10 / I made a bot
(Or to be more precise, I paid my friend to make a bot for me.)
My friend made a Twitter bot for me. Bots on Twitter are automated Twitter accounts that can autonomously tweet, retweet, follow, etc. Twitter bots came into public consciousness during the 2016 election for tricking innocent people into voting for Trump, but bots can do a lot of things. There's a bot (@tinycarebot) that reminds you to do little acts of self-care like drink water or straighten your posture, which I followed for a while, but found to be more scolding than motivating, ultimately becoming background din reminding me of my personal failings :/ It's like how I wrote down "posture!" on a sticky note and instead of fixing my posture I am now just always a tiny bit aware of how my posture is bad.
Another bot (@everywordisgay) just tweets every word in the dictionary preceded by "gay," which is mostly uneventful until it's not.
Personal Twitter bots are bots that basically recombine and spit out language from your tweets. They require a knowledge of coding, which I do not have, despite all the times I've told people I'm a "woman in STEM" (a lie), so when my friend Deanna Arthur was making them for 10 bucks a pop, I was like okay let's do it.
It's been richly rewarding. My bot doesn't come up with any new language of its own, so instead it just refracts my own writing back to me. Because syntax is hard to parse and program, the bot often doesn't totally make syntactic sense.
Sometimes the removal of context actually makes for better, more interesting work — a lesson that sometimes we overspeak, a testament to the poetry of removal. "The phrase kingdom come?" is more interesting as a question than any answer could be. The original tweet that the bot is borrowing from reads:
"ok the phrase "kingdom come"? extremely evocative, powerful AND erotic"
which is actually not as good as just asking the question "the phrase kingdom come?" itself. Twitter has always been about the power of brevity, after all.
Recently, my bot tweeted this:
I was like.......... whatever you say. There's something so authoritative and prophetic about this. Even though the source of this is purely algorithmic and random, the fact that it's coming from a bot makes it feel wiser, connected to a deeper sort of knowledge. Like, I guess the railroad is where I'm supposed to be celebrating, if that's what the computer says. After all, computer knows everything. Again, the original tweet has an entirely different tone. The mystique is gone.
I also don't know how the bot turned "going down to the railroad" (personal statement) to the imperative: "Go to the railroad." That's the magic of the algorithm, babe.
Sometimes, the bot doesn't feel like a wise, all-knowing computer, but instead like a child learning to speak. Here is when my bot first learned about gay people <3 VERY relatable
Sometimes my bot is an activist, which makes me immensely proud.
To be honest, few people are really willing to acknowledge the weight of the "poly" community, so that acknowledgement alone has tremendous radical potential.
This one is crazy because making the bot did actually cost $10. self-aware queen
Ultimately it only took my bot a day to become a capitalist :(
The ultimate, maybe obvious thesis here, is that every Twitter account is already in some senses a bot already. Having an online brand or persona means having a limited (albeit flexible) bank of topics that you recombine ad infinitum. Just as "chunk bot" can't come up with any actually novel language, I too am limited, both by what I'm exposed to (like I've lived a certain life and can only write from my own experiences blah blah blah) but also by what I know will be successful. There are certain personal or political ideas I have that I won't share on Twitter, because I know they won't resonate, so I'd rather stick to my set of topics: numbers, gay language, New York City, being sad and anxious and obsessive, etc. The act of making a bot suggests that my brand/persona can live outside me and exist without my agency—that my body of written work can be automated. Having a Twitter bot is just one degree of abstraction beyond than having a Twitter account. Maybe I'll make a bot for my bot, and a bot for my bot's bot, until the chain of automation just spits out all the individual words I use, devoid of any context. Being online sometimes feels like being a word cloud.
SHOWS
WEDNESDAYS ALL MONTH (November 6, 13, 20, 27) / 8pm – August Exploration (Jones Beach Bushwick)
Do I even have to say it...... my favorite day of the week, every week. Come to this! Natalie and I have so much fun every time, show is free drinks are cheap, we book comedians really really well not to brag but it's true.
November 2 / 10pm – That Shit Ray (Union Hall – $8)
This show is tonight (sorry for late notice that is on me) but it'll be so so good. Union Hall is the best place to perform and see comedy in New York in my humble opinion, and this lineup is really sensational. First of all it has me (I am good), but then also Megan Stalter (famous I would argue) and Celeste Yim (so funny and also smart and also a new friend). come!
November 7 / 8pm – Petting Zoo (Vital Joint – $10)
A stand-up show with a live animal handler........... I love snakes god knows what I'm going to do.
November 8 / 7pm – Our Queer Saints (The Footlight – $5)
A show where comedians argue for certain people to be vaunted as icons in the queer canon. I have so many ideas for this I really don't know what to do......................
November 9 / 6pm – Character Bash (The Magnet – $7)
A character showcase..... again I have too many ideas and I don't know what I'm going to do........... I guess I have a lot of work to do this week :)
November 13 / 9pm – Easy Lover Show (Easy Lover)
Okay I forgot the name of this show but it's at Easy Lover in Williamsburg at 9pm. Felt important to let you guys know <3 What is so cool about my location being so public all the time is that it would be very easy to stalk and kill me :) don't though
November 16 / Midnight – Sketch Cram (UCB Hells Kitchen – $10)
If you can even believe it, I'm doing a "sketch cram" with UCB where I write sketches from 9pm-midnight that then get performed. I may finally try to put my signature "world where everyone's keys are huge" idea to paper.
November 21 / 8pm – Extreme Zone (Vital Joint – Free)
On this stupidly fun show hosted by my friends. I love it so much please come we'll hang out after I PROMISE
November 23 / 7pm? I'm performing at Wesleyan
Do you go to Wesleyan????? Well guess what. I am being PAID money to PERFORM a HALF HOUR OF COMEDY at WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY on November 23!!!! this is actually a huge career thing for me that I'm really happy about. If you go to a school and want me to perform please reach out !!! I love performing for college kids. I'm NOT like Seinfeld or Chris Rock who complains about college kids I LOVE it!!
SHOWS I'M NOT ON :( THAT YOU SHOULD STILL SEE :)
November 4 / 7pm – Max Wittert: Portrait of the Artist Seated With Grapes (Union Hall – $8)
Holy shit. This show this show this show. Cannot recommend anything more highly. Max is an acclaimed illustrator and in this show he performs with his illustrations and it's SO brilliant. Truly a superlative show. He has a bit about anxiety that has stuck with me since I first saw the show over a month ago. Max is brilliant, this show is brilliant, go go go!
November 22 / 10pm – Thanks But No Thanksgiving (Union Hall – $8)
Dash, Brian, and Tai are all so funny, and every Thankgiving host an amazing anti-Thanksgiving show – I went last year and it was amazing. They are native and they will drag you which is awesome :)