Politics is a popular topic on Twitter, especially in Indonesia. To stand out from the crowd and attract followers, twitterers need to be creative, even when tweeting on political issues. Salman Aristo found his way by using flash fiction (a short story summarized in a tweet) for his tweets on politics. Interestingly, his creative effort has led on to a book titled, ‘Politweet’.
Within the book, Salman’s tweets are accompanied by engaging illustrations. Each page contains a portrait of Indonesian society, depicted in satirical prose and cartoon. Most of his critiques are directed to government, while some of them directed to the media and society.
Best known as a writer for hit Indonesian movies, such as “Laskar Pelangi” (“The Rainbow Troops”), “Ayat-Ayat Cinta” (“The Verses of Love”) and “Garuda di Dadaku” (“Garuda on My Chest”), Salman started to use Twitter on September 2009. At first, he was not really sure about what he would do with Twitter. But then in March, he started to share his flash fictions after he found a Twitter community called Fiksi Mini, which shares Tweet-like short stories.
He has posted more than 5,000 flash fiction stories and gained over 9,000 followers on Twitter (@salmanaristo). His flash fictions share about anything, both serious and amusing topics with Politics as his favorite topic on Twitter. His tweets toward recent events were often sharp and smart, which attracted Bentang Pustaka, a publishing house to compile them into a book.
Salman’s Politweet marked a new genre of literature that is based on online content. Previously, there was blook, the combination of blog and book. They were so popular, that some of them became best-selling books and adapted in movies. As Twitter continues to grow in Indonesia, it would be interesting to see how this genre of content will develop in the future.
Twitter’s 140 characters maximum length of a tweet could be limiting for some people, but not for the creative ones, like Salman Aristo.
via Jakarta Globe
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