livestreams, and even geo caches that viewers could go out and dig up to share more clues. One downside to this huge variety of storytelling was that it made it hard for casual viewers to get the full grasp of what was going on. Information was spread out over so many sites that entire wikis had to be made to keep things straight, and there was always the threat of fake information and imposter accounts. This was a good lesson to show that in any form of storytelling, sometimes less is more.

So with all this mind, I tried to judge whether or not I would consider a bot run tumblr that created gifs from season 1 of The Wire and the facebook page of the show as forms of digital storytelling. And that’s really tough for me. I’ve always experienced these stories as written by human author(s). I can certainly appreciate the work put into creating a bot that creates random gif’s from a tv show on an hourly basis. That must’ve taken a lot of work. But even if it were run manually by a human, I don’t know if I’d consider the tumblr a form of digital storytelling. Its random nature doesn’t seem to have its own message or story to tell; it’s just “hey here is a neat scene from the show.” Same goes for the facebook page. I know a lot of work goes into running this sort of page, let alone on a periodic basis. But I have seen stories that utilize facebook pages, and this one feels more of an homage than a story. But who knows, maybe I am too old-fashioned or close-minded to realize what other forms a story can take. If anything else, this chapter certainly made me think about it.