fandomtownies | Community Center Class: 21st Century Social Media, Thursday Evening [09/06].

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Community Center Class: 21st Century Social Media, Thursday Evening [09/06].

"Hey, everyone!" Summer beamed a little at the front of the class to see that there were still some people who returned to this class this week ~~hopefully~~. "Welcome back! I hope those of you who are new to your smartphones had some time to play around with them a little, and if any questions popped up, we'll take a few moments at the end of class to go over them. In the meantime, we'll just jump right into this week's topic so we can spend some time exploring that while we're all here, too.

"Now, I was going to originally do this lesson on Facebook, because even though Facebook is pure garbage, it's still kind of important, especially in the grand scheme of social media and its development, buuuuut, since Captain Rogers,"...could she call his Steve now? It just sounded weird. Steeeeeeve... "mentioned Twitter last week, we're going to go with that. Twitter's way more fun, anyway.

"Twitter started as a novel little platform with a gimmick that you could only post 140 characters at a time, but they've since upped their limit to 280. Some of the fun of trying to condense what you're trying to say or spreading it out through multiple posts in a big long rant is a bit spoiled, but whatever. Twitter has, like, millions of users, spewing out billions of tweets on the daily, and almost all of them are completely dumb and useless. But it's fun. And interesting, and you'll totally see what I mean.

"If you don't already have it, here's how to download it." And, with her phone hooked up to the screen like last time, she went through the steps so everyone who didn't already have it could now have that ubiquitous bird on their screens. "And, like I said last week, I already have one, but I'll show you how to set up an account with the account I've been meaning to make for Turtle & Canary, real simple, plug in the username you'd like, hope it's not taken, password, email confirm, and voila! @Turtle_n_Canary_FI is all set up.

"But what's the point, you may ask? Well, if it's a business twitter like this one I just made, I can use it to talk about special promotions we might be having, upcoming sales, tweet out the daily Squishy and Jello flavors. Customers can respond to me with feedback, suggestions, usually complaints, and it just engages people in a way that's very direct and to-the-minute, that can also be spread out to the other millions of people on Twitter as well, for better or for worse. And if it's a personal Twitter, well, you can post about your day, post your opinions, engage in conversations with other users through retweeting...that's when you just put @-their-username in your tweet so they get a notification that you mentioned or addressed them...people can slide into the DMs as they say, which means sending them a direct message just like email or texts or messenger.

"Usually, that's reserved for people trying to get your number so they can send you photos of their business, and I don't mean their shops in that case.

"There's also a retweet button, that's this one right here, where you can share a tweet you find interesting or relevant with everyone on your feed, with or without commentary. Probably about half the content on Twitter is people just retweeting other people's content, which is fine, that's how stuff gets around. And there are so many people on Twitter, too. Celebrities are on Twitter. If you see a blue check by someone's name, that means they're verified, which means it's the actual account of a popular or famous or even sometimes not-really-but-okay-technically famous person, sometimes they respond or retweet something you tweet at them, and it's kind of exciting and a little bit of a big deal, even if it's probably not even them but just some temp hired through a PR firm doing all the tweeting for them.

"Even the President of the United States tweets, which you'd think would be cool, but in this dimension? It's totally not. Trust.

"So I know that was a lot of babble, but you know I'll be more than happy to go over anything again if you need me to, but what I'd like to do for this class, then, is just sort of play around with Twitter, maybe share each other's handles so you can practice tweeting at each other, try to find some interesting things to retweet, maybe find someone famous and see if you can get them to tweet back. And if you come across any horrible jello recipes and don't tweet them at me, you totally fail today's lesson."

And instead of telling them to get started, she quickly added the handles she did already know to her store Twitter and tweeted out, still displayed on the screen, "Let's get this party started!"

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Tweeting!

Kanan Jarrus

Fjord

Amaya Blackstone

Hera Syndulla

And know that it's okay that, even with the visual aids, you might feel a little bit lost.

Huh. Okay, so they were basically just setting up accounts on some kind of public messaging system today? Easy enough. Kanan followed along with the lecture without an issue, mostly just taking a minute to mull over what the hell he even wanted for a handle, here.

Amaya was honestly just mostly confused. Not by the concept, though. She understood that well enough, but she supposed the part that got her all hung up was the purpose. Sounded a lot like what you got when you got a bunch of people in the town square squawking away about this or that or the other thing that no one really cared about or wasn't nearly as important as they made it out to be.

Wait.

Squawking.

Twitter.

It was exactly like when a bunch of people got into the town square and started twittering about nonsense and gossip.

"Ugh."

Okay, this didn't sound too bad. Hera had no idea what she'd do with an account, but why not?

TWITTER TIME!

Use your current account if you have one, make up a new one if you don't want everyone knowing your Twitter, or try to wander your way into it from scratch. Ask questions if you got 'em, but Summer would much prefer you tweeted your questions @ her. It's a learning curve, though, you'll get there.

Explore, retrweet some dumb shit, feel totally accomplished because you got Cardi B's younger brother's former roommate to clap back at you.

Kanan shrugged and contemplated what kind of handle would be him without giving anything important away, really.

@stance_the_dog Was going to be the winner today. Because then he could just stick all his photos of his ridiculous spotty monster on the internet and be done with this assignment, still make everyone happy, all without identifying himself. Ever.

