Poetry of Twitter Spam, Redux

Nov 3, 2011 · 1 minute read

A while ago, I wrote about the poetry of Twitter spam, where a particular spam-bot was generating an odd series of tweets that, strung together, looked like bad teenage poetry.

That was two years ago. Technology has advanced. Neven Mrgan points to @horse_ebooks as an example of how Twitter spam-bots are now producing profoundly entertaining non-sequiturs that could be some of the most entertaining stuff found on the internet. In fact, some of these are so perfectly crafted I’m having trouble believing that it isn’t actually a person pretending to be a spam-bot.

Some of my favourites from @Horse_ebooks:

“OBSESSED WITH GAMBLING”

“1 2 You can use the power of your mind to find a shiny, cool car hidden in a paper bag. Your incredible mental powers”

“The difficulty of seeing with very large instruments”

“It s a FACT - Most Doctors, Nutrition Experts , Celebrity Chefs and Best Selling Authors are DEAD”

I’m wondering what linking to a known spam account will do for what little Google-juice I have - whether Google is going to push me further down its search listings. But honestly, I’ve enjoyed these tweets so much, I don’t care. It’s totally worth it.