These two bots are based on the concept of snowclones, which are a linguistic phenomenon best described by Erin O’Connor in her wonderful blog and resource “The Snowclones Database.”
A snowclone is a particular kind of cliche, popularly originated by Geoff Pullum. The name comes from Dr. Pullum’s much-maligned “If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z”. An easier example might be “X is the new Y.” The short definition of this neologism might be n. fill-in-the-blank headline.
Fill in the blank mnemonic phrases? This is ripe for a bot treatment.
This bot was inspired by Darius Kazemi’s “Metaphor-a-Minute!” bot and it basically uses the snowclones from O’Connor’s database and combines them with words randomly pulled from Wordnik, an online dictionary and language service. Because there are so many possible combinations of templates and words– astronomical figures, really– the bot tweets a generated snowclone every two minutes.
bankability-a-holic
— Snowclone-a-Minute (@snowcloneminute) June 16, 2014
If Eskimos have 267 words for snow, Cabiri must have 295 words for troublemakers
— Snowclone-a-Minute (@snowcloneminute) June 16, 2014
The results are often funny and surprising, but because it tweets every two minutes, it has a way of dominating your Twitter stream. I like to follow it for short periods of time, visit its timeline, or enjoy its output when retweeted by a person or bot.
This bot tweets every two hours an exploration of a snowclone joke described as “Every noun is an adjective noun under certain conditions.” Rather than pulling from Wordnik or some other online dictionary, the program draws from Twitter itself, as Parrish describes in this blog entry:
The bot works by first searching Twitter for tweets containing a phrase in the format “this isn’t a(n) {ADJECTIVE} {NOUN}” and then using a Pattern search to identify and extract the ADJECTIVE and NOUN. It then searches Twitter for phrases that match the string “{NOUN} if” (and “{NOUN} unless”, “{NOUN} as long as”, etc.), and extracts the rest of the clause following the “if.” (There’s some more NLP behind the scenes to ensure that the “if” clause will fit the joke syntax.) Then it jams the NOUN, ADJECTIVE and subordinate clause into the format of the joke and tweets it out to the world.
The bot links to the source tweets in its tweet, allowing the reader to follow the tweets and enjoy them individually or juxtaposed. The results are very readable, and are frequently funny because they offer strangely logical propositions.
Every surprise is a big surprise if it was sabotage https://t.co/XCtfpRCvEZ https://t.co/58V1m27ny7
— Pizza Clones (@pizzaclones) June 18, 2014
Every time is a good time as long as it's today https://t.co/9rlCD1yrc5 https://t.co/t3YqF0GIbL
— Pizza Clones (@pizzaclones) June 17, 2014
Both of these snowclone-inspired bots offer endless explorations of a catchy concept captured in memorable language. Snowclones remind us of the power of orality that is still present in our culture, even as it shifts from traditional print-based literacy into an increasingly computational, digital, code literacy.
Featured in Genre: Bot