Followback?

I must apologize for the lack of content on this blog. Then again, we did state beforehand that our primary medium was Twitter, and this was just for when we have things to say that don't fit into 140 characters. And this is such a case.
This entry is rant-like so... You are forewarned.


What's with the 'follow me and I'll follow you back' Twitter accounts? There are SO many of those, and we often get random messages to do so. We also see many retweets of such thing such as 'If you are born in 91, 92, 93, RT and follow and we will get you more followers!' or something lame like that.

random related image to satisfy people who can't stand a words-only entry.

I mean, it is one thing to want more followers for your account, and it's another to have an account ENTIRELY for that sake. For instance, these accounts only tweet things like 'FOLLOW ME PLX' or 'FOLLOW ME AND GET 50 FOLLOWERS' etcetc.
And for less extreme cases, these accounts will post actual personal tweets ONCE IN A WHILE but they are probably along the lines of 'ohh i aM sHo HaPpiexx i gotz feeef-ty new FOLLOWERS 2dae! whee!', with the bulk of their other tweets being tagged with #followback or something of that sort.

I mean, we understand the desire to have more people read what you tweet - assuming you DO tweet stuff besides 'hey come read what I tweet'.
But we don't understand why you would want random people to 'follow you' just for the sake of racking up follower count. If you follow us, we want it to be because you want to read our tweets. Not because we are part of '#followmeteam' or something lame like that (These DO exist btw)

And of course the last point is that we don't understand the logic of 'follow me and I'll follow you back!' requests. Sure, we know of the norm of reciprocity and all, but we really have no interest in adding a Twitter-spammer to our newsfeed. (as these people usually just tweet those tweets) Even worse, some promote some  weird health products with dubious website links:

I can't believe it's working too. You don't look like you lost 16 lbs.
(yes we are mean.)

So.... that's all. Good luck for your project deadlines and such, the next few week should be killer for many NUS students. And for the rest of you not from NUS and read this... good luck in life I guess. And in getting more followers.

Follow

We would like to thank everyone who has been visiting this blog for whatever reasons. (Probably to read about Steven Lim) We are still primarily a parody Twitter account, so blog updates won't exactly be regular (but based on inspiration)

As such FOLLOW US at @realfass for an update whenever we make a blog entry!
http://twitter.com/#!/realFASS
We tweet about FASS/NUS issues, general current affairs, and just about everything.

Also, please do feel free to contribute to this blog by emailing realfass@gmail.com
You can provide suggestions for blog entries, actual writings (we will acknowledge you definitely!) , insider scoops, etc.

Thanks for your support! We will be nothing without you.

Singtel - We will give you LESS!

Singtel has started a project called "ProjectLESS'. You can read more about it here

This is the (fake) advertisement for it.

DISCLAIMER: Everything said below is a fabrication of the author. Do not believe anything written. Singtel would never be so cruel. They are the best telco after all aren't they?

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Singtel recognizes that natural resources are scarce, hence we should do our part in conservation. We realize we have been doing too much in terms of our excellent mobile service provision, including our flawless 3G networks. This has resulted in a massive amount of electricity being consumed and hence contributing to quicker depletion of our resources.

Thus, our campaign goes forth with the theme of DOING LESS.

How we will contribute:

- We will increase the frequency which you get disconnected from your calls. Mobile calls take up battery power, which takes up electricity. Also, harmful radiation from cellular devices causes harm to the environment too.

We're subtly promoting racial harmony as well

- We will decrease the strength of our 3G network so as to lower the strain on our satellites and hence the strain on the earth's precious resources. On top of not being able to use 3G on the East-West line underground stations, you will now also not be able to use them on all other underground stations, including the NEL.

Sorry for providing 3G service here as well. We will remove coverage here to reduce total power consumption.

- In line with DOING LESS, our customer service operators will not answer your queries directly. They will instead suggest ways in which you can figure out the problem on your own.

Some examples of these would be : 

()Medidation

()Punching a wall

()Google

()Switching to another provider

We aim to do as little as we can for you.

I think we spelt 'Singtel' wrongly. Isn't it F-A-I-L?

- Remember, LESS is more. Our mioTV service has been too perfect. Totally uninterrupted viewing of cable channels, seamless soccer matches with no disruptions, especially during crucial times like the World Cup - what were we thinking? The environment has been screaming.

