Thirty Second Stories (.com) is ALIVE

Once again, I'm starting a new project (semi-permanently putting the last one on hold), and I need your help. This one completely depends on the creative contributions of others in order to succeed.

First, I need to collect a core group of 30 second stories. This initial group would be on any subject, sad, funny, scary, absurd. But all of them concise, communicating some sort of story in 30 seconds. I would ask that people send me audio recordings of themselves reading the story - nothing fancy, a laptop or iphone voice recording would be fine. For the launch of the website, I would need a decent amount, ideally at least 25 or 30. (more on this at the end of this post that will probably be too long)

Since everything that I do has to involve randomization, apparently, these stories would play on the website in random order, automatically, and would never end. The user would just hit a button, then sit back and listen to stories. A short (2-3 second) musical interlude would play between the stories as dividers/palate cleansers.

the rest of this idea depends on whether or not the reception to the original launch is positive. just for fun, let's say it is. then...

on a weekly basis, i would do a call for submissions on a theme: injuries, heartbreak, puberty, yahoo chat rooms, etc. these newly collected stories would be collected in a new channel for the website, which would be updated weekly with the new content. visitors would then be able to either choose to listen to a specific thematic category of stories, or just listen to the default random mode that would include stories of all sorts. it's my hope that by doing this it would give people a reason to return to the site, and that these frequent visitors would be able to just skip to the new content.

if i can get total strangers to start submitting stories, i will be very happy and i think it would start to gather momentum. it's my hope that i would eventually be receiving enough new stories that i would be able to exercise tyrannical discretion by selecting only the best ones to be featured on the website.

but the whole thing, i think, hinges on whether or not i can collect a solid batch of initial stories. if i can get 25 or 30 good stories to demonstrate the concept (and provide 12-15 minutes of content on launch day), it will be a lot easier to get total strangers to contribute new stories and keep things fresh.

so...here's the ask: would anyone here be willing to contribute? if so, could you please let me know so I can start to get a head count? you could either just let me know in this thread or email me at [MODERATOR REDACTION] at gmail dot com. if you're willing to help out, the next step, of course, would be for you think about what story you want to tell. it would probably be a good idea to write it down and read it out loud a few times to make sure that it gets in under the 30 second threshold.

phew. guess that's it. i'm really excited about this idea and i'm hoping that at least some ilxors will be too. if the website comes out anywhere close to how i imagine it to be, i think it will be really fun and addicting to visit. any ideas/suggestions/criticisms are welcome here too, of course.

Whoa. Your ideas are consistently brilliant ZS. I'm on board!

:) thank you! Once I get the core group of volunteers together I'll send out an email with details and instructions.

heh, i'm just realizing that NYE is a pretty idiotic time to try to spread the word on this! i will cool my jets for a few days and bump again in the future, 2015

I'm down. Your projects are A+++.

thanks!

the coalition of the willing is growing exponentially

What a good idea. Will join in.

I would do so

Fantastic, thanks!

Could those that are interested (how's life, old lunch, amory blaine, future people who indicate interest) please send me an email as well so I have your contact info? I shouldn't have said "or send me an email" upthread because it turns out that I DEMAND an email! :)

fuck yeah, i can't wait

I would love to also!

Great, thanks! Send me an email please! :)

by the way, i should have mentioned this earlier (i should start a list) but since i forgot i'll put it in bold: if you know anyone else (ilxor or irl-er) who would be interested please send them my way as well

Sent!

i'm in dude. i mean, i haven't read your proposal yet but i'm in.

will email you tomorrow/weekend. and i can amplify this to a music pro list i'm on that would be very receptive to it if you'd like?

Uh isnt this a kids in the hall bit

I would be all about doing this but I never feel like I have any stories

forks - you mean sending it out to the list before it launches to get interest? that might be really helpful, but it also might be even more helpful to wait until after the website is up and things (hopefully) enter the phase 2/total stranger submissions stage. i guess it depends on how much interest i can get right now from people i know. i'm up to about 7 or 8 people right now, but i haven't started to contact old friends and acquaintances who i think will probably be interested in helping. tl;dr i'll let you know! (ps and it would be great if you could contribute something!)

shakey - shiiiiit! i hadn't seen those before, though i just watched the "bears" and "bachelor named joe" bits. i think this will turn out to be different than KITH, though, for better or worse (worse).

silby - that's ok, i understand! if this thing ends up working out there will be plenty of opportunities in the future. i'm guessing that having a theme might help, too.

