I love Twitter muchly, it’s a fun way to keep track of my friends and to try and be clever on the Internet. Back before Twitter…actually back before HTTP, what we think of as blogging or microblogging was called a .plan file. A .plan file was simply a text file sitting on a server on the Internet that anyone could access using the Finger command. That’s right, in those days before the World Wide Web you basically got on the Internet with some type of console application and issued text based commands like “finger stepto@stepto.com”
So people would update their .plan files with what they were doing or interesting thoughts or whatnot. After the advent of the WWW, .plan files kind of exploded in the geek community because it was easier than running a webserver and you didn’t need anything other than a text editor to write for it. So game developers and other people would update their .plan files. Along came easy web page hosting and .plan’s went away.
I told you all that to tell you this: One day Paul Steed, who did models and animation for Id Software, updated his .plan file with an interesting story about how he missed his exit to head into work in Mesquite, Texas. Instead of circling back he decided to just keep going. Until he reached the ocean. 8 hours later he reached Galveston, looked at the waves, then drove back. Then went into work the next day like normal. I always thought that was kind of cool. Unfortunately when I miss my exit at work and decide to drive to the ocean it’s a 30 minute trip.
I got home yesterday to find my Blu Ray copy of the extended Lord of The Rings trilogy had arrived early. I had made plans to watch them throughout the week, but as I popped Fellowship in with the intent of only watching the opening, Paul Steed’s story popped into my head. So I decided “screw it, I’ll watch the whole thing. And live tweet it!”
What followed was an enormously fun 11 hours or so as I powered through the films, tweeting as I went. What surprised me was the reaction. While 90% of people reading and responding were having fun with my playing MST3k to the trilogy, there was a very vocal 10% who were *furious* at me for tweeting too much. Some even pulled my favorite passive aggressive twitter tactic: “Gosh if you don’t stop tweeting, I’m going to have to unfollow you.” as if that’s going to have an impact on my tweeting. Does that person think I read that and go “Uh oh! @BobinFlorida226534 is going to unfollow me. Better stop tweeting!” I’m enormously grateful for the 21 thousand people who find what I say interesting enough to follow me. But to that vocal 10% here’s a protip: You can make lists on Twitter! Make two. Put everyone you follow in one list, and no one in the other. Then when you need to unclutter your stream from someone who is tweeting too much, just move them into the empty list temporarily! Science! OR you can just, you know, unfollow me. It won’t break my heart, I promise! No need to threaten first!
It was enormous fun to do however and I think with a little more warning I will do it again with Star Wars and Indiana Jones films when they inevitably come out. The LOtR blu rays are astounding however. The movies look and sound better than they ever have. I heard things in the uncompressed 6.1 DTS sound mix that I had never heard before! One minor drawback is that the picture is to perfect and clear, Gollum looks a lot more like a special effect than I was expecting. It’s like they worked so hard to make him perfect that he stands out as too perfect. But that’s a minor quibble.
So I’m bleary eyed at work, but I can’t recommend this edition of the films enough. And as my twitter stream can attest, I can confirm all 682 minutes of the run time.
I really enjoyed following your Tweets of the epic adventure. I didn’t read every single one I’ll admit, but just reading many of them made me make up my mind: First thing this morning, I went to Best Buy and purchased the Blu-Ray extended edition set and I am now excited to re-live this epic adventure in HD. I purposely did not buy the Blu-Ray set that was released beforehand because I knew these extended editions were coming! And thanks again – I enjoyed your excitement in the Tweets!
I thought it was lots of fun. Thanks for taking us along on your trip through Middle Earth.
That sounds great Stepto, very sorry I missed it. Any plans for future marathons?
Ah, a simpler time when internet users fingered one another, as opposed to all this promiscuous googling and twittering going on nowadays.
God, I can’t believe you wrote so many words in this blog. You better edit it down or I’m gonna… um.. unread this post.
True story I once knew a couple people who would read everything I wrote here and tell me how terrible they thought it all was. They would do it with every post. It was really weird. I never understood why they would intentionally waste their own time.
Although I missed the live tweeting part, I was able to read the stream the next morning while at work waiting for my coffee to settle in. It was very fascinating and can’t wait for your next nerdgasm!
I do follow you but missed all this. However I can understand the ‘hate.’
