Thirty Second Stories (.com) is ALIVE

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

why not gifs? even mellow subtle gifs

i would do it if i was good at the mellow subtle stuff, but i'm just not. this is mellow for me:

http://i.imgur.com/84b8aP2.gif

boogiteeboogiteeboogitee

policy on swearing

this reminds me of lots of old web 0.5 art concepts, but in a good way!

policy on swearing is to go ahead and do it if it's important for the story, i guess.

thanks, s.clover, and you should contribute a story!

i have a few in already, and up to 45 volunteers. if i can get to 60 i may do 30 stories on the day of the launch, and then have 30 more ready for the first update.

made me think of you z - http://gimletmedia.com/episode/the-anxiety-box/

I'm in for this if it's not too late to sign up.

My voice is totally shot due to illness and likely to remain shot at least up through the deadline. You can have my spot.

hahaha, listening to the anxiety box now. i do have a few unused domains that i registered, but i fully intended to use them at the time! (i.e., the permanently sidelined channel2014). i have some friends who are like that dude for real though, in terms of domain registration addiction.

crut - not too late! can you send me an email? [MODERATOR REDACTION] at gmail

how's life - if you still want to contribute something after you feel better, feel free to send it whenever because there will be an update with new stories at some point.

i'm at 57 participants now. i'm still unsure whether i should just include all 57 stories (or however many i end up getting) at launch, or to go with just 30 and then stockpile the remainder for the first update.

You've mentioned 30 before. Just out of curiosity: why that number? Would you 'curate' and pick the ones best in your eyes, or make it random? Or do you feel having nearly 60 stories on there is too much for a randomized website thing?

30 is pretty arbitrary, but it equals about 15 minutes, and that's about how much new content I'd like to include for each update. So about 15 minutes on launch day, and then for the first update, add another 15 minutes.

I'll keep adding stories as long as I get them - if there are 1000 on there that are in the random selection pool, I think that would be fantastic.

As far as curating goes, that'll change over time, I think. For this batch that I'm receiving (about 1/3 ILXors, 1/3 old friends of mine, and 1/3 people that know of me through conferencecall.biz) I'll try to include every story. If this ever takes off and strangers start submitting, I would hopefully be able to just accept the very best stories, but that of course depends on how many I receive from strangers. If I do a big call for stories and only get a handful, I would just use them all, but if I got 100 or something (yeah right, but let me dream) I would be able to pick the cream of the crop.

are you getting a story from Kai

proooobably not!

i did receive the horse_ebooks story though, so that made me feel pretty good

Clear enough ZS, thanks. Will get cracking on mine this weekend!

starting to gather around a coherent visual theme (maybe). if i can figure out how to code it, i think i'm going to switch to only one randomized element - 30 second video files - rather than layering audio tracks over GIFs. that will allow me to create short visual accompaniments that are at least somewhat relevant to the story you're hearing. videos will probably still be made up of looping elements, but having it in video format will allow me to make slower transitions, add the title on the top of the story, insert something temporarily 20 seconds into if needed, etc.

we'll see how long i stick with it but i like the idea of focusing on two elements per story. like in this case the story a history of the table purchases that this guy has made over many years, so it combines a wood texture with passing clouds. i dunno. *wings it*

http://38.media.tumblr.com/95053bfccfc1b826e0e0288bce66c52a/tumblr_ni1jen4yR51qdmmiqo2_500.gif

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