I could get behind this, is there a way to search ilx posts by popularity

haha, i wish, but i don't think so. it would be really great to get one of your stories, though.

I'm down for this (and I sent you an email).

thanks - got it. :)

darraghmac (and a few others upthread) - could you send me an email so that I can include you on the forthcoming details/instructions message?

ZachRScott at gmail dot com

I'm myusername @ gmail throw me on the list

I sent mine via ILX mail, should I resend?

would you mind? my ILX mail is hooked up to a gmail account I never use so I always forget about it. sorry about that!

Sure, no probs.

zs: I'll wait till you're up and running to blast out. I'm writing a piece to record now.

the coalition of the willing is growing and strong: 29 people!

30!

Horse_ebooks is on board

This sounds fantastic! I'll fling over an email now just in case you're in need of surplus contributors...

Got it! And up to 32 now. Having a surplus is good because it's likely that at least some of the 32 people won't end up submitting anything. And if it goes a little over 30 people, the all the better. I suppose if somehow I ended up with 50 people in the initial coalition of the willing, I could stock up some of them so that i'd have some content ready to go for the first update.

damn getting under 0:30 is gonna be hard. first draft was 1:45

Yeah, it's gonna be tricky.

38 people are willing to try though!

Believe it or not, my initial idea for this (conceived nearly entirely during a long pee at a rest stop somewhere on New Jersey) was called twenty second stories, but my gf wisely advised that I add another 10 seconds!

I got my story down, those years working alongside advertising dickheads have not been altogether wasted.

Are you accepting more contributors? I would like to do this.

Of course! Just send me an email at [MODERATOR REDACTION] at gmail dot com and I'll send instructions.

can i forward the instructional email to ppl who i think might be interested?

xps Οὖτις, that was a dickish post.

xpost
yeah of course! i can't believe the instructional email was like 30,000+ words and i forgot to mention that! also if we reach a certain threshold of recordings (maybe 50 or so), i may end up saving up half of them to use for the first update to the site.

i don't think shakey was trying to be mean, just pointing out that it's not the first time someone thought of the idea.

SENT

(my submission, that is)

I know I'm biased because I want this thing to work, but what a fantastic first submission! It's so good it's almost uplifting

firsties yall

stoked for the whole project- I'm assuming there will be a visual component too?

yeah, on two levels, sorta:

1) i will probably just make a jpeg for each story, something related to the specific story, or at least inspired by it, with the title overlaid. these images would change out every 30 seconds or so. i'm probably staying away with gifs for this one, just because i know some people are not into them at all, and also i don't really want to distract from the stories too much.

2) i'm extremely lucky and happy to have a good friend of mine who is a graphic designer helping me out with the user interface. we're working on it over the next 2 weeks but i think it will be a big improvement over the UX of the last few things i attempted to do myself.

these images would change out every 30 seconds or so.

this is maybe the dumbest thing i've ever written, which is a lofty achievement. they'd change with every new story. ugh ugh ugh

also jan 19th is the tentative goal for the launch

i just sent a few things
lemme know if that wasn't any good

wow i had no idea that's what abbott sounded like either!
my voice is way lower, and much less fun

something about the intonations in abb's voice made me feel an LL vibe! I wasn't too surprised to find out it was abbs though
both times I've recorded something for Zach (mine isn't up yet) I've been sick so I sound way huskier than I am IRL

damnit i won't be near a laptop/desktop for a few days maybe

yeah, me and the benevolent coder guy are going to work on mobile support (again) later this evening. for now, though, don't forget you can always check out the youtube playlist, which should work on your phone: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtnDNzhDcq9sxH2LlcDATCyzLPtlF3kG9

beautiful URL! but yeah, the mobile/tablet thing is a bummer. right now i have a redirect in place that detects if it's a phone/tablet, then redirects to sorry.html with a message saying that mobile doesn't work yet, check it out on a computer. about a 1/3 of the visitors have been redirected to sorry.html so far today. :(

who found the body by the side of the road? that one was v dramatically delivered.

just a suggestion but maybe you should make a new ThirtySecondStories youtube acct?

these are really enjoyable
my favorite by far was the praying mantis
for some reason the website played it 2x and i watched it 2x

― groundless round (La Lechera), Monday, January 26, 2015 11:27 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. did not play twice for me, but I would have enjoyed it.

xpost

that's Ronan!

There are a few more ILXor contributions coming in the next batch, too. Grady's was actually the very first one I completed, but I'm going to re-do it. I'm still at the extreme beginner's end of the final cut pro learning curve, and his was the very first one I did. I tried my best and was happy with it at the time but now it looks pretty bad compared to some of the newer videos and I wanted to do a better job. same deal with silby's story.

do i recall him doing some acting or something? he should record audiobooks.

