With all the negative sentiment surrounding Twitter bots these days — and Twitter itself, for that matter — it’s worth highlighting some positive examples from the botsphere.
Twitter bots are nothing new. They’ve been fixture since the earliest days of the social network. But in recent months, they seem to have bubbled up from the public subconsciousness into the zeitgeist. Election meddling. Brexit. Mind manipulation. Twitter bots have acquired a bad rap — rightfully so in many cases — but with this increased awareness and interest in the botsphere, as well as the development of easy-to-use botmaking tools, creative and fun twitter bots abound along with the nefarious.
I limit the number of accounts I follow in my primary feed on Twitter. In my opinion, staying as close as you can to Dunbar’s number is a good rule of thumb. Still, I make room a number of bots within my self-imposed (and fairly flexible) Following limit. They add a bit of levity to my feed. Here are a few of my favorites.
I hope that Twitter’s recent crackdown on bots doesn’t cull the good, in an attempt to root out the bad. There is good yet in the botsphere.
Archive and Library Bots
@ArtBrowsing
Scanned books from the Smithsonian via the Internet Archive. Also, previously by @tinysubversions, @MuseumBot.
@youtubeartifact
Random YouTube image or video glitches every 3 hours
https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact/status/970433748570435586
https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact/status/968802990906896384
@MOMArobot
Random objects from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
@winampskins
WinAmp skins
@gifs_bot
Gif images from 1992 “Gifs Galore” CD.
@oldschoolflyers
Random flyers from hip hop’s formative years
@AnimalVidBot
Animal (mainly bird) videos sourced from @macaulaylibrary (defunct)
@HistoryPixs
Amazing pictures throughout history
https://twitter.com/HistoryPixs/status/968664810077478913
https://twitter.com/HistoryPixs/status/969200841893859328
@censusAmericans
Tweeting the census one real American at a time.
@wayback_exe
Generative Bots
@RadicalThinkerz
Generating book covers and titles in a specific left-wing intellectual style.
@ThinkpieceBot
A satire of millennial explain-pieces.
@StinkpieceBot
A malodorous parody of @ThinkpieceBot
https://twitter.com/StinkpieceBot/status/947173819453669376
https://twitter.com/StinkpieceBot/status/962892443539689472
@metropologeny
Cities, towns, villages, hamlets, conurbations, burghs, municipalities, metropoles https://twitter.com/metropologeny/status/971053664138924032
@UnchartedAtlas
An atlas of unknown lands
@softlandscapes
Soothing landscapes, every 6 hours. Similar: @_cavebot
@some_new_cities
Cities and their slogans from nearby sideways dimensions
@relativeprices
Comparing the relative price of things
@magicrealismbot
Magical realism plot elements
@FellasBot
Asking whether things are gay
@expandingbot
Blowing your mind with progressions of concepts. Uses abstraction chains from ConceptNet.
@mothgenerator
New javascript-generated moth species
Literary Bots
@WordsofMcCarthy
Words and scenes and dialogue of Cormac McCarthy. Every Day.
@DailyKerouac
Jack Kerouac. Daily.
https://twitter.com/DailyKerouac/status/970890925466636288
https://twitter.com/DailyKerouac/status/968173018093703169
Change-Tracking Bots
@nyt_diff
Bot that highlights the changes in the news on the main page of @nytimes. Plus, @NYT_said_where
@congressedits
Anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the US Congress.
https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/970776618410086400
https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/963837924273016834
Music Bots
@DailyPianoScale
Other Bots
@pentametron
https://twitter.com/dreyster97/status/971088305600131072
Botmaker Patreons
Many great botmakers accept donations via patreon and other platforms. I’d encourage everyone to send a donation their way. Pick your favorite. Support their others project. Small donations add up and also gives these individuals encouragement to keep creating interesting internet art.
Let me know if I should add any other bootmakers to the list, and I will. If you have a favorite Twitter bot not listed here, I’d love to check it out.
This post Fun Bots From The Botsphere 🤖 originally appeared on williamwickey.com.