10 Commandments of Shouting

Day 1,312, 14:13 • Published in USA USA • by Gnilraps


eRepublik Decorum
Day 1,312 of the New World
"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't."
— Tom Waits
Guidelines for Shouting in eRepublik

Somewhere between 4-5 months ago, the eRep Wig decided to do away with the old style of “Shouts” and introduced the very-obviously-facebook-influenced “Citizen feeds”. Wig apparently considers this “amazing”:
http://wiki.erepublik.com/images/f/fb/Citizen_feeds.png

The Citizen Feedsbeta has in many ways supplanted the newspaper module as the primary means of communication for many eRep citizens. But Citizen Feedsbeta is seriously limited. More importantly, no eRep feature offers a greater opportunity for you to wear out your welcome among other Citizens of the New World.

16 Shells would like to suggest the following codifications for your behavior in the Citizen Feedsbeta “module”. Let’s do this 10 Commandments style.

1: Thou shalt not be a dick in the Citizen Feedsbeta.

What does this mean?

Much like the real 10 Commandments, this first commandment is an embedded understanding in all the other 9. “Don’t be a dick” means that you should remember that your shout occupies 1/10th of someone else’s shout thread. Your shouts are only visible by your “friends”. You are therefore granted the privilege of screen space on their home page. Since eRep shows 10 shouts at a time, each one of your shouts occupies a “tithe” (10😵 portion of their thread. Don’t abuse this honor by being a dick.

Also remember that if your “friend” has only a few other “friends”, your last 8 shouts may be all he/she sees. You might look like a bigger dick than the one you have. And that is likely not saying much.

2: Thou shalt not link too much non-eRep-related material in your shouts.

What does this mean?

Honestly? Once in a while it is no big deal to link a cool youtube, boobshot, or another article about Ajay Bruno’s real life psychological problems. But remember, people usually play a game to ESCAPE the real life news. Seriously. Like any one of us needs eRepublik to tell us that Osama Bin Laden is dead? Most of us have smartphones now.

3: Thou shalt not shout the same damn thing every 10 damn minutes.

What does this mean?

eRepublik gives you the privilege of shouting every 10 minutes. They’re nuts. Well, not exactly. If you can think of something new to shout every 10 minutes be my guest. And send me your FR because I am interested.

But the general rule is DO NOT SHOUT THE SAME EXACT SHOUT ANY MORE FREQUENTLY THAN ONCE PER HOUR. If this crappy Media Module would allow me to, I’d have printed that in whatever maximum-sized font was available. Even shouting the same thing every hour, you should at least mix it up a bit and change your verbiage a bit. Come on. This is “language”. Use it.

4: Thou shalt definitely not be a dick in the Citizen Feedsbeta.

What does this mean?

Like you don’t know.

5: Thou shalt not link your crap in someone else’s Citizen Feedbeta.

What does this mean?

Come on. You can’t wait another 6 minutes to fart your stupid link out? eRepublik gives you the rarefied privilege of commenting on my Citizen Feedbeta. But they do not give me the one thing I most want, the ability to delete your stupid crap comment from my awesome shout. So if you plan to comment on a shout, make it good. Be complementary or at least disagree with decorum. (Oh crap, there I go sounding like a Federalist again.) But if you want to link your article in a comment on my feed, it damn well better make sense that you did so. Otherwise I will so unfriend you.

6: Thou shalt not blame me if I don’t see your shout.

What does this mean?

Oh please. Like I am going log on all day every day just to read your verbal diarrhea. Shouts only last as long as it takes for enough other people to fill my page with their verbal diarrhea. eRep only shows 10 shouts at a time and will only keep track of the last 100 shouts from among my “friends”. So if I have been having connubial relations with my wife, I may miss your request for me to click on your latest poorly-written diatribe about how INCI needs to “swear allegiance to the flag” or how the CJCS is really a golem in real life.

Seriously. I routinely delete dead citizens from my friends list, so with 800 or so friends I see a lot of shouts. Deal with it if I miss yours. Geeze. You’re writing probably sucks anyway. And if it doesn’t, I don’t need your damn shout to remind me to read it. I NEVER miss an issue of Primitive Thinking. Even when he attempts poetry. (/me holds nose)

7: Thou shalt shout ASAP if you have written something good.

What does this mean?

Shouts really are the best way of getting people to read your crap right away. Whenever I write new crap (like this piece of crap for instance) I shout it. Getting your article voted is important still (thank god) and shouts will generate some attention.

It used to be that eRep would notify you if someone whose writing wasn’t crap wrote something new. But now publishing an article necessarily includes shouting it. So go ahead. It is a very legitimate use of the Citizen Feedsbeta.

8: Thou shalt by all means consider the Citizen Feedsbeta a separate and unique art form.

What does this mean?

Limiting yourself to 160 characters can often be a challenge. Work on it. Some of my favorite shouts are obvious efforts at fitting a square peg into the round hole of only 160 characters. We should all be good at this by now, living in a TXT-based world.

Remember, you can’t shout again for 10 whole minutes. You might as well cram as much information into 160 characters as possible. At least I’ll appreciate it. No one has perfected this better than Ronald Reagan Reborn. Send him your friend request immediately.

9: Thou shalt not link your article if it’s title contains the words "work", "train", "vote", "subscribe", "study", "buy", "join", "remove", or "address".

What does this mean?

Look, just don’t. If you don’t believe me read this: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-laquo-link-r3moved-exploit-detected-raquo--1786878/1/20

10: Thou shalt not make the mistake of thinking that your shout has been seen by the entire eRepublik universe.

What does this mean?

You don’t matter that much. Your shouts are only visible to your ingame “friends” and even then only if they log on in time to see it. eRepublik will only publish your shout to your first 2000 friends (which is why I delete dead friends on a regular basis. Go ahead and wait. Have fun wading through your list when it reaches 2K and your new friends can’t see your shouts while 1200 dead people “can”. Idiot.) Even if you’ve only got 173 friends, figure that about 30% of them saw what you said. Yes. This game is that pathetic.

The best thing you can do if you want to make the most out of your shouts is to accumulate 2000 “friends” who are active in this game.

I am. But that's a different Bible Story altogehter.