Email from BOOK SA to the people at CanYouTwist: I’d like to run a piece on your quest to crown SA’s short story diva. Most of the information I need is available on your site – but crucial details like who initiated and funds the project are left out. Can you let me know who’s running and funding Can You Twist? Thanks much.
Reply from info@canyoutwist.co.za: Thank you for your interest and we would love the publicity. At the moment we would like to focus on the stories, and keep the back stage details hush-hush for now. We will reveal all of the details when it ends but for now we are focussing on the writers and their stories.
Question: If you wanted to pique the wrong kind of interest from an sa-lit-journo-cum-web-geek on a story involving “six of the country’s hottest young female storytellers” – including Bridget McNulty – would creating a website that features the combination of fresh fiction, a series of related, real-life events and a slightly fishy lack of transparency do the trick?
Answer: Yes.
So instead of writing a story about CanYouTwist’s six hot authors – only three have posted stories so far – or its hook for readers, or the prize that Bridget might win, or the inevitable Facebook group, we’ll write a story outlining our speculations on just what, exactly, the Can You Twist project is all about.
It must be said that we arrived at this thesis without any outside influence whatsoever, relying solely on information that can be gleaned from the web, so we’re wholly responsible for the accuracy of our guess.
One thing that we’re fairly sure of is that Gerhard Human of Soak Productions is involved, because of the web trail that he’s left concerning certain of the site’s technical mechanics. Soak Productions is closely associated with Warp Development, which in turn hosts the CanYouTwist.co.za domain.
Soak Productions is also one of the few websites (if not the only one) to promote “the Guerilla marketing force, FIREBOX”, established last year, whose own website at one stage said that the company “fills the gaps in a personalised marketing approach by challenging traditional approaches through guerilla tactics”.
The Firebox motto is, “In a world where everybody shouts, it’s the whispers that get heard,” and Can You Twist is certainly set up to whisper very loudly, from a web2 angle: from its site design to its RSS set up, and from its elegantly-delineated Google Analytics and Amatomu tracking embeds to its Facebook group, we’re looking at the work of professionals here. In another context, this would be a value-neutral observation; but when slick web products are combined with the kind of anonymity-preservation that suggests an ulterior motive, and fiction that features brand names, then the tanks of the curious are filled, and they motor off on a trip to the following question:
At BOOK SA, we deduce the following answer, in somewhat belabored fashion: the writers supply the content for a concept supplied (and possibly pre-pitched) to clients by Firebox; Soak supplies the platform; and you, dear reader, supply the boost in brand awareness.
We could be totally wrong, of course – just Can You Twist metastorytellers having a bit of fun!
Keywords for those who wish to do their own sleuthing: Shaolin, canyoutwist-rss, Radiohead, foolab.
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July 21st, 2008 @18:27 #
Before clicking to read full artcile, I was just about to start sleuthing, fresh coffee and cigarettes in hand... I am glad to see, however, you've done some yourself already, as my skills are not exactly, erm, developed (Are there any development-sleuthing programmes?)
When I first saw the logo, thought, I thought: Wonderbread on BookSA?
July 21st, 2008 @18:29 #
"Artcile" of course is urban slang for the kind of short, to the point writing pieces one finds on Web2.0 sites. But can you spot the deliberate piece of poetry in the above comment?
Time for rye...
July 21st, 2008 @19:53 #
I love marketing and the marketing mindset, and have always thought the world needs more of it. More stuff, as we all know, means, well... more stuff. I believe the late, great, Bill Hicks -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9208243726486678774&q=Bill+Hicks+marketing&ei=S8yESKnPIZH-jQLD9NXtAg
- summed it up best.
July 21st, 2008 @20:13 #
Say whut?
Don't stop now, Ben Williams. Write more artciles for the imbeciles so that we can get artfully cleverer.
July 22nd, 2008 @07:43 #
Dark marketing incorporating fiction with a serious budget (quarter page in the Cape Times ain't cheap)! That's something very intriguing indeed. So far all the contributors seem to be blogger elite (blogotocracy?).
July 22nd, 2008 @08:36 #
Lauren is right, it seems all the participants with the exception of Bridget seem to be bloggers on blogspot
July 22nd, 2008 @08:57 #
But Bridget is also a popular / famous / award-winningest blogger as well as a extraordinarily talented novelist.
July 22nd, 2008 @09:38 #
Ah,I stand corrected
July 22nd, 2008 @09:45 #
And here I was thinking KFC was behind it all...twisting it their way. I obviously need to get out more!
July 22nd, 2008 @10:54 #
Sven, hah hah, that Bill Hicks cracked me up. Now I'm wasting time watching other Hicks clips. Good on you for subverting the logic of production; I'm always game.
July 22nd, 2008 @10:55 #
Willemien Brummer? Congratulations on your book. Erm, do you have brothers called Stefaans and Kerneels, onder andere?
July 22nd, 2008 @11:02 #
F--k, Sven, this Bill Hicks stuff... "Send in Vanilla Ice..." (On drugs and music).
July 22nd, 2008 @11:05 #
Rustum, if Bill Hicks is eating up your bandwidth, stay away from George Carlin at all costs. It's a strange reflection on our society that someone simply telling the truth can be hilarious.
July 22nd, 2008 @11:51 #
I've just been googling Hicks - never heard of him before, although I thought he reminded me of Denis Leary. And now I've discovered that apparently Leary's 'No Cure for Cancer" plagiarises Hicks.
July 22nd, 2008 @12:15 #
Rustum, Hicks is a bit of a cult figure. He was really honest and thought outside the box, that sort of thing is generally frowned upon by the people who own the airwaves. George Carlin was much the same. Check out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=57009394860418440&q=Americas+owners+george+carlin&ei=u7CFSLHPKaTqigLP0OC0DA
July 22nd, 2008 @12:43 #
Sven, I'm diggin all this like an old soul record, to quote Me'shell Ndegeocello.
I remember, as a kid just post-"48 Hours" coming across an nth generation 4-track audio cassette tape (just had to use that formal description for all the old folks out here), a tape of Eddie Murphy doing his hardcore stand-up. I couldn't believe it was the same person.
It seems that that era - Reagan and Thatcher - pressurised into being some good subversive stuff. We are very much children of that era - I mean, the Reagan and Thatcher chickens are coming home to roost in a big way in that the selfish-gene has become morally acceptable more widely. So, hopefully, a new age of good, anti-corporate art. But, do you know of any new comics who refuse to suck Satan's c-ck, as Hicks puts it?
July 22nd, 2008 @13:36 #
I don't know any other comedians, but there's a very subversive grafitti artist on the prowl in England who has earned notoriety for his work. Goes by the name of Banksy, I'm sure a search of google images will reveal some of his work.
July 22nd, 2008 @13:59 #
Ja, I was thinking comedy specifically. But I'll check Carlin another day. Must work.
By the way, Banksy has been "outed" recently as just a normal, middle-class boy, etc etc., which I don't think should now re-frame his work as less interesting; as, obviously, the "outing" is now being used.
Work work work; thank god no foraging for rye today as I received a non-corporate home-delivery of waterblommetjie bredie and rice, yum yum.
July 23rd, 2008 @15:18 #
Not Willemien Brummer, Sven, but I'll take the congrats anyway! Willemien de Villiers.
August 21st, 2008 @17:23 #
Looks like we were right about the viral marketing part, but slightly off-base about the brands involved:
http://epidm.edgesuite.net/AccelerationMedia/Woolworths/twist/Twist_2_WW_Customers.html