While flying to Chicago to attend the HH Backer Pet Show with client Merrick Pet Care, I happened to glance at American Airlines’ American Way magazine. The usual travel fluff was splashed across most of the pages, “Visit Branson! Enjoy a show!” However, nestled amongst the ads for “so-and-so’s” Crab Shack and “Visit the Show Me State!” was an article written about a book that covers everybody’s current favorite form of communication: Social Media.
Ophelia Joined the Group of Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook, by Sarah Schmelling, delves into how literature’s greatest characters would have participated on Facebook. Who would have taken what quizzes, what their updates would have been, who joined what group, etc… The thought of Hawkeye writing a message to Cora of “I will find you” or Holden Caulfield posting an update of “Another lousy day full of phony people” absolutely brought a smile to my face as I went on to explore how my other favorite characters would have danced the social media dance the rest of the flight… definitely better than the in-flight movie.
And while the article discussed only Facebook, what if we applied the Literary Character Facebook challenge to Twitter. How would Hamlet have delivered his entire soliloquy “To be, Or not to be: that is the Question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the..?” This simple exercise demonstrates what most people and companies do poorly when it comes to social media – staying relevant and thorough while being concise. Social media is for the tidbit masses, those that don’t want to sit down and read the full length edition of “War and Peace” but rather the “Cliff’s Note’s” version. Social media was created to keep our fast moving, tidbit loving society in the loop and in the know.
Thanks to this article I feel inspired to treat each Tweet, update and post as my next great novel, with suspense, romance, danger and intrigue – capturing the readers attention to the very end… in, of course, less than 141 characters!
Comments (0)