Fell From Fiction

By Michael J. Ritchie (@gossipguy17)

Here are some tips on living through the DailyBooth community!

#1 – Get Stuck In

As soon as you join, get on with it! Take your first picture – your first picture should always be a webcam snap, not an upload, unless you take your photos on a separate camera. Browse around a bit; see if you can find a few people who look interesting that you could follow. You don’t have to follow them forever. Leave a few comments on recent photos. Basically, just say hello.

#2 – Engaging The Community

Make your pictures more interesting than you merely staring at a webcam every day. Show the community things that you love, and ask their opinions. Get to know the people you follow and this will make people more likely to follow you back and talk to you. It’s no good following three hundred people if you never comment.

#3 – Leaving Comments

Leave comments when you feel you need to. If you’ve nothing to say on a photo other than “lol”, then it might not always be necessary. You need to find a happy medium between commenting no one and commenting everything. If you can, leave picture comments! They brighten up a thread and they’re often more interesting than just a comment.

#4 – Games

If you see a game going on, or some sort of comment collaboration, go and join in, or at least enjoy it! DailyBooth is full of some intensely funny and creative people so join them. It’s like the offline world – if you don’t socialise, you get left out.

#5 – Daily Means Daily

We’re all guilty of sometimes taking more than one picture a day, and some of us are guilty of missing a day here and there too, but for the most part, try and keep up. If you can’t do it, get someone else to cover for you. I’m not trying to be pedantic here; I’m just saying there’s a difference between missing a day or double-boothing and boothing once a fortnight or every half hour.

#6 – Reply To Your Comments

If people are going to be nice enough to comment on your photos, then you should reply to them, especially if they are complimentary or ask you questions. Sometimes this isn’t always possible if you’re busy or there are a lot of comments, but always do it when you can.

#7 – Be Positive

Don’t sit there and insult yourself every day, saying you hate your nose or your teeth or your body. Everyone else will do one of two things: comment saying you’re wrong, or not comment at all. We all have days where we feel like this. If you are simply fishing for compliments about your body then say that you love it instead. As long as you don’t overdo this, it’s fine, because you’re being positive and happy instead of moaning about it.

#8 – Be Funny

A sense of humour is attractive, so don’t get bogged down trying to be arty all the time. Tell jokes, take pictures where you don’t look so serious and maybe embarrass yourself a little bit. It’s all in the name of good humour.

#9 – Be Interesting, Without Being Pretentious

By all means, talk about your religious beliefs, your political ideals, your philosophies and your life, but understand that not everyone else shares the same views or lifestyle. Respect each other and don’t stand for any comments that you feel are unnecessary, such as those completely slating something that is otherwise acceptable (i.e. religion bashing or homophobia).

#10 – Limit Your Nudity

Keep your clothes on. Yes, Naked Friday was fun for a while, but now everything has been done. You may be completely ripped and enjoy looking at yourself naked – other people may too – but it doesn’t mean you have to be naked the entire time. We all know that nudes get views, but you are allowed to use your brain too.

#11 – Be Modest

Don’t expect people to follow you and don’t ignore them if they do.

#12 – Don’t Feel Obliged To Follow Everyone

Don’t forget though that some people seem to follow you apparently under the pretence that that’s enough to get you to follow them back. Never feel you have to follow anyone - only follow them if you find them interesting or actually want to see what they get up to.

#13 – Follow Friday

Like Twitter, DailyBooth has its own Follow Friday system in place. This is a good way to share the names of people you feel deserve more followers and saves you having to do it all week. Don’t go overboard though and name everyone you know – three to five is probably enough for a week.

#14 – Gatherings

Attend them! You can only learn so much about a person by seeing them online so do your best to meet people. If there isn’t one in your area, organise one!

#15 – Collaborations

Work with other Dailyboothers to engage people. Take two sides of an argument and have each of you present it on your own profile. It’s sure to spark a little bit of rivalry. Just keep it light and don’t let it descend into madness.

#16 – Finding The Balance

Sometimes uploads from the past and arty collages are nice, but so are snaps. People are there to see you, not some photoshopped, airbrushed, cleverly lighted version of you. Webcam snaps show that you’re real. There’s no shame in it, the rest of us are doing the same thing.

#17 – Congratulations

Congratulations! You should now be stable in the community and getting the full DailyBooth experience.

By Michael J. Ritchie (@gossipguy17)

Affectionate reworking of an idea by Martha Cracknell (@MartyToes)

Here are some simple rules to become really popular and respected on DailyBooth.

#1 – Signing Up

As soon as you get an account name and password, you’re in! Hooray! It’s probably best if you don’t take a picture of a few days. That’ll probably build up the mystery won’t it? You’ll probably have three hundred followers by the end of the week, all desperate to see who you are!

#2 – Who To Follow!

Obviously, you need to be following people. Firstly, find all the YouTubers that you love. They use DailyBooth too (so you know it’s a cool thing!) and they’d love it if you follow them. You have to follow them anyway don’t you? They’re famous after all! Once you’re following all of them, you then need to go to the “Suggested Users” tab and follow all of them. They must be cool!

#3 – Your First Picture

Make sure it’s a good one! In it, say how much you love everyone and how much you love DailyBooth. Link to every other website you’re on and then sit back and wait. You’ll have more comments than you know what to do with before the day is out.

#4 – Publicity

Always ask people to follow you. That’s what the blurb is for isn’t it? At the end, always tell people that following you would be a very good idea because then they’ll see how cool you are.

#5 – Don’t Ask Questions

Never ask questions! In fact, you don’t even need a blurb most of the time. If you do need one, make sure it says something interesting though, like, “I hate my eyes” or “My dad is a dick” or even “Fuck”. It’s good when people have something to say.