It can be annoying to go and try to quickly catch up with what is going on, only to see that someone has flooded your feed with messages.
Why spam Twitter with the messages though? If you really enjoy a movie, why not post a blog message here afterward, where you can go into more detail. I can’t believe you are enjoying the movie as much as you usually would if your attention is split between it and Twitter.
Stepto, you missed a chance to use this : http://www.gonnahate.net/gonna_hate.gif
Also, as I recall, Major Nelson was one of those 10% of vocal people :P
I realized that my efforts were in vain…..once you get Stepto going, you really can’t stop him. At all.
I really enjoyed the play-by-play.
I had to unfollow @jeffprobst a few times because I couldn’t watch survivor on the night of airing, but I don’t see the point in threatening to unfollow someone.
Wait a minute, you can’t make fun of the leet kids when announcing gamertags on Name The Game and then create a blog called H8’rs gonna h8.
I’m gonna unsubscribe from Major’s podcast… look what you’ve done.
Being serious for a second, I love seeing people get irritated over stream of consciousness over twitter, the rage that gets spent on it is silly. If you’re following somebody, chances are you care what they think, or what to know how they feel about a subject. A constant stream of thoughts on a movie that nerds like us like should be a gold mine. Throw in some snarky tweets in the middle and you’ve got yourself a good read.
I look forward to your livestream of the Star Wars, do all 6 films and see how nuts “them innernets” go.
When you said that the films are on two discs do you mean you have to switch discs midway or that all the special extras are a separate disc?
Also what is this MS3TK thing? I’ve seen it around on Reddit but am not nerdy enough to understand :(
ALSO, do you get told by Twitter if someone unfollows you?
Yes each film is on 2 BD-50 discs. So you have to disc swap halfway through.
MST3k stands for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and you should immediately go to netflix and watch some.
No, twitter doesn’t automatically notify you of an unfollow.
S.
I think part of the issue with the outrage that people had is that they weren’t involved or apart of what was going on. Almost like seeing tweets of an apple keynote or something similar and not being there to watch the keynote.
It’s rare in life to have those moments of perfection, they are too few and far between and I’m glad you enjoyed the films (I personally never really got into LOTR trilogy) but I relate it to playing Portal 2 last month. I felt the same exact way…
I have a suggestion for the future films such as Star Wars, which is either a really good or really stupid idea. Maybe having a public event or facebook event where everyone can attend and watch the movie at the same time and create a hashtag on twitter to follow along with everyone?
Almost like a TV series premiere. Obviously the main issue is the timezone of the event. Everyone could pause the movie a few minutes before the event and press play at the same time, and it would be the equivalent as a TV broadcast (I think).
I personally had no problems with your live tweet and actually enjoyed the running commentary. It was sorta like a 21st century take on MST3k.
Heck, @MajorNelson:disqus does the same thing during press conferences (albeit with a bit of notification), but really, the reason we follow you and Major is because we are interested in the same things you’re interested in. Like you said, if you can’t commit as a follower to the stream of consciousness of someone’s Twitter, then you should just use lists. In fact, some clients even have a “Mute” function, so you can mute them temporarily (don’t remember which desktop clients, but I know Twidroyd on Android does).
As a geek, you’re entitled to geek out, and by you geeking out gets other geeks like myself excited too. In fact, by your recommendation, I will probably pick up the LotR set and add it to my entertainment collection. Besides, stuff like this reminded me of the gaping hole in my collection that is the new Star Trek BR, which I promptly rectified. :)
Oh, and in terms of length of posts, people complain too much. Its your blog. Write what you want. Heck, I do – and I’ve always had a problem with brevity and people have told me so ever since high school. Did that change anything? Nope, I still write a lot. In fact, I probably should stop here since I’m just rambling on now on something completely off-topic. :)
Haha, keep at it…. I love that sort of thing… I do to tweet-alongs myself, sometimes, but mostly with crappy movies – Tranformers 2 (http://alimaggs.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/transformers-2the-live-blog/) and Titanic 2 (http://alimaggs.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/titanic-2the-live-blog/) were my two most recent – and were so much fun to do, I saved them to my blog…
Was also thinking about rewatching (both) Star Wars trilogies and blogging along.
Btw, took your book away on holiday… Awesome!