We will show only 70 minutes of all BPL soccer matches, 'leaving out' random bits at a time with static. This will, as mentioned before, decrease the strain on our satellites.

If the volume drops suddenly, don't be surprised.

No, we are not Manchester United Fans. But they do wear the same colour as us, so....

- Finally, our Internet Broadband service. We are deeply apologetic for wasting so much power by giving you high-speed Internet connections that far exceed the advertised speeds. This is extremely harmful to the environment.

As such, we will be trying to equalize the overall Internet speed to something around this level:

If we can do it for Mobile, we can do it for Internet too! 

Remember, little acts can collectively make a big difference.

Our planet is worth doing LESS for.

35 + 16 = disaster

Steven Lim actually replies all the haters talking about him and his paedophile (sp?) ways. The replies are hilarious. We will make a short blog post about it, let's see if he replies us.

The Twitter world is abuzz with news about the notorious Steven Lim, 35 years old, getting attached to a 16 year old girl (going on 17 this year apparently) (We question the validity of this, but that is a topic for another day)

We will just comment on his replies . (EDIT: Actually, check out what people are saying too (above his reply), some of them are equally funny)

Still delusional

NINE girlfriends? Perhaps he is dating a cat and he has tortured it to death 8 times already, this is its last life.
(Still delusional with his 'love u guys'. Does he not realize noone likes him?)

Seems to have some fetish about koala bears.

He also has some idea that everyone is jealous of him

'Green eyes dinosaurs' ? Getting creative eh.

No Steven, no one is jealous that you have a 16 year old girlfriend. We are more appalled than anything. That means shocked, by the way. #condescending

We don't quite understand why anyone will date someone 20 years older, unless he is old and rich (i.e. Jay and Gloria from Modern Family :) )

still delusional.
Either that or 'Life' is his blind friend's name.

Hey primary school kids, are you taking notes? This is how you respond when your friend calls you  a retard! eggtard!

He searches Twitter for tweets mentioning his name, finds them, and tells them he will ignore them? Anyone notice the irony here.

Is 'Eating sushi' some euphemism?
Can he be arrested then?

Are the primary school kids still taking notes?

Still delusional.
And by the way, the phrase is 'I am your worst nightmare'

Well ok that is about all the "StevenLimspeak' we can take. How a grown man still talk like that, we have no idea.

Anyway, we have done some research on his supposed 'cute' girlfriend, and we found a picture at last!

I guess she really is quite cute! Scroll down to see her:

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his Twitter name IS 'wildhog' so we assumed...

Creating and sustaining a parody Twitter account

DISCLAIMER: We are not claiming to be good at what we do - we are just writing what we believe works. Choose to believe or follow what we say at your own volition. Did we use this word right? Oh well. Read on.

Remember this module?

NM1337
(Click to enlarge!)

NM1338 - Creating and Sustaining a Parody Twitter Account.

LECTURE 1

Let us start with the definition of 'parody'

"A parody is  work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation."

Step 1 - 
Choose a famous figure or organization that people will be interested in

Can you name them all?

Step 2
Get a good feel of how that figure/organization will speak. 
This is crucial, and here are some examples.

@fakeYoda : Follow me, you must
@fakeYoda : Tell you a funny joke, I will!
@fakeyoda: Learn my way of speaking, you have to.

@fake_Xiaxue : fuck la! stupid nose job made my nose runny again!
@fake_Xiaxue: bloody PZ showing off her red panties again! shameless!
@fake_Xiaxue : I hate smelly people!
@fake_Xiaxue: omg that bunny furry thing DAMN CHIO pretty!

@fake_CentralLibrary: Next week, we have a tour of the top ten most popular sleeping spots in the library
@fake_CentralLibrary: Following that is a hands on demonstration of how to annoy your fellow library users with noisy keyboards
@fake_CentralLibrary: Library is closed! (to ATs only, we have hit the AT limit) (What is the point of this really, ATs don't use Twitter)

Generally, an organization always sounds more professional like the above example, or at least types in proper English. It does not tweet with 'Internet/SMS lingo' like:

@fake_FoS : we lik 2 use chemicalz 2 make tings go boomz!
@fake_FoS: sigh we r so bored. wonder what's goin on over at e cool people side (arts)
@fake_FoS: y the place smell so farny one ah? is it some1 fart or got sulphur leak again?

