For my creative social media piece, I aim to construct a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style narrative through the medium of Amazon product reviews. The story, entitled ‘Consume’, will be zombie-apocalypse survival themed as this type of narrative lends itself well to physical objects such as those purchasable on Amazon. Readers will be able to decide between branching paths of the story by clicking links to other products, as Amazon allows such links in its product reviews. This will both count as their branching narrative choice and lead them to the next product, where the story will continue in another review. The story will also end in with a restart link, so if readers happen upon a piece of the story or choose an option that ends in death for the protagonist, they can start at the beginning. I will also post the piece onto items that have few reviews, so the next piece of the story can be easily obtained without having to trawl through reams of genuine reviews. 

I will endeavour to create a humorous tone by incorporating the product specifications listed on Amazon, and by subverting the expected outcome of the narrative. This will be achieved by appointing the seemingly least helpful product for the situation as the ‘correct’ option in allowing the narrative to proceed without the death of the protagonist/reader e.g. a cheeseboard allows the protagonist to fend of zombies whereas a knife does not. I will write the story in a first-person narrative as if each section is a genuine review of the product on which they are posted. This to both blend into Amazon’s review system, and to parody the medium itself. The use of ‘Consume’ as a title then creates an ironic double meaning between the act of zombies devouring flesh and the purchasing of products on amazon. 

To promote my story, I will employ Instagram and Twitter, using the first line of the story as a hook to entice the reader to click the link and read the review in full. Instagram’s visual nature will be useful in promotion, as I can use the same image from the product review to promote the story. However, due to it being a visual medium rather than textual, it is perhaps limited in the promotion of a story. Instagram users will not necessarily click on an image of a mundane object without the full context of the narrative behind it. Twitter is perhaps more suitable, since it allows me to promote the story in various separate tweets, and Twitter users are expecting to read text. 

Some potential pitfalls will be Amazon’s recent crackdown on false product reviews. To avoid this, I will include inoffensive content, and moderate my use of explicit language. Unfortunately, Amazon only allow customers who have spent over forty pounds in products, therefore I will not be able to make a new account to group all the reviews together. There is also the danger of the unreliability of the internet, since products can be removed from Amazon, or sellers can flag my reviews as spam or false. Therefore, I do not predict this story to last. I will be screenshotting the reviews to avoid this.