phishcrit

Changes Afoot at Phishcrit/#phishproject

Since I’ve reached a good transition point in this epic and foolish quest, I’ve decided to make a few format changes to #phishproject. The main news is that I will henceforth be tweeting shows from the Twitter account @phishcrit, rather than @robmitchum. I’ve thought about this move for a while, and here are a few reasons why I decided to pull the trigger and further fractionate my social media presence.

1) I’ve Made My Point - One of my motivations for unleashing slobbery Phish fandom on my followers was to demonstrate that it was okay for someone who writes for Pitchfork to like this wacky jamband with a terrible name. Whatever limited novelty that notion held, it’s long worn off, to the point that I may have permanently branded myself as the Pitchfork Guy Who Likes Phish to the expense of any other reputation I previously held. While I’m still very interested in bridging the indie and jamband worlds, there’s less of a need to rub people’s noses in it.

2) Spamming Timelines - While I’m pretty sure a healthy contingent, maybe even a majority, of the followers at my main account came originally for the Phish chatter, I imagine there’s another significant demographic that winces whenever I start a new show. While occasionally ignoring someone’s account is a basic survival skill on Twitter, I’d rather not put my civilian non-Phish followers through that too often, lest they tune me out forever. I think it’s a little crazy and perhaps mentally unhealthy to split one’s personality into too many social media tributaries, but I think it’s wise to spin this project off into its own domain.

3) Work - When I started the Phish project, nobody in my office cared about Twitter or what I was doing on it. Two years later, that’s no longer the case. A main contributor to the decline in frequency of shows over the past 9 months is my paranoia that my account is being watched by people who don’t trust me (perhaps with good reason) to multitask the day job and online musical commentary. So moving this process to an account that is (hopefully) not on the radar of my supervisors and co-workers seems like a wise move, and should allow me to kick the frequency back up.

4) A Broader Approach - I’m not about to ban myself from talking about Phish on the main account, but having a separate account for Phish ramblings will allow me to do a little more than just the show reviews without worrying about #s 1-3 above. I’ll likely move any future live/webcast/#couchtour ramblings there, for instance, and will try to conduct all internet beef with fellow Phish pundits in the future from that locale. I’m also working on some downloadable compilations from the shows covered so far, and can better provide frequent links and commentary for those comps from the new account.

That said, there will be some simulcasted tweeting for a while so that people have a chance to make the move. I hope that if you follow @robmitchum, you will come over to @phishcrit, and hopefully not un-follow the former once you’ve made the transition. I will try to meet your high standards of 140-character entertainment at both accounts. Thanks for reading, now let’s listen to some more music.

COMING SOON: A lost Spring ‘93 show, the Laguna Seca Daze shows, a batch of Spring ‘93 mp3 compilations, and the legendary Summer ‘93 tour.