
Like Tweeting, but You Can't Use the Letter E - tripofmice
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/its-like-tweeting-but-you-cant-use-the-letter-e
======
biot
Translation of posting without using 'E':

It's Similar to That Bird Social App, But Without a Fifth Symbol

Mastodon has an app with particular quirks and many humans find it joyful.

Mastodon boffins did it again.

A particular boffin going by initials M.R. works as a digital craftsman at a
corporation with initials I.A. (that has http archival capability), did craft
a social app oulipo.social with an odd quirk: said app disallows applying of
fifth anglo-saxon linguistic symbol or "any variant of it".

Said individual found motivation via book "A Void" by author G.P. This
lipogrammatic book did apply all anglo-saxon linguistic symbols but that
particular symbol. It follows a Francophonic philosophy of Oulipo, a
constraint form of writing that is a combination of both math and book study.

Banning of this symbol is Oulipo's most famous limitation: "It limits writing
without making it too hard," M.R. said. "You can still sound natural and say
what you want to say, though you may think on it a bit in a way that you
wouldn't without constraints." Such limitation can push you to think hard and
apply imagination about words, M.R. said.

M.R. had no anticipation that oulipo.social would attain popularity — as it
got its start as a trial of skills application of Ruby on Rails and to attain
a sharp mind in OS capability — but said app did gain many additional accounts
(singular digit with two nought digits) within about six days of starting.

"It's a joy to watch folks do things I wouldn't think of—#drilipo, and
applying oulipo constraints to famous writing and songs—and just chat about
day to day stuff," M.R. said. "It's also gratifying that folks will look at
oulipo.social and go on to think up constraints or gimmicks for additional
variant Mastodons."

M.R. did post back to my communication within an hour, with almost 300 words
and without said taboo symbol. I suck at thinking by using my imagination to
avoid said symbol and quit not long post-starting as my mind is frail.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Pray tell, fifth Symbol of what? Did you try to put words to say "fifth symbol
of an Anglo-variant of latin-script".

~~~
evanb
'Pray tell' has an 'e'.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Dang, you are right.

------
forgotpwtomain
> Reeve replied to my email in less than an hour, with nearly 300 words and no
> appearance of the banned character. I attempted to write this article
> without using the letter "e" and gave up after five minutes of weak effort.

0x7265657665 did dispatch back as to my communication in duration not in
surplus of an hour with almost 300 words and without a taboo glyph in sight.
Although I did try to author this column without using said taboo glyph
"0x65", against apathy and sloth I could not triumph and did submit for my
stab at it, as short in duration as to boil liquid in a pot, was a dud.

~~~
komali2
In what encoding does "0x65" represent "e" ?

~~~
tomjakubowski
ASCII, UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1), Shift JIS, among others.

~~~
komali2
Am I tripping? I thought 65 was "A"?

~~~
mikestew
Can't help you with your use of hallucinogenic substances, but I think you're
mixing your decimal and hex. Decimal 65 is a capital "A". Hex 65 (0x65) gives
you lowercase "e".

~~~
komali2
Ooooooooh duhhhhhh. I applied "automatically ignore prefix" filter for some
reason. Dumb brain.

------
whitepoplar
If we want something like Twitter, but in the form of an open source protocol,
we need to name it and brand it well.

I remember when I first used Linux, I didn't "trust" it. There wasn't a
singular OS called Linux and the GUI applications looked low quality because
they didn't have good design or branding. To most people, the UI and branding
_is_ the product, so when they see it poorly implemented, it simply feels like
a bad product.

If you make open source feel expensive and luxurious, they will come.

~~~
themodelplumber
> If you make open source feel expensive and luxurious, they will come

Hmmm...So: let's ask a bunch of objective, analytical, concrete techies to
pivot themselves over to a subjective, abstract, feelings-based judgment
process which requires a great sensitivity and sense of cultural refinement.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I'm not sure what this ad hominem comment was supposed to accomplish. Don't we
already have people who appreciate subjective and cultural concerns involved?

~~~
zimpenfish
> The cybre.space instance calls each post a “florp” instead of a “toot.”

I'm not entirely convinced that we do, no.

------
ryanschneider
Rather than rejecting e it should delete your account if you happen to enter
one. And announce the fact in impact font on your followers' timelines.

~~~
cmdrfred
That would be a great game. Try and trick others into using it while
abstaining yourself.

------
orblivion
This sounds like a fun gimmick, but it makes me more excited about the concept
of Mastodon (GNU Social). I think this creates a really fun use case for
federation. Hell I never thought of it before, but maybe now I'll want
accounts on multiple servers now.

~~~
rocky1138
One of the constraints of GNU Social is that you shouldn't have two identical
usernames on two separate instances. I did that and I don't know how to fix
it.

rocky1138@kwat.chat

rocky1138@gnusocial.no

Does Mastadon suffer the same problem?

~~~
franzpeterstein
Mastodon have the same problem.

> [https://social.tchncs.de/@voidnill](https://social.tchncs.de/@voidnill) >
> [https://mastodon.cloud/@voidnill](https://mastodon.cloud/@voidnill)

are the same user (me) on two different instances.

