Full marks to Rob Manuel for creating Clickbait Robot, a Twitter bot that turns trending topics into ridiculous ‘viral content’ ideas. Imagine if BuzzFeed or ViralNova ran on autopilot and you’ll get the idea.
Part parody, part idea generator, it’s pumping out a steady stream of tweets every hour. It’s produced some real gems.
Sometimes they could actually be real articles:
21 Things You'll Be Secretly Aroused By If You Enjoy New Star Wars #NewStarWars pic.twitter.com/WXERr9VWVb
— Clickbait Robot (@clickbaitrobot) November 6, 2015
Sometimes they’re delightfully nonsensical:
This Brandon Barker Video Proves You've Been Peeling Christmas pudding Wrong Your Whole … #BrandonBarker pic.twitter.com/FCRhvrg3Ap
— Clickbait Robot (@clickbaitrobot) November 6, 2015
A Man Tries To Kiss Easyjet Egypt. First You'll Be Shocked, Then You'll Be Inspired #EasyjetEgypt pic.twitter.com/mCcp2n3F0c
— Clickbait Robot (@clickbaitrobot) November 6, 2015
And sometimes you can see how this bot could really upset people by tweeting something insensitive during a time of crisis:
23 Life Changing Twitterbots That Will Never Be Explained By Charlie Hebdo #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/GdWZgLc7Nz
— Clickbait Robot (@clickbaitrobot) November 6, 2015
Manuel told Quirker that the bot is a Python script running on his desktop computer, and could be expanded into an entirely automated clickbait machine in the future; “I could extend it to try and make the articles it clickbaits – if I can be bothered.. Tricky though – but almost doable.”
Even if Manuel doesn’t get around to it, I’m sure someone somewhere is working on that nightmare vision of the future of ‘content.’
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