It's my birthday....png

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later as i have been flying high with @AFrikkinHashtag since i started hosting the games. But this game bummed me out.

And it was my birthday. So not the best of presents… or presence, really.

Sorry, community, but you can do better.

With the advantage of hindsight i can see why this went badly, but i certainly didn’t see it going in and despite inviting people to play A FAMILY GAME, for this most part the offers i received were dodgy and oversexual and just plain gross in many ways.

While i get it that this is the internet and a place for people to unleash their inner child, it really did make the game pretty horrible for me and so am really hoping we can bounce back well tomorrow with a great game like we’ve been having.

Gamestarter#ForYourBirthdayI

For the record, in case i didn’t make it clear before, @AFrikkinHashtag games aim to be FAMILY-FRIENDLY SAFE-FOR-WORK and FUN FOR ALL and so any tweets that are rude or sexual or violent or racist in nature tend to be ignored…

What we do look for in particular though are a number of things which really help you to express your creativity and hopefully in time will make @AFrikkinHashtag one of the most fun and clever games on offer in a sea of too many games.

[oh and Star Wars Spoiler ahead so if you haven’t yet seen the new one you may want to look away]

The kind of things we reward by way of RETWEET and HEART and adding to the FISH LIST OF PRIZEWORTHYNESS [and hopefully one day real life prizes] include:

# FUNNY – you can be funny without being vulgar or rude or sexual or 6 years old and in fact the funny you generate when you are not those things tends to be of a much higher level than the rest – tweets that make us smile or LOL or LIL [Laugh Inside Loud cos i seldom actually laugh out loud but my inner giggle is legendary] are ones we love to see.

# CLEVER – i try to choose tags that give you a lot of freedom to get creative and so when someone takes what has been offered and comes up with something really clever with a double meaning or showing that extra degree of thought, we reward it.

# MISDIRECTIONAL – this is one of my favourite forms of humour – suggest you’re going one way and then send us in another direction – people who took the #YouHadMeAt tag and turned it into #YouHadMeAt with the simple difference of a capital letter became game changers and WE LOVED IT.

# RANDOM – i am a big fan of Jack Handey and random humour in general and so when one comes out of left field and makes sense and doesn’t make sense all at once, that generally makes me happy – if you can get the right amount of random so that it still fits the tag but is quite out there i will often put it at the top of my list.

So those are generally the things we are looking for when we play @AFrikkinHashtag and we would LOVE for you to try and aim at those too when you play our game. If that’s not your thing then fine, but our game probably isn’t for you. As i said we are looking to make @AFrikkinHashtag one of the best games out there and by challenging yourselves to get more deeply creative rather than churning out a whole bunch of mediocre ones, you will help us to get there.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

game1#ForYourBirthdayI

game2 (2)

game3

Huge thanks to Anthony @MarketingDude for helping me co-host my birthday game

As well as the ever present sometimes-nemesis @KeshaTedder for all her help… we did still create a trending tag:

While the majority of tweets were pretty dismal [you can do better, Twitterer!] there were a few that caught our attention and in an attempt to convert the FISH LIST OF PRIZEWORTHYNESS to a Top Ten List here is this week’s:

FISH LIST OF PRIZEWORTHYNESS

[10] Wordplay gifts are always a winner, so these three count as one:

[9] Three non-gifts count as a second one:

[8] Rick gave me a really great…um…er…

[7] Whereas Steve got me something not many people have:

[6] Colleen suggested it without actually saying the words:

[5] While Lili shared a promise, or was it a threat?

[4] Piter offered me jewelry:

[3]Humphrey brought the entertainment:

[2] Guapo excelled with this helpful resource:

[1] But i think most people agreed that this week’s top #ForYourBirthday I
tweet came from Either Oracle with this literal testimonial:

So, as always THANK YOU to everyone who played and especially those of you who kept it clean and fun and good and uplifting. Please forgive my mini rant at the beginning but i am hoping to craft something worth being a part of and i need all of you to help me with that.

See you at the next one… which is going to be a KENYA and SOUTH AFRICA mash-up as we truly try to take Africa by storm. i will be partnering with @Atanasi_ and his team for a first African collaboration… Wednesday at 1pm SA time [6am EST]

Kenya joinsSouth Africa.png

[To catch up on the winners of previous games we’ve played, click here]