Tag Archives: tweets

Tweeting TI9 as @WeAreBrisbane

I spent the last week shouting into the void as the @WeAreBrisbane rotation curation Twitter account, telling the good people of Brisbane (and everyone else that follows the account) all about Dota 2 and The International Dota 2 Championships, which also happened to be taking place that week. I thought it would be nice if I had some kind of record of what I said that was a little less ephemeral than a rotation curation Twitter account. Of course, rocur accounts being what they are, in terms of having a different host every week, and not wanting to embed the tweets directly with a different profile picture, what follows is a near-direct transcript of those tweets, with only light editing for layout and clarity.

Hello, Brisbane! It’s your new tweeter for the week, @bdyling. Long time follower of the account, but I’ve never thought of actually being Brisbane… until this week (more on this in a sec).

About me: I’m a late 20-something guy that works and lives on the north side. We’ll get to all of that over the course of the week, I’m sure. But strap yourselves in, because this week we’re going to talk about V I D E O G A M E S. Well, one video game in particular. Everyone has their passions, and one of mine is Dota 2, because I hate myself. Which brings us to…

As for why I’m curating this account this week instead of any of the hundreds that I’ve followed the account for, it’s because this week is special: it’s the week of The International Dota 2 Championships. And I promise you, it’s a real thing. Look, we get our own Twitter emoji and everything, which is how you know that It’s A Big Deal™: #TI9

Unfortunately, Twitter’s tweet embeds don’t show these custom emojis. Don’t ask me why, just click here to see it.

But what is The International? It’s one of the world’s biggest esports tournaments. For Dota 2 fans, TI is a true celebration of Dota 2. That it happens to feature some of the best Dota you’ll ever see is a fringe benefit, as far as I’m concerned.

To people who don’t follow the Dota 2 scene, the one thing that blows their mind, every time, is the prize pool. That a video game can have a a $33.4 million (and counting) prize pool is crazy enough, but that’s not even the craziest part. No, the truly crazy part is that of that $33.4m, players like me (and maybe even some of you?) have contributed $31.8m. And that’s only 25% of the total amount of in-game cosmetic sales that have happened since May, which means we’ve given Valve ~$127m in 3 months.

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Tweets from the road: drafted, but not posted

 Thanks to a lack of a constant internet connection, I wrote a lot of tweets that didn’t get published. A few were thanks to frequent trips to Starbucks, but many, many others didn’t. Without further ado, I present: tweets from the road: stuff that didn’t get posted during my time away from the constantly connected web (note that some are actually longer than 140 characters). There’s a backstory to most of them, but I’ll leave it up to your imagination to fill in the blanks. In some kind of chronological order…

If you look closely, you can see the AMP tower or whatever it's called.

If you look closely, you can see the AMP tower or whatever it’s called.

What most people don’t know is there’s a game you play on intl flights called “respect other people’s personal space as much as possible”.

This guy next to me lost very badly, as did the woman in front who had her chair reclined almost the entire flight.

Travelled something like 6000 kilometres yesterday, but Fitbit reports a mere 5500 steps taken. Technology, hey?

Think my Comply foam tips worked just as well as a pair of noise-cancelling headphones would have on that flight, at a fraction of the cost.

Day two of my overseas trip and my sister already has Wi-Fi. Me? I can wait a few more days to sync my Fitbit, check email, etc.

Kinda disappointed in myself. Only lasted just over a day without Wi-Fi before I succumbed to the mistress of TCP.

Saw the first Hunger Games on the plane over. It was OK, I guess, if you’re willing to overlook the entire dystopian future aspect.

Riddick, on the other hand, was kind of stupid. Did not enjoy.

Worst thing about travelling, by far, is the sub-quality showers. I can deal with everything else, but showers with no water pressure, no.

Can you tell I slept in these pants? Because I totes did.

My sister just revealed to me she turned off autocorrect on her iPod touch. The shame.

Always amazes me how great iPhone battery life is in airplane mode.

…which is exactly what I need on long bus rides from KLIA to my father’s remote hometown. Just me and Miley, or Kilometrey as she’s known here

I seem to be catching a lot of buses in Malaysia. It’s like I never left Hobart!

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Need more reasons to join Twitter? Here’s some.

If you need more reasons to join Twitter, then here they are:

its like irc but with no topic and available anywhere.
its like a worldwide forum where you are the moderator of your board.
its like instant messaging but completely random.
its a cheap/free way of sending group sms to your friends.
its a wonderful distraction.
its fun.
its addictive.
its pathetic, and i should be old enough not to get involved.

i completely agree that myspace/facebook/virb/whatever suck, cos you’re locked in to those sites for your “friends”. but twitter offers much more, because it is so damn simple.

i find it hilarious that many of the people that complain about twitter will have an irc channel open all day. i’d rather get various updates from people all over the world with many different interests, than sit and watch the same few people discuss the same topics.

also, twitter can be digg done right. i get interesting links all day, but if anyone is spamming me, i just remove them.

but meh, to each his own…

Thanks to @fulltimecasual for those excellent responses. Now, onto a question that I was asking myself: What’s Twitter good for if you don’t know anyone that’s on it? None of my Calvin friends are on Twitter, so, why’d I join? Over to you, fulltimecasual:

well, i only really “know” two people on twitter, my sister and my step brother. since my step brother joined about a month ago, we’ve become much better friends, he’s a fascinating little kid. my sister randomly says things like “i dont know what the hell you are talking about, but i’m glad you happy” when i geek out too much on twitter, and that just cracks me up.

for the other 140 people i dont know but have friended, i see their updates the same way i look at mactalk. sometimes i just throw random questions out that i’m fascinated to get other peoples opinions on, like what is your fave death scene in a film? (for orange sofa haters, trust me, twitter has saved you from many boring threads) sometimes i just use it to vent, like a simple “f*** telstra”, or “f*** connex” to which i usually get a bunch of “they suck dont they? last week…” which is passes the time when connex decide to cancel yet another f**king train i’m waiting for.

i’ve also used it to get things, like my iminlikewithyou invite, which i then used to chat up an extremely hot chick from ny, who now flirts with me on twitter, which also passes the time when connex….

i’ve used it to find new podcasts, and have twittered questions to the podcasters who have then answered them on their next episode.

and if i ever get my s**t together and work on my own work, not on other peoples, then i’ll start using twitter to advertise my stuff.

having said all that though, 80% of all the updates i receive are pointless. i stick around for the 20% that arent.

(and yes, i have real friends too..)

But wait, there’s more! Thanks once again to fulltimecasual:

another use for twitter; i know a bunch of kids that run an art gallery in melbourne, one is a geek, the rest are not. the geek was sending emails all the time that the nongeeks were missing, and getting meetings orgainsed was impossible. i got the geek to set up a twitter account for him and the other board members (behind there backs of course, it would have been too annoying to explain it to them) and now when he needs to organise a meeting he tweets it, all the other board members receive the message straight away, and if one cant make it, they all know instantly.

@aulia says:

You need to be using Twitter to appreciate what it is, what it does and how it does it. Simply looking at the website would do very little to encourage you to tweet.

People don’t just use it for status updates these days, many use it as newsfeeds, notices, announcements, live reports, blog baits, etc.

And finally, something from @decryption:

Just riff on Twitter with what you’re doing – if you’re sitting at your computer reading MacTalk, tell twitter!

Join Twitter.

Add me – twitter.com/bennyling

Twitter. Do it.

Note – all responses for this post were taken from MacTalk Forums.