I missed last week’s email because I was in the New Forest looking at ponies, and I won’t apologise for it.

I was also down in Cardiff for the Museums Assocation conference talking about museums and shitposting. It’s one I like doing because a lot of people attend who don’t do digital content for a job, and they’re the ones we really need to talk to.

I’ve got the slides here but they’re semi-pointless without the (50% improvised) script, so my main points were:

• We’re happy with meeting communities halfway and talking their language in almost every other context except when it comes to social media.

• Social media is where careful audience segmentation goes to die (ish). Audience needs and taste are as much dictated by the platform itself and the online community as other factors, so it’s easier to design for the platform than for the specific audience.

• Going rogue as a museum shitposter may work really well but it will probably end in tears. It’s worth doing the boring bureaucracy to avoid getting fired.

• Shitposting comes in different flavours. You can keep it to a specific channel (National Trust), make it your whole identity (Crab Museum), be lovable rather than sharp (MERL), or do it as an individual.

• A load of other stuff. Pop me an email if anything doesn’t make sense.

Content of this week

• You’ve probably all seen a variation of the Trust Fall video. Is it too stale to copy? Who knows. Spin the wheel.

• Most people haven’t seen things. There are too many things to see and to know and remember. So if you’re used to living or working in a place that others would consider a fairy tale maybe you just need to show them it.

• I’m sharing this 50% because I think filming an interactive is a good way to show off the experience (if it’s interesting enough), and 50% because we had the exact same idea for a calf birthing interactive at MERL but we just couldn’t source a cheap model.

• This post of a dating app conversation between two characters in The Last Five Years by the Barn Theatre has criminally few Likes. But then part of me wonders whether I actually like it or if I’m just starved for new formats. Maybe it’s too polished and would have worked better as something animated or a skit? Who knows.

The bullet point bit

• OpenAI have released Sora2, vastly improving their generative video AI. I mean, I hate it, and it’s just going to destroy any trust we have in media, but it is very good. It’s led to Zelda Williams asking people to stop sending her videos of her dead father, saying “You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings”.

• This isn’t a link to anything, I just want to put on record that I fucking hate Hootsuite.

• MuseumNext are doing an online social media summit 20-21 November with some really good speakers and topics, but it will set you back one hundred and thirty of your British pounds. Because I now have to spend my own money rather than my organisation’s money I often have to weigh up the question: should I spend £130 on this, or buy 8 and a bit takeaway curries.

• Story Things have started a Content as a Service, in a much flashier way than my shit post about doing sort of the same thing on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. If anyone wants to make an agency with me let me know. We can call it Toethumb, because I have toethumbs.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I’m going through my ‘bleep bloop bleep’ phase of music again, so there’s a lot of Boards of Canada and Jon Hopkins. Also reading a distinctly average book by Mark Gatiss.

What else. Alan Partridge is good.

And saving my sheckels for Europa Universalis V.

🐕 Keith

He’s on holiday so here’s a dog I met at a pub in Cardiff with big balls