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The Ballad of @Horse_ebooks
How a Twitter spambot accidentally started writing poetry, gained an internet following, and what it says about us.
Of the accounts that follow me on Twitter, half are spambots. About 15% are companies or organizations whose social media interns found me on a list somewhere, and another 15% are something in between: not definitely bots, but not exactly humans. Whatever they are, they're not "listening" in any meaningful sense. Among the remaining group are some people I like, some people I like a lot, some people I don't know, and a bunch of technology PR professionals who don't really have a choice.
My "Follow" list, in contrast, is cultivated with great care — it’s almost exclusively people I think are funny. But the funniest account I follow doesn’t belong to a comedian. It isn’t a parody account and it doesn’t tell jokes. It’s a spam bot that sells shitty ebooks about horses, and it might be the best Twitter account that has ever existed.
Full essay (lengthy -- ~2,500 words): http://splitsider.com/2012/01/the-ballad-of-horse_ebooks
My "Follow" list, in contrast, is cultivated with great care — it’s almost exclusively people I think are funny. But the funniest account I follow doesn’t belong to a comedian. It isn’t a parody account and it doesn’t tell jokes. It’s a spam bot that sells shitty ebooks about horses, and it might be the best Twitter account that has ever existed.
Full essay (lengthy -- ~2,500 words): http://splitsider.com/2012/01/the-ballad-of-horse_ebooks