Once it was pretty clear that BDG had figured something out, Summer drifted over. "Sooooo," she said, thumbs poised and ready, "what'd you go with?"

Kanan just shrugged, grinned, and turned his phone around to show off his shiny new username, already with a photo of his dog uploaded as an icon.

"It was inspired."

It was safe.

"Ohmygod, you made a twitter for Stance!"

Kanan should be able to tell by the squeal in Summer's voice that she approved.

"That's going on the personal account," she said, switching phones fast as lighting and a second later, he'd be getting his first follower notification.

"Oh, man, just wait until we get to Instagram."

She was going to be so disappointed now, BDG, if she didn't get daily Stance tweets.

"I have no idea what that is," Kanan chuckled, "but I'm glad you approve."

Yeah, making daily Stance tweets wouldn't be too hard.

Summer gave him a look.

"I highly doubt you could incorporate Stance into anything and not have me be over the moon about it," she reminded him. "I'm one hundred percent sure that the Internet will love him, too."

"Well, good," Kanan laughed, "because everything I make is going to be all Stance, all the time."

One might think that this was because Kanan was just really, really fond of his dog.

Stance was totally saving his ass this semester.

Hera looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Think I should make one for Chopper? He knows this alphabet well enough to type it."

Kanan blinked, and then broke into a little chuckle.

"Give Chop control of something like this and he'll be banned within the hour."

...

"I say do it. It'll be hilarious."

Hera grinned. @c1-10p wasn't taken, so she grabbed it. "I'll have to get a picture of him. And he'll need a phone, I guess."

"I wonder if Summer has any spares left," Kanan mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "You know, to give to a droid who is almost certainly going to throw it out an airlock before the month's through."

Hera thought. "Do you think we could get the Ghost's holoreceiver hooked up to it?"

Kanan considered that for a few moments himself.

"Yeah, I think we could probably get them to interface if we get creative," he mused. "How hard can it be?"

"Might as well give it a try," Hera said. "Chopper might even enjoy doing it himself."

"He might," Kanan agreed with a grin. "Give him something to keep occupied for a while. Why not?"

Fjord found himself thankful, at first, that at least the icon for Twitter was something recognizable and actually kind of sensible.

He even managed to download it without any problems, following along with Summer's directions fairly well.

And then it came time to get himself an account.

....

He was going to just stare at his phone, now. A consternated green man looking at a green phone, wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into, here.

"...questions, Fjord?" Summer ventured. Call it a wild guess.

"Yeah, uh," Fjord looked at his phone, and then back at Summer, and then, again, back to his phone. "Having never had experience with this sort of thing before, what route would you suggest I take for this?"

That seemed like a safe question. Right?

"Where are you at in the process so far?" Summer asked, moving around so she could see what Fjord was doing on his phone over his shoulder. "Ah! Still at the start. Username. Handles can be hard, it's true. Not only do you have to contend with millions of other people who might have already taken what you want to use, but you usually want it to be something that gives people an idea what they're in for. Or something that really shows who you are in fifteen characters or less. Does that help at all?"

She thought she'd give him a chance to come up with something on his own before she started testing a few of her own ideas and making the suggestions.

Fjord made a faintly baffled face at Summer, but was willing to give this a go.

The typing process was going to be painfully slow as he entered in a few variations of 'eagle eye,' a few attempts to play on his time spent as a sailor, even a couple of things involving the word 'orc.'

Hell, he just tried 'green guy,' and was mostly stymied by the fact that he couldn't use spaces.

"It looks," he said, at length, "like maybe it doesn't much care for who I am in fifteen characters or less."

Summer felt a little weird looking over Fjord's shoulder as he worked through some options, but it was her job, she was the teacher, she was trying to help. "Oh, no," she said, "if you want to do spaces, you have to put in an underscore, which is..." She leaned in so that he could see how she did it on her screen keypad. "It won't work with regular spaces. But it looks like some of what you were trying were already taken anyway. Oh, but, hey, look! 'greenguyfjord', no spaces, isn't taken! Not the most creative choice in the world, but still slightly better than...I don't know...a car company slogan that you probably wouldn't even get."

Ahem.

~~Don't listen to her.~~

Edited 2018-09-06 19:29 (UTC)

"Green guy Fjord."

It didn't have the same ring as 'eagle eye,' but it was certainly apt.

"I can't argue it fits," he allowed. And someday he'd realize he could change it! Maybe! "Thank you, Summer. That's very helpful."

Twitter was already frustrating and he hadn't even made it to his feed yet.

Amaya was...having some trouble.

"What do you mean, it's already taken?" Amaya muttered after she tried her own name. And then she just tried 'Blackstone,' and that was taken, too. "An investment firm? But...

"Ah-ha! Got it!"

@blackstoneforge. Looks like she was going the business route like Summer had, which really worked out in the longrun, because why else would she ever use this ridiculous technology on her own free time and leisure?

If you must. But why talk when you could tweet? That was the whole point!

I have to take my cat in for surgery in an hour.

Oh no, kitty! Sending good thoughts your way and kitty's!

Aww, good luck!

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Community Center Class: 21st Century Social Media, Thursday Evening [09/06].

Sign In - 21st Century Social Media, 09/06.

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Talk to Summer - 21st Century Social Media, 09/06.

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