Moment of Twitter zen: people arguing with typo-correction bot

If you like to laugh at other people's textual foibles, @StealthMountain on Twitter is for you. (via Jon Tennant)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Grey Devil

Comedy gold.
- http://twitter.com/TruthByTrial TruthByTrial
  
  I also laughed for the first few, but then I got sad.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YO27RCRORLE66EJXIZU27VSQTU Mulayim

Did you notice almost all of the victims are black?
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  I did.
- http://twitter.com/Rad_Hall Rad Hall
  
  Victims? Perpetrators…
patrace

Not all of them, I present Rhode Island Senator, Jack Reed -
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Also one of the very few reasonable and non-furious responses.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YO27RCRORLE66EJXIZU27VSQTU Mulayim
  
  At least he was a good sport.
- Joseph Ware
  
  He is the only one that I saw that understood it was from a bot.
- corydodt
  
  Democrats have a sense of humor.
mccrum

I eagerly await the day when Twitter is only filled with typo correction bots, programmed by people who cannot spell, each correcting each other until the ultimate fail whale comes. (I think you mean “fale wail.”)
Brainspore

So that’s the guy who keeps butting in every time I mention my secret hilltop lair.
Christopher Friend

Oh dear god please someone start a “sneak peak” bot to auto correct sneek peak’s sneek peeks to “sneak peak” and the recursive lulz may begin….
EeyoreX

It makes an interesting read because the reactions seem to vary a lot depending on what the respondents’s general attitude toward Twitter is. Those who don’t view twitter as a public forum tend to see the correction as an invasion of their privacy, even though they put their stuff out there acessable to all the world.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  It is troubling how many of the replies indicate that someone they don’t know tweeting them is some kind of violation.
- http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski
  
  I think you meant “accessible”
  - Ipo
    
    Damned bot.
Daneel

What happens if I set up my own bot to automatically reply saying that I definitely meant sneak peak?
- http://www.raines.com/ raines
  
  we end up here rather quickly: http://www.endoftheinternet.com/
Glippiglop

Damn, I really wanted this to be a complete grammar nazi bot that would continue the conversation if the person responded with more spelling mistakes. That type of design makes troll bots excel at what they do.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

My favourite was “How bout you get the fuck off my tweets! #dontgiveafuckchuck”

It’s brilliant because of at least 2 reasons:

1) “Get off my Tweets!” is simply an awesome phrase. We may be witnessing the early uses of the internet communities ‘Get off my lawn!’, or more to my taste, ‘Get ouf ma land!’.

2) They clearly do give a fuck.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Actually this might be my favourite:
  
  [EDIT: Even better if you view the original message: https://twitter.com/iLoveMusic_AL/status/226855980015681536
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Wouldn’t “Get off my tweets” be a variants of “Get off my tits”?
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    Is that something you hear often?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/get+on+tits
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        Well if you go and say it wrong…
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        I see it all the time.
  - McGreens
    
    You make a very good point. Although I use “getting on my tits” I’ve never thought to tell someone to get *off* my tits.
    
    Aaaand now I want to know the etymology…
http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

Pardon me while I wander off to create a twitterbot that whines about twitterbots that use inch marks in place of quotation marks.
- Ipo
  
  „Quotation marks“ Nazi bot.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=713743906 Marc Caldwell

the homophobia in the sampled response, pictured above, is also hi-phucking-larious as well…
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  There are much worse examples too. There’s a definite correlation between vocabulary and bigotry. Read into that what you will.
- Brainspore
  
  They seem outwardly homophobic, and yet so many request the (apparently male?) spambot to suck their dicks. Talk about mixed messages!
Gabriel Morgan

What about the guy who writes ‘sneak peak’, get abusive, but uses ‘whom’ correctly?
- Ipo
  
  “wtf? fake ass page, get a life whom ever this is !”
  Correctly? Really?
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    It’s a shame because, “Hark! This page is fraudulent; whomever this is, please reconsider your life choices.” would have been an awesome reply.
    - Ipo
      
      It would have been. Besides “whomever” still being wrong.
      “Whom is getting a life? Him, who it is.”
      “Who is getting a life? He who is getting a life.”
      Which one sounds right?
      I am, generally speaking, bad with rules, so I can’t say why.
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        Darn, you could well be right. However given that ‘Whomever’ is the subject of ‘this is’ I believe my usage to be correct – not that I’d like to bet on it – I dunno.
        
        [EDIT Even after checking I'm still not sure, English is so intuitive]
      - http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski
        
        It would be correct if you wrote “to whomever this is: please consider your life choices.” Whom and it’s variants are the accusative and dative inflection of who. That means if it is the subject of the sentence, it can never be whom. Only if it is grammatically a dative or accusative object can there be whom.
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        It’s so obvious when you put it like that.
        
        Wait, what?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Who = subject.
        Whom = object.
        “Who gets a life”, not “whom gets a life.”
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        Thanks :)
http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

It’s always refreshing to see how much fucking, dick sucking, ass sucking and various orifice pleasing behaviour is present on a social network. It must be working to bring people together as promised!

And so many people express a deep affection for mothers which is just precious.
Jellodyne

I like the word peak. I like to sneak peak into phrases, even if it doesn’t necessarily belong. I just gave you a little preview of what that would look like.
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

Brings back memories of when somebody who was not very tech literate got subscribed to a tech oriented mailing list which I was on, probably by a troll. We got a torrent of abuse from him and quietly unsubscribed him.

And BTW the solution to all these bots around the place may be to enforce a four year lifespan. I am sure that will go well.
crenquis

“He” has an accomplice:

SneakPeak RT

@SneakPeakRT

https://twitter.com/SneakPeakRT

I retweet the people who don’t understand @StealthMountain.

Stealth Mountain
destroy_all_humans

now i see the point in twitter
http://twitter.com/imstillsimon Simon Briggs

See also: http://twitter.com/YourInAmerica
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  ‘If your in America and you cant speak English plz leave #thankyou’
  
  ‘See you on the way out, it’s “you’re.”‘
  
  LOL. Bookmarked.
http://www.facebook.com/the.zach.wagner Zach Wagner

I never get a sneak peek at anything…
unsanityzombietron

i got a sneak peek once…