33 years to read 'Twilight'? This TikTok account isn't in a hurry.

NelsonG · December 29, 2021

Take a 15-year-old fandom, add in a heap of meme-based absurdist comedy, and place a 20-year-old who's never read the source material at the helm. That's Shaiann Alger's Twilight fan account.

Without being a part of Twilight fandom, knowing the inside jokes, major characters, or fun facts, Alger's created a landing space for its enthusiasts, and her profile is just the latest in successful "one-line-at-a-time" fandom accounts.

"I know, generally, it's about a vampire and werewolf, but I've never read it so I don't know the exact details of the story," she explained.

One-line-at-a-time accounts like Alger's use a pretty simple format. Pick a book, movie, or TV show, make an account on your favorite social media platform (usually Twitter or, now, TikTok), and start tweeting a single line, sentence, or quote at a similar time each day. Some accounts go chronologically through a screenplay or book, but others mix it up. Schedule the tweets to go up each day and boom! Instant community.

These accounts live at the intersection of two social media trends — daily out-of-context accounts that share images from the internet's favorite shows and movies, and repetitively reliable meme accounts that have turned social media posting into a precise, weekly formula. These accounts include the "Ladies and gentlemen, The Weekend" account that tweets a Daniel-Craig-hosting-SNL GIF every Friday, or the Russian Doll fan page that shares the same show image every Thursday.

For fans, one-line-at-a-time accounts serve as daily reminders of lifelong faves and yet another opportunity to commune with fellow obsessives, even as the source material ages and the fanbase dwindles. (Or maybe even convert some new fans).

After 400 days of posts to @new_poop15, Alger isn't even done with the first of Twilight's 25 chapters yet. (Her account's name is a play on words referencing New Moon, the second book in the Twilight franchise.) Alger was inspired by fellow TikTok accounts doing the same thing for other cult favorite books, like user @sillyspence, who was reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone one sentence at a time. Her mom also played a part. "I was talking about maybe watching the movie and she was like, 'Don't watch the movie. Just read the book. The movie was really bad.'"

As Alger can attest, one-line-at-a-time pages require consistency, tight schedules, and accuracy (the real fans know when you've missed a crucial sentence).

"I'm kind of retelling Twilight in this slightly twisted, slightly unique way."

Each of her videos, which have netted more than 29,000 followers and a collective 1 million likes, has a similar vibe. She introduces herself with a different meme-worthy name each day — "Hi. I'm the 50th Shade of Grey and this is day 390 of reading Twilight. One sentence at a time." — reads a single line, and then gives the viewers an analysis or prediction for the rest of the story. And the viewers in the comment section play right along, guessing with her in playful ignorance. "I wonder if bella will ever be done with lunch or if she'll just live in the cafeteria forever," user @captainmorgs commented on the video from Dec. 19. "Haven't checked in here in a while. Looks like we've made some progress. Very good," wrote user @amberandthings.

What keeps bringing me back is that for Alger, every sentence is a new, out-of-context piece of information. As a former Twihard and historical witness to the Twilight craze, it's startlingly fun to watch someone read the book with fresh eyes. Alger's account is like rediscovering a childhood favorite alongside thousands of friends. It's a community of people who love the humor of pretending to not know that Edward and Bella end up in eternal love together, and also a group who crave a kind of nostalgia only found in our favorite youth-related media. It helps, too, that the Twilight franchise has found a resurgence online in the last couple years.

And since she exists somewhere outside the fandom, Alger adds a refreshing spin to something that's already been consumed and reproduced over and over again. "I try to come up with funny commentary after reading the sentence. And I usually take things very literally. Like when Bella 'dropped her eyes'. She still hasn't picked them up. They're still on the floor," Alger said. "I definitely think, in a way, I'm kind of retelling Twilight in this slightly twisted, slightly unique way."

Similar one-line-at-a-time accounts have long taken over Twitter, including ones focused on the entire Twilight Saga. There are even separate script bots for each of the film adaptations — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn: Part 1, and Breaking Dawn: Part 2.

Popular bots also tweet multiple lines a day from the scripts of beloved, currently-running TV Shows like Ted Lasso and Succession. And the Lady Bird bot successfully tweeted every line from Greta Gerwig's award-winning 2017 dramedy in August 2018. The bot was still tweeting lines from the movie in March 2021.

Tweet may have been deleted

And social media is reinvigorating other old media, not just the meme-worthy. Take The Goldfinch bot, which posts a line from Donna Tartt's 2013 novel The Goldfinch every four hours. The book was adapted into a highly-anticipated film in 2019, the same year the Twitter account was created, and it's still trending among readers in TikTok's book community two years later.

In the same way The Goldfinch won't leave BookTok recommendations, the last year of online Discourse™ was a cycle of younger generations rediscovering art and media beloved by the rest of us for years. Annoying to some, it's a testament to the source material's longevity. Teens obsessed with the online "dark academia" trend are introducing each other to the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society and Tartt's other 1992 novel The Secret History — which is now the #9 most discussed book on Tumblr. LGBTQ kids are learning about cultural icons and discovering LGBTQ novels, like Madeline Miller's greek myth retelling The Song of Achilles, published 10 years ago. The intensely dedicated The Song of Achilles bot, posts a quote from the book every single hour and has 24,000 followers.

SEE ALSO: Is Gen Z bringing flip phones back?

Some of the creators who run these accounts become characters to obsess over themselves, especially in TikTok's universe — just ask the devoted dozen followers that interact with Alger's videos everyday.

"I really love the community of people that comment on my videos every day. It's always so fun to see what they have to say about the sentence or about whatever joke for an intro I made that day," Alger said. "It almost feels like they're all just doing the same joke along with me, instead of me doing a performance for a bunch of people."

The account's comment section, even on days when only those loyal few are in attendance, remains humorous, light, and positive — hate comments and trolls are rare. There's inside jokes, like the early Chevy truck "plot line" that dominated dozens of videos, the seven days Alger introduced herself as Beyoncé, or the running gag that she thinks Bella will end up with minor character Eric.

New fans are joining old fans as Alger reads us one line a day from Twilight, now a 16-year-old book series. "I think I picked one of the best books I could have done for the series, just because it's a book that everyone knows about. And like, people either really like it or really hate it. And I feel like my videos can capture both of those audiences," Alger said.

For some followers, her videos have also been constants in a time of uncertainty.

During the pandemic, knowing that someone would post a video everyday of something I was already familiar with was a mental comfort and a sense of minute control. Fans can rely on one-line-at-a-time accounts to offer the same brand of content everyday, about a topic they already love.

"Not all my videos will make it on the For You Page. So people are going out of their way to go to my channel and leave a comment, which is about the same amount of work I do for my videos every day," she said. "It always made me really happy to know that I was kind of helping them by just being some sort of anchor, some sort of thing that happens every single day."

Her followers have done the math — it'll take her 33 years to finish Twilight at the rate she's currently going. But most seem undeterred. The account will run until Alger decides it's over, or TikTok dies just like its predecessor Vine, or the world ends, whichever comes first.

"I plan on reading the entire book right now. Something might happen, like I might die, and then I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. But you know, assuming something like that doesn't happen in the next 30 years, I can see myself finishing it. I can see it just becoming a thing that I do every day," Alger said. I know, carrying on in my optimistic denial and fervent fandom, that I'll still be there on day 12,386.

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