One of the strangest experiences you can have on Twitter is to be retweeted by a Bot.
Retweet Bots are scripts that search Twitter for tweets that mention a certain word or phrase and then automatically retweet them. From movie phrases to foodstuffs, mention a keyword that a Bot is searching for and you might end up getting retweeted. Some bots take a different approach and reply to you with catchphrases.
Whether it’s a retweet or an auto-reply, Bots can be an annoying. Twitter is all about personal interaction. When automated accounts start contacting you it can feel like you’ve been violated in some way.
Searching Twitter for “Retweeted by a bot” reveals a trail of annoyed bot ‘victims’. It also reveals some of the strange bots that are out there, working 24-7 to pointlessly repeat what you say. Here are some of the best we’ve found:
Fanbots
TX Rangers – This Bot is an avid Texas Rangers fan and will retweet mentions of the team.
Bring Back Kyle – Kyle Sandilands was host of Australian Idol from 2005 until last week when he was sacked. This Bot retweets anyone who wants him reinstated.
EgyTweets – A Bot obsessed with Egypt. Retweets mentions of the country. Interestingly, this one has SMS-style ‘START’ and ‘STOP” commands to control whether or not it retweets you (see the profile’s Bio).
A bit of fun
Drunk_Bot – Mention being drunk and you might get retweeted by this alcohol-obsessed Bot.
The Dream Stream – Retweets your dreams.
Film Tributes - these movie-inspired Bots don’t retweet, they reply to you with a catchphrase.
doc__brown – Mention the word “Roads” and chances are this Back To The Future inspired Bot will reply “Roads? where we’re going we don’t need roads”.
obiwankenobi_ – Innocently mention the “Moon” and Obi Wan Kenobi may well get in touch to utter the immortal line from Star Wars, “That’s no moon. It’s a space station.”
DarthVader_ – If you prefer to embrace the Dark Side of The Force, the Star Wars villain is on hand. If you mention “losing faith” you might well hear from him saying “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Semi-useful
Twitt3rGeek – This Bot retweets anyone who links to anything relating to Twitter. This may actually be useful to some people looking for the latest Twitter news. That said, it’s bound to retweet some rubbish too. FacebookGeek does a similar thing for Facebook.
Opportunitweets – Looking for an opportunity? This Bot retweets them. There are some irrelevant and spammy tweets in there, but you may just find something useful.
Why did they bother?
Watson_MD – Mention Sherlock Holmes and the Twitter incarnation of his faithful assistant Watson will retweet you. For no particular reason.
AllTheCheeses – Retweets people who mention anything to do with cheese. Again, why? We can only assume it was set set up as some sort of excercise for a trainee programmer – or by someone who really likes cheese. A similar Bot (which seems to have disappeared now) used to retweet any mention of bacon.
Any more?
Have you been retweeted by any other strange Bots out there? Let us know by leaving a comment.
Nice post!
I got a RT from @AllTheSausages the other day!
It was the first time i’d encountered a RT Bot, so I was slightly confused for a moment until I realised what it was.
once i got an RT from @watch_you_mouth or something like that for writing “sh*t” in a tweet O.o
Have two experiences with some useful (Dutch) RT bots.
When I asked a question once I got retweeted by ‘hulpgezocht’ (help wanted). And some months ago when I was between jobs and tweeted about that I was retweetd by a bot that did nothing else but RT people that were looking for a job in The Netherlands.
Didnt’ get me a job though, found that the ‘usual’ way.
I run a little twitter experiment at http://all-sorts.org which picks up any tweets using the #collectivenouns hashtag. If it can find a phrase of the form: ‘a bunch of somethings’, then the collective noun is added to the database. If people ReTweet a collective noun, it counts as a vote, so the most popular suggestions bubble up to the top.
I have sometimes thought about creating a bot, which automatically retweets the #collectivenouns, but I’m not sure that it would add much. What do you think?
Tweetshelp retweets people that seek for help :-)
I made a bot called playTweets (http://twitter.com/playTweets) a while back that retweets MP3 links (or links to pages containing mp3s) from followers. It’s designed to work in conjunction with playTwitter (http://gonze.com/playtwitter) so you can stream songs directly from your Twitter stream.
Have you come across any automation that thanks people for retweeting one of your tweets?
I have also encountered some strange bots. shutupmeg was my first. If your tweet contains ‘shut up’ you’ll be retweeted by this meg from family guy avatar. I’ve also experinced the drunk retweeter you’ve mentioned. Also ballinbitch retweets tweets that contain the word ballin. useless. Swearjar retweets cursewords.
There is also a “gracias” bot in the twitterverse. The bots are silly though, because seriously who follows them? Other bots?
GUAM
The funniest is the bot at http://www.twitter.com/firefoxsux
He retweets when any user has a bad experience with firefox.
He also replies if you say anything to him.
I tied together some words “Get help if ur losing faith because of drunk moon roads, gracias.” we’ll see
Maggie Thatcher related tweets from http://www.twitter.com/thatcherbot and one that must confuse the Bieber teen fans which RTs with the phrase “Bieber likes cheese” – http://www.twitter.com/bieberandcheese (which I think is related to http://www.twitter.com/edam_cheese )
The twitter owl. Rt’s the word “hoot” and replaces it with “#hoot”. seems to be pretty popular among the younger crowd. the bio says the Rt’s are automated but the @’s are a real person. pretty cool idea.
http://twitter.com/tweet_hoot
theres a bot that retweets anything tagged with #toronto