Here endeth the reverse gaming experiment, but at least I got a spelling lesson out of it

NOTE TO READERS: I apologize in advance, because if you are not a Twitter user, and perhaps even if you are, most of the material in the following post will be completely incomprehensible to you. Perhaps I'll come up with the annotated explanatory version of this post later.

Recently I've become interested in reverse gaming various services, primarily because people are so interested in forward gaming them.

I remember that someone demonstrated how easy it was to game Tweeterboard to end up at the top of the list, which got me interested in trying to reverse game Tweeterboard to send my reputation score down into single digits.

So far I've failed at doing this - just when I seem to be approaching success, one of my tweets gets someone's fancy and they respond - but I'm usually able to keep my Tweeterboard reputation in the teens (with occasional zoom-ups, some of which even place me in the top 100 for a few hours).

But I've had more fun reverse gaming Tweet140. Now Tweet140 seems like a very nice, fun thing, but what they don't tell you is that they insult you every three days or so.

A couple of days after joining Tweet140, I found that my profile was at "Duck" level, so I decided that I'd see what lay below that level. Heck, "Duck" sounded bad enough - was "Frog" next? So I intentionally started writing short tweets, and (mostly) refrained from twooshing (which incidentally removed me from visibility on Club140 for a few days).

Not only did I successfully decline to "Pigeon" level, but I got a whole new wonderful insult from the Tweet140 folks:

@oemperor You tweet like a pigeon. You're just getting in our way with a 77 avg and 11 twooshes. Fly away and stop begging for a real tweet.

After this success, I had to decide whether I wanted to continue to explore the depths below "Pigeon," or whether this was the time to head back upward, through "Duck," "Swan," and possibly even "Falcon."

Twitter made my decision for me last night.

Last night Twitter advertised a #twittout that was supposed to last from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm Pacific time. I happened to wake up around 4:00 am or so this morning, grabbed my Motorola Q, and thought I'd cruise through a few pages of messages. In mobile Twitter terms, this involves going to the bottom of the web page and clicking "Older."

I clicked "Older"...and got the same messages that I had the first time.

Because I am extremely intelligent, I figured I'd edit the URL and change the page number from 2 to 3.

Still got the same messages.

This is where the ego part (which is present in some high degree in all bloggers/tweeters/wikiers) kicks in - MY PROFOUND MUSINGS CAN'T BE SEEN ANYWHERE. I mean, I know that Twitter is ephemeral (or, as I misspell it, ephermal), but that's a little too ephemeral/ephermal for me.

This is where Dave Winer's little tool came in handy, because even if my stuff couldn't be seen on Twitter...IT COULD BE SEEN ON CLUB140.

So I began twooshing like mad, and my ego worries were calmed.

Things seemed to be back to normal an hour later, but then I went to Twitter to grab some references for this post and ran into another #twittout.

And I'm still a pigeon, not a duck.

So, courtesy Club140, here are some of my most recent profound musings:

6. Ontario Emperor discombobulated. motorola q holster broke yesterday morning, have to put q in shirt pocket. still reach to belt. new holster ordered online. 6:35 AM

11. Ontario Emperor hey, miracle of miracles, recent is now letting you get to older stuff. for the moment. assuming no #twittout - we'll see if all remains ok. 5:45 AM

16. Ontario Emperor @peterdawson i've noticed it also. using mobile twitter, page 2, 3 have same content as page 1. search tweetscan for "recent" for anecdotes. 5:15 AM

17. Ontario Emperor saw fakemor at club140 that twitter lost db of past tweets. in truth, such a move would solve performance issues by reducing users #twittout 5:15 AM

18. Ontario Emperor @trollbaby the advertisers (other than religious firms, who don't have THAT much cash) wouldn't pay to advertise on a tv show called "found" 5:15 AM

19. Ontario Emperor @khokanson i haven't visited truemors in months, but don't they have voice to text capabilities? you may want to find out what truemors uses 4:55 AM

21. Ontario Emperor twitter giveth, and twitter taketh away. like the fact that mobile users can't click on @ names. i should add that 2 the wiki platforms page 4:55 AM

22. Ontario Emperor so i guess that in my case, the "bug" is that mobile twitter web recent page HAS an older button. i guess that it's not supposed to be there 4:55 AM

23. Ontario Emperor checked tweetscan to see if others were having my mobile twitter web recent problem in which "older" doesn't work. others don't have "older" 4:45 AM


And here are my current Tweeterboard stats:

Updates every < 1 an hour
Last Polled 01/31
Reputation 17 Points
Reputation Change 0 Points

And here is my up to the minute rolling and overall tweet140 scores:

oemperor tweets like a Pigeon

In the last week
Total Tracked Tweets 324
Tweets per Day 47
Total Twooshes 18
Avg. Characters per Tweet 76
Twooshrate 5%

Overall
Total Tracked Tweets 361
Tweets per Day 42
Total Twooshes 19
Avg. Characters per Tweet 78
Twooshrate 5%

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