Exterminate all rational bots.

rep.licants.org, a virtual prosthesis for the online introvert

rep.licants.org allows people to install a bot on their Facebook and/or Twitter account. The bot will combine the activity the user is already having on other channels such as youtube or flickr with a set of keywords selected by the user to attempt and simulate that person's activity, feeding their account with more frequent updates, engaging in discussions with other users and adding new people to their list of contacts.

[...] However a lot of user are digitally shy, introvert, etc. The bot has been programmed to be extrovert so it doesn't worry about posting ridiculous or interesting contents, contacting users that it doesn't know or contacting users that you wouldn't dare to contact. All those things put together will help the user keep an activity on social networks which make them visible to the others. That is why i like to compare the bot as a virtual prosthesis for introvert users.

I'm happy with the feedback of the users, some really interesting things happened which i couldn't have imagined. For example, one of the users couldn't recall if it was him or the bot who was posting messages; another began to interact with his own bot.

Also, when you've died at home and are being eaten by your cats, nobody will know, because you're still posting to Facebook! Bonus!

Actually I can't tell if this is doing anything more than running DadaDodo or Eliza on your past postings. But I do like the idea of it. I've read many books where having your voicemail system grow into a digital agent that simulates you on the phone is the shallow end of the slippery slope leading to consciousness uploading and subsequent machine apocalypse.

And who doesn't love a good machine apocalypse.


Update: Rob Beschizza tried it and it doesn't actually do anything interesting. He says, "What it actually does is this: send vague and overly familiar tweets @ people you follow. Neat!"

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6 Responses:

  1. Art Delano says:

    Thanks to rep.licants.org, I'm my own Mary Sue!

  2. piku says:

    Excellent, so eventually Facebook and Twitter will consist of nothing but bots talking to each other.

    It sounds like the social networking equivalent of those auto generated websites full of aggregated content from other sites. You know, that thing that was popular in 2006 when people aspired to be "professional bloggers" by reposting junk to be noticed.

  3. DFB says:

    The stock market is already about 73% bots so why not everything else. Let the computers argue it all out, I have better things to do. If only they would get it right instead of get what corporations want to pay for.

  4. LionsPhil says:

    This sounds like someone who said "you know, the one thing wrong with the web is the signal-to-noise ratio is just too high".

  5. pavel_lishin says:

    If any of my friends use this without me noticing, I'm not sure we're friends anymore.