Communications of the ACM
Twitter 'joke Bots' Shame Human Sense of Humor
Two newly developed Twitter bots generate phrases that are funny by virtue of not being particularly funny.
Credit: Comedy Central
Hackers Darius Kazemi and Joel McCoy have designed two Twitter bots that generate phrases that are funny by virtue of not being particularly funny, for the purpose of poking fun at human tweeters' own attempts at humor.
McCoy's @ilikelikeilike bot produces sayings such as "I like my lovers like I like my logic: odd, coherent, not elementary," while Kazemi's @amiritebot makes jokes like "New Music? More like Canoe Music, amirite?" "I'm interested in how people are often dumber and not funnier than computers," Kazemi says. "I throw these algorithms together in just a couple hours."
There have been some unexpected quirks in the Twitter bots' development, with Kazemi noting that his bots still manage to produce dirty jokes despite a list of offensive words that they are barred from using. McCoy believes automated joke machines could be used to comment critically on all kinds of content created by people, such as news headlines and elevator pitches.
"The general decline in voice and style makes it very easy to make something that at least in passing could plausibly be the thing that it purports to be," he says. "I think [bots] could be applied to making fun of how lazy so many things are."
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