During my latest trip to Istanbul, I had the pleasure of coming across the latest web phenomenon that every other Turkish girl is talking about: Pucca's Diary. It's raw. It's from the heart - more so, written off the top of a young woman's head. Pucca writes about her angst to find love. Nothing new you might think, but her tone and her writing voice is so strong, it makes everyone stop on their tracks. If you can't read Turkish, let me paint the picture for you: Think a young girl who's thinking and talking a mile a minute with slang, SMS shorthand and observations that every woman makes but no one dares to utter. Her chase for the neighbor's son, her competition with an Angeline Jolie-esque colleague to get the only decent looking boy in the office, her bitter break up with her less than handsome and intelligent boyfriend. It's all stories where readers can find a piece of themselves, giggle and tell their friends to check out.
In fact, that's why the blog has been so successful as a series of authentic drama. Pucca has more than 55,000 followers on Twitter. Her blog has been published as a book in June 2010. By December, it was in its 11th (!!!) print. And it's priced at 20 TL/ $13. For your information, that's very close to the cost of foreign classics whose price tag include import tax. It's not so cheap considering the Turkish book market or what the local publishers coin as 'laptop books.' Go girl!
Authenticity is a much frequently used buzz word in social media circles. While we craft ePR messages, maybe we should first jot down what we really mean and want to say and then dare to publish it. Edits, reviews, 'multiple cooks in the kitchen' sometimes boil tweets and blog posts down to, well, water. If you know your audience, if you know what they want to hear and how they talk, you should write in freestyle like Pucca.
8 comments:
I heart her book, she is the funniest and the most honest person I've ever seen!
i hate pucca, she's such an idiot. also she's the most bitchy girl i've ever known. she's a pychopath.
I think he is less than handsome boyfriend.
She welcomes my everyday by her smile from strong sentences... even when she express her hate :) So glad to find her on Twitter. I really love her, I mean that!
The success of the mentioned one is mainly related to overestimated position of the turkish women in society and culture. Different than the western cultures,unfair and overestimated value of the turkish women,who have forgotten their eastern backround,led to halluciniatons in their daily life. As all we know, eastern roots and the culture given by the family could not be change entirely. However,the girls in the Turkish culture are trying to live like an western counterparts, while they are trying to that they are aliented from who they are. And they are forgetting the truth that being and thinking like a western women needs to have intellectual ability and thinking. Expressing the sexual openness and the easy talking about sex are making them just like an redlight girls, who have more intellectual capacity then pucca and pucca's alikes in Turkish society and have to do just their jobs for money .
And ıf we look at the popularity and the follower numbers, they are misleading the truth. Because the average Turkish men can not talk with their girlfriends and wives about sex. But the Puccas authenticity of independence of talking everything about sex as obscuring her face from everyone, probably she is uggly , causes to beleive turkish men, who is bored of their wives and wives’ families, to have hope about loosing their routin with the girls and wives.
At last,Poor intellctualy ability and lack of genuine thoughts of Turkish culture promotes the heros like pucca and its alikes in Turkey. They can not be westerner at the end while behaving like an westerner. They are cought in the middle of western and eastern culture and living in a pathetic life. It is not hard to find supporters and fans in the Turkish Culture if you emphasize womens ability to talk about sex and having sex easly than the religious Turkish girl, who are the majorities in the population. Hence, pls do not express Pucca as a success because If you put her in the NY or London, where the contemporary success of literature and online culture exist, whatever you mean it,her wrightings and even thoughts would be just an 14 years old girl.
Ingilizce bilmeyen arkadaslar niye ingilizce yazicam diye kasiyorsunuz acaba :) Pucca is the girl inside each one of us, that we are afraid to show of.. she has the balls to speak out for us hehe
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