RE: setting up a new youtube account, we'll see. It's tough to tell how much interest there will be. If someone ends up writing about it and it gets a big boost in traffic I might try to sharpen things up a little on youtube, but it's more likely that it will just fade into the halls of the forgotten internet. either way, i'm going to keep plugging away at new stories for the forthcoming weeks/months.

this is mostly very relaxing, but the mantis gaze made my heart race a little

I'm excited about this!

Videos aren't loading consistently for me though (Mac OS X/Safari). Let me know if you want me to check for JS errors or something

OMFG how did I completely miss all this!? I saw the (original) thread title and assumed it was a TV show so I havent looked :( I missed out!

Whose is the praying mantis tale?

nah, you're right on time. :)

xpost hmm, that's weird - other than the obvious mobile/tablet thing i haven't heard of anyone having any problems loading the video yet.

when you say they're not loading consistently, what do you mean? there's a long pause before one starts? or does it ever get completely stuck between videos?

praying mantis tale is an ilxor, but i'm actually not sure who he is on ilx! credits here

he has an amazing speaking voice as well.

he does, and Ive no idea who that is on here either - own up man!

PS happy to add an antipodean drawl to proceedings if you ever need further worx later on!

Yeah I want in on this as well, this is amazing

XXP - I am the mantis :)

Irl the little feller did a very cartoony single take and flinch, it was funny and anthropomorphic, but KM's kinda sinister mantis matches my dour retelling perfectly.

Also it reminds me of the cover of Katy Lied!

do i recall him doing some acting or something? he should record audiobooks.

thanks :) am doing my first pro play this year. i want to get into some voiceover stuff eventually too. i was kind of messing with the body story, wanted to go for a kind of noir feeling.

i have started doing my own audio stuff as i really enjoy it - this is fairly rough but take a listen if you like: https://soundcloud.com/ronan-fitzgerald/fatherpatfrancis

followed!

the mantis story had a great video and reminded me of when i was similarly confronted by a possum staring at me while i was lying in bed.

i like how they all feel fantastical, not that i don't think they are true, just that their brevity and the different accents and topics give it this cosmic feeling.

i swear i will check this out on my 3-day weekend.

i wd have to send you mine on cassette. :)

these sound great

also did you get my email

also will you accept untrue stories at any point in the future, I mean I have my doubts about teacup

Don't worry morbs it'll only take you 5 minutes or so, max!

wins when did you send it? I thought that I'd responded to everyone but maybe I missed it somehow!

I just need to make 2 more and then I can finally do an update. Looking doubtful that it will ever work on mobile, though. (

(Eyeless sad face)

new episode, Monday at noon eastern. 5 new stories (including ilxors silby and and tangenttangent and gr8080). for other ilxors whose stories i haven't gotten to yet, i'm sorry. i have a deep backlog and they're kind of taking me forever.

this update will add support for iPad and Android, but not iPhone (fuck! hopefully it's coming home. we're still working on it).

yay!

alright, episode 3 is up!

hahaha you went with my drunker take (of course)

nice! these are v cool

i'm finally going to bite the bullet and reach out to a few of the places that helped me out with articles for conferencecall.biz to see if they're interested in writing about this. i hightly doubt it but it's worth a try i guess. i know it's not a big deal but i already went around to a crew of people when introspections.me came out and they were all like "yeah man it's really cool, ahem, er, uh i'll ask my boss if i can write about it but we're really busy this week so yeah i don't know, er", and i feel like if i bug them again for thirtysecondstories and then they don't like it, they're going to quietly filter my emails to the Spam folder.

This'll probably get attention, but even if it doesn't just keep doing stuff. With this kind of shit, the deeper your back catalog, the better it'll be when yr shit is actually covered

record a bill simmons rumor into your website

good stuff!

Thanks Bill! or rather, thank all the people who contributed the cool stories.

who had all them tables

Horse_ebooks

Saw an ad that reminded me of these

which ad?

I've been phenomenally lazy over the last month and haven't made any progress.

It was an American man talking about his shoes

No wait he was talking about his hairstyle over an image of his shoes

hahaha

http://i.imgur.com/bJe05yv.jpg

pert plus
buy

i don't think i ever heard ep 3 and just ran em by now
come back!

you're way too kind forks!

i am trying to figure out wtf i am doing in life right now

Making more of these, naturally

<3 these