About the Book

 

Rob Gokee's book, In The Belly of the Fail Whale:How Twitter Changed My Life in One Year, gives an autobiographical perspective on Gokee's first year on Twitter from October 2008 to September 2009, dedicating a chapter to each month out of that year. Through very sarcastic and often distracted writing, Gokee provides an entertaining take on how crazy that year was and how Twitter played such a huge role in it.

October 2008

After quitting Twitter the first time without sending a single tweet, Rob decided that in order to get his name out to directors and producers looking for composers for their films. His main reason for using Twitter was to market himself and wanted to avoid it becoming a place with personal ties. October was his "feeling out" month of Twitter, getting used to it's nooks and crannies.

November 2008

In November, everything on Twitter was moving slowly, but that was expected from Gokee. He started searching for people who would maybe enjoy hearing what he would have to say and would be interested in his work. He would follow them and hope for a follow back so the prospective employers could learn of him. Gokee ended up following around 100 people by the end of November, but only a few of those 100 followed back. He knew that this was going to be harder than he thought.

December 2008

The month of December for Rob was very slow when it came to work and scoring movies. He used that down time to get more into Twitter and expand how much he tweeted. While sitting in for auditions for the upcoming movie 11:11 that he was scoring, he starting tweeting non-stop from his phone about the whole process. This attracted a few followers and he became more comfortable with Twitter in December.

January 2009

To start off 2009, Rob canceled his Facebook account. He wanted to avoid politics on Facebook since he tends to get quite heated in debates and was concerned that he was coming off the wrong way to people. He was slowly but surely gaining followers as he tweeted on location for "11:11". Everything else in general was "pretty slow" in January, although he did notice some things with his girlfriend were a little off, but he didn't think anything of it.

February 2009

Production started for "11:11" in early February and for once, Rob was very busy on set even though he was only doing the score for the movie. He was now the "official tweeter" for the movie, so whatever he found interesting about production he tweeted. This gained him numerous followers as they could see production of a movie through the words of someone right in set in real time. Tiresome 16-hour days were part of production and tweeting just added to the fatigue that Rob had accumulated during the month. He sensed things were even more off at home with his girlfriend, but he still couldn't put a finger on it. He soon figured out what was up in March though.

March 2009

While Twitter was going well for Rob, his relationship went exactly the opposite. He knew earlier that his girlfriend was going on a trip out of state to "get away". One morning he noticed that she had been talking to someone a lot on Twitter and that he lived in the same place that she was soon visiting.  He also saw that the phone bill, there were numerous calls from the same area code that the guy lived in. Finally, he found out what everyone had apparently already known, that she was leaving him with no warning. He went through his stages of grief, and in that same month he helped the ex-girlfriend move out of his apartment. This caused him to break his rule of professional only tweets and started tweeting about how he was feeling. To his surprise, he gained even more popularity. He found in March that just being yourself on Twitter does much more than trying to promote yourself directly.

April 2009

March faded into April for Rob as he was still feeling the burn of the end of his relationship ending so abruptly. He started drinking a lot and ended up on Twitter while drunk. His drunk tweets, to his fortune, ended up gaining him more and more followers. He once again found that being yourself was a big part of being successful on Twitter, and being drunk for him was being himself at that time. He also continued working on "11:11" on a daily basis, keeping busy whilst tweeting away.

May 2009

May was a bit of a turning point for Rob. He began to forget about the past couple months and started looking ahead. Searching more for job opportunities and writing music also. The biggest part about May for Rob was meeting Allie. She had been a follower of his for awhile and they started tweeting back and forth quite a bit in May. He began to fall for her quickly, and soon enough they went on a date. After the date went well, Rob decided to tell her his secret about already having two kids. After that, they stopped dating at that time and he thought he had definitely screwed up something great.

June 2009

In June, Rob really had thought that he had messed everything up with him and Allie. But one day, while they were tweeting with each other, she explained that she wasn't over him but didn't know what to do about it. He replied to that with a long personal message so that only she could see it and told her exactly what he wanted. She loved every word and they were immediately right back together after that. On Twitter, Rob described things as "moving like a snowball downhill". He was gathering followers left and right from his sarcastic tweets and really thought that everything was going up for him on Twitter.

July-September 2009

Through the last three months in Rob Gokee's story, his upward trend in life continued. He told Allie that he had fallen in love with her, and she reciprocated. His Twitter followers were growing at a steady pace, mostly because he continued to be himself, and also because of his tweeting while being on set for "11:11". He got closure with his ex-girlfriend while meeting to give her some things she had forgotten at his place, but he somehow got quite upset after this meeting. He went straight to Allie to talk about it, and within 5 minutes, he was completely fine. That's when he knew that she was the right one for him. Rolling into the last month of his story, Rob begins a joint project with Allie on a film and wraps up production on "11:11", and gains many more followers on Twitter, along with lifelong Twitter friends. He ends this story on a positive note, something everyone wants to see from an autobiography.