~~~
jobigoud
What do you mean by "problem"? Email has the same "problem".

------
tjr
Also of interest:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_\(novel\))

~~~
tyingq
Now I remember where I'd heard of that Gadsby book before.

It's referenced in one of the exercises in the Think Python book:

 _Write a function called has_no_e that returns True if the given word doesn’t
have the letter “e” in it._

[http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/thinkpython010...](http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/thinkpython010.html)

------
dkurth
There's a musician named Andrew Huang who sometimes makes music based on song
challenges from his fans. Years ago, I asked him to write a rap song in which
none of the lyrics contain the letter "e." Like the person in the article, I
had read "A Void" by Georges Perec, so that's where the idea came from.

And about a day later, he posted this song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-WtH4ujps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-WtH4ujps)

~~~
schoen
Wow, that musician has amazing skills! Thank you for sharing this.

------
egypturnash
Oulipo.social now has a mirror image: dolphin.town, where you can _only_ use
the letter E.

------
sebringj
I think I need help understanding why this is in any way relevant or
interesting. I'm actually serious and open to listening. Obviously it got on
the front page.

~~~
gbaygon
Personally I find interesting the general idea that adding constraints to a
system leads to creative outlets, forcing the participants to break
entablished thinking patterns. The fun stuff here is not the content, but the
alternative paths the writer has to take to convey the message.

~~~
porpoisemonkey
Wouldn't the asy workaround b to writ what you wantd to writ but drop th "3"?

Even without the e's you can probably infer meaning with a high probability of
success.

~~~
scadge
Replacing 'e' with similar symbols like '3' is also not allowed. That's the
point :)

~~~
Sophira
It's not actually said that "3" should swap with it - it's a substitution for
that symbol.

It's a proposal to post normally but to omit any symbols that don't fit by
just not typing anything.

------
Programmatic
How would you talk about an unfamiliar individual known by a noun you can't
say?

~~~
ClassyJacket
It's limiting in a big way. Occasionally, you can say a string of words
without that symbol that flows without worry, but an individual word trips you
up and brings much difficulty, as any of its obvious synonyms all contain that
symbol too.

~~~
nebabyte
That's... just a hacky workaround...

Imo such would warrant a distinct class of "non-format" strings, just for that
noun class; that you might talk about it as-is without violation?

Or for purists... commonalization of a particular 'magic' shorthand, such as
'xqx', that is uncommon in that noun class thus can act as a _quick_
shorthand. Though such has additional 'logic' to say initially, it and similar
shorthands form a basis for a community 'pidgin' within constraints.

Also, I am now full of irk. Continually colliding with taboo words containing
(un)said symbol. Ugh. (WHY MUST SO MANY WORDS FINISH WITH TABOO GLYPH?!)

------
nightski
So just lav out the "e"? The human brain would b prfctly capabl of
undrstanding it.

~~~
Joeboy
From oulipo.social's FAQ
([https://oulipo.social/about/more](https://oulipo.social/about/more)):

* No problm I'll writ lik this.

No. Stop. Don't do this.

~~~
wielebny
At the same page they describe themselves as:

'A Dcntralizd and Fdratd Social Ntwork'.

~~~
Joeboy
Fair point, but it's still a young program and no doubt a fix is coming soon.

------
SlySherZ
This website is slugish as hell. Every time I scroll my cpu usage jumps to
~30% and I have ~2FPS, using the latest version of Firefox.

On Chrome the CPU still spikes, but it's no nearly as bad.

~~~
j4_james
If you're willing to turn off JavaScript, you can have all the same content,
but with silky smooth performance.

On the "downside", though, you miss out on the social media sharing buttons,
and auto-loading of the next article when you get to the bottom of the page.

~~~
nebabyte
> you miss out on the social media sharing buttons

Oh, sad day... :)

------
d_j_b
Silly Vice: it's "Perec", not "Pereca".

------
kem
It seems to me that Vice casually mentioning Mastodon suggests something about
a level of achieved status as a communication platform.

------
DonHopkins
"A little glob becomes a globe instantly, if you just add silent e!" \- T o m
L * h r * r

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHPaVxkdPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHPaVxkdPA)

------
amenghra
Also of interest, "A Void":
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void)

------
zapdrive
Slightly related. Reddit user IHateLetterF never uses the letter F.

------
owenversteeg
Link to the actual "social sharing hub", which is a mod of Mastodon:

[https://oulipo.social/about](https://oulipo.social/about)

~~~
rspeer
That's a login form.

Can you not look at posts on Mastodon without signing up for it? That sounds
fatal for adoption.

~~~
JeremyBanks
You can see any users public timeline and posts at /@username, but the
complete public timeline requires authentication (with this or any instance
it's federated with).

------
OscarCunningham
Twitter is like blogging, but you can't use more than 140 characters.

Clearly the more constraints we add, the better it is!

------
adynatos
Just use 3, 31337 nerds. Hey, people were writing like that in the '90!

------
jl6
Twatting?

