How to Catch a Python

So by now most of you are familiar with the Hashtag Game i host to provide a bit of light relief and silliment [it’s a word!] in between trying to educate white people on privilege, figure out how to be an ally to my friends of colour and see and become significant transformation in the lives of the poor and more.

Last week 43 941 tweets were produced with the #YouHadMeAt game we played [although Tom Cruise and Rene Zellwegger were surprisingly absent] and this week we are hoping to go one better.

A Frikkin Hashtag: #MyLastBucketListItemis…

Two weeks ago @KeshaTedder [aka Binks] and i challenged Hashtag gamers to come up with their best suggestions for the Tag #AndThenTheWorldEnded and there were some great suggestions worth checking out.

Last week it was @TheatreAfrica co-hosting with me as we looked at #MyLastBucketListItemIs which saw 306 people come up with 1289 tweets with an audience of 727, 406 people… We were quite guy heavy as a stat of  78.1% of those playing tells you. Hopefully we will do better this week. Best way to play is to download the @HashtagRoundup app and play from there.

Literary Lion Challenge: Edge

i stumbled upon a piece of a blog called Literary Lion, [who i believe to be Laura Gabrielle Feasey who you can find on the Twitterer as @laurafeasey], in which there lay a challenge to write a 400 word or less piece titled ‘Edge’ and in the absence of regular Tandem Blog posting, i decided to take up that challenge and so here is mine, i hope you will enjoy, or something:

EDGE

David woke up with an impressive jolt.

He’d had that dream again. The one where he was the guitarist that Bono had picked to be in his world famous rock band. You know, U2. Yes, THAT U2. Except that he hadn’t been picked, had he? Because his name was not “out there” or cool like ‘The Edge’. His name was David.

Big world-travelling hit-producing rock bands didn’t choose people named David as their guitarist. They chose someone who people would not make complete eye contact with, who you would half-smile and nod to as he entered the room and quietly made space for him to pass by. They chose someone called ‘The Edge’.

“I could have been The Edge”, thought David, whose last name was Evans. David Evans. You don’t see people getting excited about screaming that name into an announcer’s microphone as a legendary quartet set the stadium on fire. Metaphorically, that is. They didn’t actually set the stadium on fire. Although with U2, who knew what they might try? David Evans clearly didn’t. Because he was lumbered with that sad, ridiculous name?

What if he’d told them that his middle name was ‘Howell’? That was slightly interesting, wasn’t it? I mean, not by itself, but maybe snuck in between the two most boringest names he could think of, maybe ‘Howell’ was just what was needed to have helped him force entry into the band?

David Howell Evans. He whispered it again. As he finally climbed his way out of bed and started getting dressed.

David. Howell. Evans. He liked the sound of that. If he had applied to be a member of the group that would Wow the world with ‘Boy’, by giving them his whole name like that, maybe it would have been he who was synonymous with not being able to find that thing you had misplaced on a badly signposted road somewhere on a clot-ridden Sunday afternoon?

David Howell Evans pulled on his jacket even as his face continued to shout to anyone who might have been vaguely interested that he was sulking. Pouting, even. That could all have been his!

Yet here he was, stuck in a hotel room somewhere in the middle of who knows where, doing he couldn’t for the moment remember what.

David looked up and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. “Oh, right!” he exclaimed out loud.

i hope you enjoyed reading that – make sure you check out the home page for Literary Lion and all the other entries for this challenge… and maybe consider writing one yourself…

A Frikkin Hashtag round 2: And Then The World Ended

Last week was the second official week of the South African presence on the International Trending Hashtagging game app under the hashtag @AFrikkinHashtag [Say it out loud].

Despite it happening right in the middle of all the #FeesMustFall action, we still somehow managed to briefly trend in South Africa for the first time while also trending solidly at number 4 in the States.

South Africa is on the Hashtagging Game Map

So it’s official. South Africa has joined the International Community of Hashtagging games with the first official tag game which took place yesterday which was #ArtAMovieOrTv.  Every Wednesday at 12 lunchtime our time on @HashtagRoundup – Come and Play.

And it was a LOT of fun. Thank you to everyone who pitched up and got stuck in.

Wanna play a game?

It’s official. Today at 12 lunchtime South African time, @afrikkinhashtag launches the first official on the @HashtagRoundup app South African game with a bid to get South Africans in on this game phenomenon that has been sweeping the world.

As i explain in more detail in my post ‘Is it at a bird? Is it at a plane? NO! It’s @AFrikkinHashtag’ the basic premise involves someone presenting a tag for the game, eg #DifferentEndingsToHorrorMovies was one that happened yesterday and my best tweet was ‘They get a bigger boat’ with reference to the “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” catchline in Jaws.

So coming up with a punchline in 140 characters or less [minus the ones used invthe synopsis].

In Americaland the games often becoming Trending Topics on the Twitterer for a couple of hours and it gives people a fun respite from all the negativity one often finds on the net.

i came up with the @afrikkinhashtag [say it out loud] handle and ran my first game last week and it did really well – #CountryAFood had over 1500 tweets and was seen by over a million and a half people.

#CountryAFood The United Steaks of America with @AFrikkinHashtag

— Thomas Zuckerman (@AFrikkinHashtag) October 10, 2015

Trinidad and Two Bagels #CountryAFood

— Jared Montana (@Jarmadillos) October 10, 2015

I can’t Belize how Hungary I am – I’m going to Norway at this Turkey #CountryAFood

i think today’s will do even better.

i have been invited to Host a Game on the @HashtagRoundup app and it will be dropping at 12 lunchtime South African time and it would be great to have some South Africans jumping on board and spreading the love.

The Game tag will be revealed at 12 and then you are invited to get creative on your own as well as favouriting and RTing all the ones you think are well done. The main push will be between 12 and 2 and so if you can jump on every now and then and play the game and show some love that would be amazing.

Time to get this flag on the Hashtagging map. See you at 12…

Is it at a bird? Is it at a plane? NO! It’s @AFrikkinHashtag

So there’s this little thing called Hashtag games [which i wrote this article about for 1Africa.tv] which i got into while i was in Americaland.

Someone comes up with a clever Hashtag, something like #WaterACelebrity and then anyone in the world who is on the Twitterer plugs into their creative minds and tries to come up with clever or witty responses.

So examples might be: Sea-gourney Weaver, Drip Torn or Harrison Fjord.