The only exception I can think of is when you are trying to squeeze a message in the 140 limit of Twitter. Then, go ahead and shorten your words.

Even worse, with bad grammar/English in general:

@fake_UTWP : hi we are advertisings the new programs we  have, hope that many ppl will joins rapidly ok
@fake_UTWP : we will make all students has good english and be excellent writers k.

(unless that is exactly your aim, e.g. to mock a literary organization with poor English)


The problem with NOT doing this step is that there will result in a mismatch between what you say and what you are supposed to represent. Thus, you will not be 'a parody account'. You are indeed a fake account. Next point is closely related:


3) If possible, take on all the characteristics of your target, and be relevant as much as possible

Our favourite example is Lord Voldemort

@Lord_Voldemort7 : I follow NO ONE.

As Lord Voldermort indeed does not follow anyone, this parody account does not follow a single person. Zero. Followers.

Another one we like is fake Singtel, whom if i'm not wrong call themselves @SingtelPR or something to that extent, and one of their recurring jokes is as such:

@SingtelPR : Another happy customer  - RT @tom1999 FUCK YOU SINGTEL WHY MY INTERNET SO SLOW

To explain this point more precisely, you need to tweet relevant information about whatever you are trying to spoof. For instance, if you are fakeStarhub, you tweet regarding Starhub issues.

Of course you don't have to limit your tweets to JUST those issues. Feel free to include jokes, comment about news (from your perspective, would be even better)

We know we ourselves don't exactly follow this strictly, but we do try to keep to it as much as possible.



4) Develop a sense of humor

And a random riddle:
If a mosquito can fly, can a fly mosquito?

You can follow all of the above rules and still flop terribly because - you simply aren't funny.

Noone wants to hear about how the clouds swirl in the air when the wind blows. Noone wants to hear about how many nuggets you bought during McDonald's 1-for-1 day on March 1st. Noone wants to hear about how your tummy hurts when you eat too much chilli.

Helming a fake Twitter account is NOT easy. It's not easy to be funny all the time. Don't start one if you do not think you are a humorous person to begin with.
Alternatively, being extremely cynical can work for you too. Cynicism can be funny. Can be.


5) Think of some great tweets to start with
These are probably the most important tweets you'll make. Psychologists have coined a phenomenon called the 'primacy effect'. Simply put, people remember the events that occur first more than subsequent events.

You need to start off strong, with a bang. It's ok to go cold for a while after that (Noone is funny all the time, besides Neil Patrick Harris (Barney from HIMYM) and Jim Parsons (Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory)) but your first few tweets have to be good to make an impression.

6) Find some way to enter the scene
We are going to reveal a big secret - our entry strategy. Yes, we did plan it all, from the starting tweets (remember the #howwehandlebadresults series?) to this entry strategy we had.

What we actually did was we found our predecessor (the now defunct @fakeFASS) and mass followed everyone that was following them. After all, that was our target audience.

From there, we figured we would get ourselves publicity by word of mouth - if we were good enough. Then came the tweets - mostly about school and about exam results, which was 'the thing' of that moment. Through these relevant tweets, and also by building good relations with our fellow beloved fake twitter accounts like @therealfakentu and @fakemoe, and other very supportive and entertaining Tweeters like @cchockolate and @musereomuse , we were able to get the sizable audience we have today.

Of course, this isn't necessary if you are representing some famous organisation or a popular figure, or you have @fakeMOE helping to promote you (if you are a school) . You guys have it easy now. :(


6) Tweet regularly
We'll repeat (don't ever put 'again' after the word 'repeat'; it's redundant) - It is not easy to sustain an account for long. You need to constantly tweet relevant, interesting material. It's almost expected of you. If you can't, don't start one.


That's all we have. Good night and good luck for exams!



Know of great parody Twitter accounts? Let us know! We are always glad to add a funny Tweeter to our News Feed! 

It's all a mind trick

If you are a Psychology student, when you took your introductory module you would probably have had to go for many Psych experiments to make up the numbers for the projects of the Year 4 students or Lab students. Even if you're not a Psych student perhaps you have also gone for some paid psych experiments.

I will include some experiments in here because they are quite interesting, they are in blue so you can skip over them if you don't want to read them, though I highly recommend you to.

It's quite a long post, so you can just not read it if you don't want to. If you want to, click to read on after the page break -

Twitter Wars and fake accounts.

