oulipo.txt

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/its-like-tweeting-but-you-cant-use-the-letter-e

Mastodon is a social platform on which folks "toot" back and forth, similar to  
that famous microblog host with a bird logo. But Mastodon allows customization  
by all who can author programs.                                                 
                                                                                
And computational wizards who build custom Mastodon parts stay surprising.      
                                                                                
Mous* R**v* has a day job writing programs for Int*rn*t Archiv*, built a        
Mastodon thing known as oulipo.social with a singular big law: Nobody may to    
print that most common symbol in today's writing, or "any variant of it, that   
is found in Latin script."                                                      
                                                                                
R**v* told of gaining inspiration from "A Void" by G*org*s P*r*ca. This         
lipogrammatic book shows all its ABCs, barring that common symbol. It follows   
a Fr*nch philosophy you call Oulipo, or a form of writing that combining maths  
and book writing.                                                               
                                                                                
Banning of this symbol is a famous constraint of Oulipo's: "It                  
limits writing without making it too hard," R**v* said. "You can still          
sound natural and say what you want to say, though you may think on it a bit    
in a way that you wouldn't without constraints." Such limitations push folks to 
think hard and originally about words to say.                                   
                                                                                
Its author didn't think oulipo.social would gain popularity — this got going    
as a way to display Ruby on Rails skills and work on making programs go — but   
oulipo.social has upwards of 100 accounts in its six days running so far.       
                                                                                
"It's a joy to watch folks do things I wouldn't think of—#drilipo, and          
applying oulipo constraints to famous writing and songs—and just chat about     
day to day stuff," R**v* said. "It's also gratifying that folks will look at    
oulipo.social and go on to think up constraints or gimmicks for additional      
variant Mastodons."                                                             
                                                                                
R**v* got back to my mail quickly, with almost 300 words and no display of the  
taboo symbol. I sought to do this manuscript within such limits, but quit too   
soon.