#6 – People Will Always Agree With You

Tell people you hate your eyes or legs or hair, but make sure – and this is very important – that the body part in question is on full display in close up in your picture. Everyone will agree with you, saying that, yes, it’s disgusting. You’ll get followers because you can be yourself and talk honestly.

#7 – Numbering Photos

Don’t forget to include the number of the photo in the blurb! I know DailyBooth numbers them anyway, but what if someone doesn’t see that? This is vitally important.

#8 – Putting The “Weekly” Into “DailyBooth”

Daily is just a word, it doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes you’ll only need to upload a picture once a week and people will still love it! They’ll have missed you!

#9 – Putting The “Hourly” Into “DailyBooth”

Of course, if you do miss a few days, you need to catch up! Put them all on the same day within the space of fifteen minutes. And make sure that they’re all basically identical. You don’t want to leave your fans hungry do you?

#10 – Get Rude!

If people are still being stubborn and not following you (maybe they’re just waiting until you’re cooler?) then it’s time to insult! Find someone who is pretty well known, (but not a big YouTuber because they are cool) and say they’re a douche or something equally unfriendly. This shows people that you’re a bit edgy and your opinion is probably right anyway and within minutes everyone will start following you in favour of the insulted party. If you can, insult DailyBooth as a whole!

#11 – Get Naked!

Pose suggestively with something interesting covering your areas that shouldn’t be seen. Being naked is by far the most interesting thing you could ever do, and you know, no one else has ever thought of it! You’ll gain followers like nobody’s business as everyone clamours to know you – the most daring person on DailyBooth!

#12 – One Hundredth Photo

If you’ve been doing it right, you should reach your 100^th photo on about Day 71, thereby perfectly matching up one photo per day. Congratulations! Give love to everyone who follows you and send an e-scowl to everyone who doesn’t.

#13 – Leaving Comments

Don’t. Never comment on anyone’s picture, unless they’re a big YouTuber or something. Those people will obviously love to hear from you and enjoy reading your comment of “lol”. It means a lot to them. If you didn’t know someone before you joined DailyBooth, you shouldn’t comment. By all means, follow them though, as you might be able to ride along on their success.

#14 – Picture Comments

If you do ever feel the need to comment, make sure it is NEVER a picture comment. They’re so boring, why would you want to do this? Why do we even have the option? DailyBooth is NOT about looking at your face!

#15 – Using The Message System To Its Full Potential

We all know why it’s there! So you can message some of the more well known people and tell them to follow you! Can’t they see that you’re as interesting as they are, so why are they getting all the love? If they still don’t follow you, it’s OK at this point to start insulting them to anyone who’ll listen.

#16 – Sharing The Love

In every blurb, mention about sixty other Dailyboothers. It’ll show people how popular you are, because you know everyone’s names!

#17 – Congratulations!

Hooray! If you’ve been following all the rules here, you should now have about ten thousand followers and everyone will love you! Keep up the good work and good luck!

I’ve just read a very interesting article which can be accessed here about people now quitting Facebook. I guess it shows how times change and, in these times of instant gratification and iPhones, how quickly.

I joined Facebook in November 2006, so just at the time people started to notice it in the UK. Until then I’d been an avid user of Bebo, which is impossible to believe now. In fact, there are photos from my first weeks at university on my now dormant Bebo account. My friends and I had MySpace, but used it very little, but upon arriving at university, MySpace became our default. And then Facebook quickly appeared and while I used the two in tandem for a while, Facebook won out.

I always imagined that Facebook (as I probably assumed with Bebo before that) would push on through and always be a staple of our lives. However, times moved on, Facebook lost Scrabulous, went mad and started redesigning itself, ignored the suggestions of its users, stole our details and used them to personalise our adverts and so on, and so on. Someone wrote on my wall today - I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened! I went about three weeks without a status recently. Back in the day, I had a new status every day, sometimes more than one.

And now, here we are, less than three years later, and people are leaving Facebook in droves. Even if they aren’t deleting their accounts (or suspending them as Facebook doesn’t let you completely delete I don’t think), they aren’t checking anymore. In fact, all my friends and I use Facebook for now is the private messaging system and the addictive rubbish that is FarmTown. Facebook is on its way out, with sites like Twitter and Tumblr taking centre stage as we enter the 2010s and a new era for the Internet.

And MySpace? It could easily have shut down by now and I wouldn’t’ve noticed. We’re all moving to social networks where we aren’t actually friends with our friends. Isn’t that weird? Twitter, Tumblr, Dailybooth … stalked by strangers, stalking the strange.

The first girl that I fell for was a fair and faithful fighter
She smouldered with a will to save the world
I did my best to help her, yeah I stood shoulder to shoulder
On the front lines with my visionary girl

I wish that she had cared for me
But in the end her ideologies
Occupied the fortress of her heart
I wrote her 15 songs, but still we had to part

And if music was the food of love
Then I’d be a fat romantic slob
Well music, it’s my substitute for love

The last girl that I loved she was a low and lusty liar
She set my heart on fire, but made me choke
Her beauty was a sight to see, but she didn’t save it all for me
I found other fires by following the smoke

I wish that she had either cared for me or let me be
But she chased me from mind and from my home
I wrote her 16 songs, but I ended up alone

And if love is really all that we need
Then even all my singing is never gonna save me
Music it’s my substitute for love

Well I’ve had many different girls inside my bed
But only one or two inside my head
These days I cuddle up to my guitar instead
But oh, what I would give, not to stumble but to really fall in love
And I could substitute my singing for the sound of someone sleeping next to me