We thought this whole thing was rather interesting, so we decided to chip in to this matter.

If you haven't been keeping up to date with the entire Twitter-verse (yes, the Twitter universe. If noone has coined it before, we are coining it now), lately a whole bunch of fake Twitter accounts have surfaced, probably due to the encouragement of the daddy of all Twitter accounts , @fakeMOE

While we're all for parody, we can't say we're totally supportive of this surge of fake accounts - especially so if they are created just for the sake of making a fake Twitter account, and they don't maintain it with regular humour. We're probably still a bit bitter about this because of how the creator of @fakeFASS took the nick we wanted and just faded away -  just one example of 'making a fake Twitter account for the sake of it'.


The latest brouhaha (yes there is such a word. check it) has been a 'Twitter War' between two parody accounts - @therealfakeSMU and @fakeSMU , which has been nicely covered by @therealfakeNTU at their blog: http://therealfakentu.blogspot.com/2011/02/twitter-wars.html

(a side note, we didn't use the name '@therealfakeFASS' because we thought it was too long and a shorter moniker would be more user-friendly. This leads us to wonder - what if one day someone thought we sucked and tried to make a competing account? What would they call themselves? @therealrealFASS? @thefakerealFASS? @themorerealFASS? @thesorealthatyoucanttellwearefakeFASS? )

We were indifferent to this whole fiasco before reading the blog entry but after seeing this:

This singular tweet just reflected such immaturity that made us cringe. Way to win more followers, therealfakeSMU.

Then there is:

We don't quite know what @fakeSST is about, but this tweet seems a tad arrogant to us. You see @fakeMOE with over 6000 followers but you don't see them saying such things. In fact, they are actively promoting OTHERS (oh man this made me think of a recent @museoramuse  joke - 
Q: The BULLy vs The COWard. Who won?! A: The COWard la! Cus it had UDDERS to back her up! #badsgjokes ) in their #FFs, etc. 


One point of curiosity though - @fakeSMU DOES have quite a lot of followers, despite basically shutting itself off from others by not retweeting/mentioning/following much others. Kind of reminds us of @Lord_Voldemort7 - That parody account follows NOONE! 
Is the SMU Twitter population just significantly big? Probably. Of course it could be because they tweet regularly and their tweets ARE amusing (we do follow them). We wonder.






It all comes down to different 'business strategies'. (This is just our take on how they are like, they may not be the actual directions these accounts take (besides our own))
@therealfakeNTU has a very pro-active style of engaging its audience - I just glance at their Twitter feed any time and I see half of it are conversations with their followers. They also supplement their tweets with regular blog entries which really impress us (people comment that they 'copied' us by creating a blog after we did, but the thing is, for them the blog is a regular fixture, for us it is just an avenue for when we have more than 140 characters to say (e.g. this entry) So we are quite different.)
They aim to be 'the voice of NTU' as their blog proclaims. A platform for students to express resentment, etc.


@fakeMOE - I don't know what really happened behind the account, but I could have sworn they were only awaken after WE made our account. The only funny fake account last year was @fake_pmlee (who since has faded to oblivion - perhaps taken over @fakemoe? who knows. ) Now they regularly tweet just about anything, and actively promote fake Twitter accounts from schools and the such. 


@realFASS ? We do try to be pro-active as well in engaging our followers (but probably not as much as @therealfakeNTU ) and as mentioned our blog is just a secondary medium. We would say the main source of Twit-spiration (wow we're coining so many terms) comes from our head Twitter, who is just a really lame person who needed an outlet. :) 
We tweet as often as we have things to say - we do not like to tweet for the sake of it - it's apparent when someone is doing that, the jokes just get desperate and unfunny. We try to avoid that. Unless it's a #badSGjokes tweet. Then anything goes :)




Thus, different strategies lead to different styles of tweeting. And after all, we are Singapore-based, so we should be familiar with the Rojak dish. I'd like to think of us all as a giant dish of Rojak, different flavors and tastes complementing each other in one ball of Twitter-astic goodness. 


Ok, you can tell we're getting hungry with that random last paragraph. With that, we conclude this lengthy, wordy post. Happy last week of school to all NUS kids! (and whichever school is having recess week next week too)








p.s. We have a feeling it is 'proactive' and not 'pro-active'. Need to spend more time interacting with the English Language Department.