For many, social networking is regarded as leisure, where one can forget a little about the stresses of everyday. This is not how Ale Santos uses them. The publicist, a specialist in gamification and storytelling, has used his Twitter, @savagefiction, to tell the story of black people that are usually unknown to the general public.
Ale, who graduated in advertising as a shareholder, became curious about himself and finding his roots. He started studying the subject more in depth when he was still in college. “Whoever is my friend has always heard these stories. I’ve been trying to write for a long time, but I still had not found the space to bring it up in a way that I liked, ” he explains.
However, it was in an unpretentious way that Twitter became the environment to share these stories with the world. There, he created narrative threads (a set of tweets that talk about the same subject) that quickly became viral. To date, the writer has published more than 30 stories on Twitter and says he cannot pick a favorite because they all marked him in a unique way.
“People were connecting with each other and talking about what that meant to them. It was there that I began to understand more about the role I was playing, the pedagogical and communicational role. I even received messages from people saying they are coming to the end of 2018 more black than when it began, “he says.
The development of the work, however, is arduous, since obtaining this information is not always easy. Ale says that he accesses several blogs to find a story that has the potential to engage him and his readers. From there, research through academic documents is done, to create a strong basis for the story that will be told.
I’ve been trying to write for a long time, but I still have not found the space to bring it to a level I liked…
“I have received a lot of feedback from people that were impacted by the stories. Recently, a girl told me that she spent the day taking care of her sister’s children and told them what I was saying on Twitter. The next day, they became very curious and wanted to know more about these black leaders in the time of slavery. That moves me in a very positive way, “he says.
Até a última gota de sangue, negros resistiram para alcançar a liberdade em um sistema, que celebra até hoje seus assassinos. As vozes na senzala e fora dela nunca esqueceram seus verdadeiros heróis, hoje vamos lembrar de dois líderes no RJ: Manoel Congo e Marianna Crioula pic.twitter.com/RW3HVIgl8k
— Ale Santos (@Savagefiction) 4 de dezembro de 2018
By 2019, Ale already has a contract with a publisher to launch his first book, which will be an adaptation of his Twitter threads. “I want to help, in some way, to rebuild the popular Brazilian stereotype on people of color, of Africa and all Africans in the diaspora, as well as exterminate the racist and Eurocentric imagination,” he concludes.