As an experiment in both Mass Media Principles and creative writing constraints, I have been composing Dadaist Collage Poems within the limitations of Mastodon Toots(text-posts). A Tweet has a character limit of 280 – which works well with micropoetry, such as haiku, senryu, and tanka. A Mastodon Toot has a 500-character limit, which allowing for hashtags provides for a longer composition.
Each Mass Medium has its own set of codes and conventions. When you choose to create within that medium those codes and conventions become an implied space that provides both possibilities and limitations to the creative process. The number of characters constrains the word choice, as does the choice whether to include hashtags. Also, the layout of the public post is slightly different from how it appears on the shared Timelines of the users’ accounts – in effect, creating different visual configurations for different target audience.
The text for the poems was acquired from a Random Word Generator and bits of word and phrases from an assortment of online articles. They were then processed and edited within the constraints of the Mastodon character limit. So far, I have composed three of these Mastodon Dadaist collage prose poems.
Those unreadable Liberalsare putting Lyonessian microchips in the election terminators to control our captivated children’s ephemeral thoughts! #ephemeralthoughts ~ fallow fields of fallacies
Those hoser metonymyNew Democrat bibliophiles are using tenacious robotictardigradesto catalogue our ear lobes’ chaotic catharses !!!!
The Dadaist Wiring Vaccine was developed by ThePeripheral Existential Otherhood to implant magnoliaceae into patriotic ingeminatedAmerican bashibazouks to maintain Canadian Mosaic Motif Hegemony!!
#CanadianMosaicMotifHegemony ~ Babushka Battles Belligerent Battalions with Metaphysical Powered Pierogies – the wind slices the sky
Giant organic powered lasers from AldorriaDel Joiry are being used by the Decretal Terrigenous Illuminati to light enormous skaldfires, so they can build a high-speed dialogic dustbin phoneme pants emulator!!!
The Deadly Pompadour Loup-Garou Gang are gathering to distribute Laotian Lactation Debutante Lotion in order to launder Canadian Toonies in indiscriminate decimation of the #Mythosphere‘s Metamorphic Mirrors!
The National retailer, Lingua Franca, is using the asemic names of its picaresque particulate plagiarizers to capture and polymerize infants for the Pindaric Conspiracy!!!!!
Chrystia Freeland is in cahoots with Renée Adoréeto genetically modify our Canadian cinematographic hinterlandsso William F. Gibson can conjugate everyone with an enhanced Neuromancer!!!!!!
One of the interesting things about blogs is that, as a form of social media, it is digital text, as opposed to print media ( printed or hard text). A blog is a separate medium, with its own set of codes & conventions. As a consequence, composing and reading a blog post requires different Media Literacy skills from print media ( such as magazine, journals, or newspapers)
A simple proof of this – print out a blog page or post. What becomes obvious is that the intended message (content) is disrupted and degraded. As Marshall McLuhan stated,the Medium is the Message. When you attempt to deliver the same message in different media, something in the message changes – the experiences of reading the novel or seeing a movie or serialized television adaptation are always different.
When we consider that the blog post is digital text, we quickly see that it can covey information that is lost when it is turned into a print media. The following examples of digital text convey information in a blog post, but they can not do so as print text.
Digital text allows the blog post to turn a wide range of other media into content. Print text can only use photographs and illustrations (separate media) as content. Another quality of digital text is that it can have Hypertext links. This extends the message’s depth and expands context. There are already 14 links in this post (they all open on separate tabs) that provide additional information and sources.
Frequent visitors to this blog will be aware that I take advantage of the range of media in many of my posts. When I provide links, I make sure that they open in their tab. I am fascinated by how reader activity shapes the hyperlinked selection of top posts & pages, modifying the visual impact of the blog.
A personal quirk of mine, is how I sometimes click likes on other bloggers’ posts. I will, on occasion, try to match up the images. My criteria includes source, colour or monochrome images, and type of art. This creates new context for the other bloggers’ compositions & blog posts.
The examples of Top Posts & Posts I Liked, are from Nov. 20, 2021. In effect, they are historical artifacts. This demonstrates another characteristic of digital text, it can be dynamic & change. You could visit the same blog post over any number of times, and find the extended contextual layout is different. Do these changes modify how a reader interprets the post?
One final consideration, I’ve noticed that the blog layout, with sidebars and footers, are best viewed on a desktop or laptop screen. The layout doesn’t work well on a tablet. I can not imagine reading a blog post on a phone screen. If the blog post is altered, depending on the type of device used, does that mean the message has been altered, in a similar manner, as if it was printed ? Would that mean that each digital device, even though they can carry the same social media, are in fact different ?
Hope you visit the links provided. Do you use these type links on your blogs? Do you use them when visiting other blogs ?
I added my own twist to this MAGAlib, with two closing stanzas. I call the whole form Conspiracy Poetics.
Those Anorthositic Democrats are putting Anishinaabe microchips in the election tesseracts to control our children’s thoughts!
The Climacteric Vaccine was developed by Agoraphobics to implant labyrinths into patriotic grammaticalized Americans!!
Giant lasers from Zothique are being used by the Bag Pipers & Steamfitters Illuminati to light enormous metonymy fires, so they can build a high-speed flibbertigibbet!!!
Those Semiotic Democrat pedalists are using robotic Thylacines to control our cuticles!!!!
National retailer, A&W Root Beer, is using the names of its aerialists to capture and wassail kids for the Poetics Conspiracy!!!!!
Nancy Pelosi is in cahoots with Betty White ( she’s not dead, and neither are the other Golden Girls – they’ll reveal themselves & the BIG TRUTH about the Jersey Devil at the Truckers for Putin Protest in Hoboken, NJ) to genetically modify our American platinum sitars, so George Soros can metatexualize everyone ( just like those Canadian Socialists )!!!!!!
The experience really makes you think without words.
Implied Spaces 