”Do this fast every day and you will soon be as fat as Jonsy”
Gitta Wilén · @gitta
Ur SSWC-boken 2010, s. 558–561 · Läs boken som PDF
When storytelling is not about having a total control of the story. When user friendly is about having fun. When interactivity is about creativity.
Last weekend I found this Mad Libs book at a flee market. It lets you fill in the blank words.
His name might be Klas, the guy who used to own this book. My guess is that he was about 12 years old and that he did spend a holiday together with his parents at the Holiday Inn by the Nags Head Beach, North Carolina, USA. The hotel address and telephone number is written on the cover.
I guess that his parents wanted him to study English during the trip and bought this book, where the trick was to fill in the missing words.
Klas realized really quickly that he could fill out the blanks with any word that he wanted, as long as it was an adjective, adverb or noun. And he got really creative.
Do not underestimate the power of letting the user being able to twist and tweak the story.
Fotnotlänk:
Wikipedia om Mad Libs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs
GITTA WILÉN — DÅ
Texten finns publicerad på: http://mysecondblackbook.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/%e2%80%9ddo-this-fast-every-day-and-you-will-soon-be-as-fat-as-jonsy%e2%80%9d/ http://korta.nu/sswc10_156
Jag, Gitta Wilén, är en webbveteran, nyamedierjournalist och socialamediergeek. Arbetar sedan drygt ett år tillbaka som digital storytelller och story DJ på Veidekke Bostad. Twitter: @gitta | Mejl: gitta@dataphone.se | Skriver också på: www.citizenmediawatch.com
GITTA WILÉN — IDAG
Efterforskat juli 2026 · AI-underlag med källänkar
Kvalitets- och kommunikationsstrateg, Tyréns AB
Webbveteranen som 2010 var digital storyteller på Veidekke Bostad arbetar sedan 2019 som kvalitets- och kommunikationsstrateg på samhällsbyggnadskonsulten Tyréns i Stockholm, med bland annat tillgänglighetssäkring av PDF:er som specialitet. Bakom sig har hon över 30 år av digital förändring — via bland annat gulasidorna.se, Icon Medialab Singapore, Aftonbladet.se och UR.
Brev från 2026
En AI har läst texten från 2010 och föreställer sig – varsamt och med glimten i ögat – hur Gitta Wilén kanske skulle svara idag. Det här är INTE Gitta Wiléns egna ord.
I still think about Klas sometimes. The boy who was handed a language exercise and turned it into a creative act, simply by refusing to fill in the expected words.
Reading my old text now, I realize I was writing about something much bigger than a flea-market find. The blank space turned out to be the most powerful part of the page. The web I knew in 2010 was already learning this — remixes, fan fiction, users twisting stories their own way — but the years since have taken it further than I could have imagined. Today, whole machines are built around the Mad Libs principle: you type a few words into a blank, and a story comes back. The prompt became a literary form. Klas, wherever he is, was ahead of us all.
So the advice holds, and I would only underline it harder now: do not underestimate the power of letting people twist and tweak the story. Control was never what made a story good. Play was.
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Drömmarna i den här texten
Let the reader twist the story
Slog inA flea-market Mad Libs book, a boy named Klas, and a principle that quietly conquered the internet: let people twist the story. From memes and fan fiction to the prompt box itself — typing a few words into a blank and getting a story back became the defining interface of the 2020s. Klas was simply early.
Källor: en.wikipedia.org
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