Locations
Hello, faithful readers!
I have received a lot of feedback from all of you and from the staff here at Gathering Magic about what you are looking for when it comes to information about the connectivity of the community. A lot of you feel that I made a compelling case for why we should all at least pay a cursory amount of attention to Twitter, for example, but a lot of you who weren’t on Twitter before feel a bit lost. “Okay, I did what you said—now what?”
I hear you loud and clear. Based on your feedback, I’ve spent a few weeks in the tank and decided this column is going to launch a new series—one that helps you to identify a few key elements that will help you maximize your integration into the community in several big ways:
- By helping you maximize your use of the social media you currently use to fully incorporate important and instructive members of the Magic community;
- By helping you identify which social media you are currently ignoring but which have good Magic content you’d benefit from finding;
- And by helping you identify which members of the Magic community whom you may not currently be following on those various social media but whom you should be.
I feel that we’re finally on the same page—you and I. Consider this initial installment a proof of concept. Future installments will contain much less text from me and the reason for that is simple: The links will provide you with hours of web-surfing potential, and I want to let these contributors’ work speak for itself. In case it isn’t obvious on the first read-through, I’m not making the case for these two gentlemen, I’m using the examples of the fun and novel stuff they put online to make the case for the various social media you’ll need to use to follow them. Let’s get started.
Starting with a Big One
Name: Mark Rosewater
Where You Know Him From: Anywhere from old Duelist magazines to DailyMTG.com
Current Title: Magic: The Gathering Head Designer
Social Media: Twitter
Where Can I Read Him: DailyMTG on MagicTheGathering.com
Obviously, we all know who Mark Rosewater is. But how closely do you follow him? You may be shocked by how prolific Mark Rosewater is in terms of the sheer volume of content he contributes on a weekly basis. This is a guy who decided he didn’t like the fact that being stuck in traffic meant he couldn’t do any work, so he started recording a podcast in the car during his morning commute, thus improving his efficiency as a Magic machine to a near a hundred percent.
Got a question for MaRo? He answers a ton of fan questions here on his Tumblr page, which is a veritable Treasure Trove of quality Magic content from one of the game’s earliest contributors. There are currently seven hundred seventy pages. Remember to eat and bathe periodically.
In its bid to take over the world, Google has created its own social medium, Google+, which is really the Microsoft Zune of social media. It’s easier to use and has a much better design than the more popular Facebook (the Apple iPod of social media), but it hasn’t quite caught on the way the other has. It’s a shame—Google+ is great, and since most of you already have a Gmail account, it takes seconds to join. Just recently, MaRo posted this:
That’s his favorite 2012 entry in his comic series “Tales From The Pit.” He also uses Google+ as a platform to announce his recent articles and other contributions. Find his Google+ page at this link.
If you’re on the Facebook, he has a public Facebook page as well.
Mark Rosewater doesn’t appear to have a MySpace page. That’s okay. No one does.
Did you know MaRo writes for the Mothership? Of course you did. But this is another place you can find unique MaRo content.
Do you remember this? If you followed Maro on twitter, you do! This is how he decided to spoil a new card from Return to Ravnica in his signature puzzle style, and only his Twitter followers were in on it.
What follows is all the text on the card (minus micro text) with only the first letter listed. You have about 45 minutes to figure it out.
— Mark Rosewater (@maro254) September 12, 2012
C.UURI.C.C.B.C.B.S.O.A.C.T.S.Y.D.C.O. 1UUR
— Mark Rosewater (@maro254) September 12, 2012
It didn’t take us forty-five minutes (more like forty-five seconds) to figure out the puzzle—it’s the Return to Ravnica card Counterflux—but it’s this kind of fun content that makes MaRo worth following on Twitter as well as everywhere else.
Are you starting to understand why it’s worth following MaRo across various social media platforms, even if that means becoming part of those communities to access the content? Once you delve into this a bit deeper, you’ll discover it’s not as hard to keep up with as you’d imagine; you’ll follow a wide range of people over a wide range of platforms, but there is so much overlap it will just become part of your everyday routine of checking various websites. If you still need convincing, we should do one more.
Another Big One
Name: Aaron Forsythe
Where You Know Him From: The Pro Tour, Early StarCityGames articles (circa 2000), Wizards of the Coast
Current Title: Head of Magic: The Gathering R&D
Social Media: Twitter
Where Can I Read Him: Check him out at DailyMTG on MagicTheGathering.com
Aaron Forsythe is a mainstay in the community. A Pro-player-turned-early-theory-contributor-turned-Wizards-of-the-Coast-employee, Aaron Forsythe rivals MaRo for the title of Most Approachable, and he frequently crowd-sources Twitter and other social media.
I don't mind quirky deck names like The Rock, Solar Flare, Project X, whatever. They don't imply cards/mechanics that aren't in them.
— Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) November 11, 2012
Which deck wins faster in terms of time to execute: the Modern Second Sunrise deck or the Legacy High Tide deck?
— Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) October 24, 2012
When he’s not asking for input or starting interesting discussions, he’s answering questions from the community. The merit of following Aaron on Twitter should be readily apparent.
Unfortunately, Aaron’s Tumblr appears to be updated infrequently. That said, when he does update it, he tends to preview cards and post decklists, and previewed cards are always nice.
In your pursuit of quality info, remember that even though they’re important figures in the community, it’s important to respect the privacy of the content creators. If they have a private Google+ or Facebook page, don’t take a rejected friend request personally. Most people still have many other ways to access them and may not want to use all social media platforms as extensions of their Magic personalities.
Now that we have a hang of the format of this column, check this space every week for more people you should be following. As this first entry demonstrated, even obvious titans of the community have some content hidden in various platforms that aren’t completely obvious at first blush, and you could miss out on quite a lot if you don’t know where to look. As we go along, I’ll be giving you more great content from your favorite Magic contributors and finding some people for you who are evolving great content that you may be completely oblivious to.
Got a topic you’d like to see me cover? That’s’ what the comment section is for—but if you really want to practice what we’re covering here, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook or send me an e-mail to altjason17 at gmail dot com.
Check back next week!
