Twitter bot mockery FTW.


A good friend and Loyal Reader™ linked me to this Twitter feed, with the comment “I swear you’re behind this.” It’s generated by a bot (named Joel Dongsteen) that replaces the word “God” with “your dick” in the tweets of the insufferable pastor Joel Osteen. Much hilarity ensues.

Hahaha. Awesome.

While I am deeply flattered by my friend’s complimentary* comparison to the fine work of Mr. Dongsteen, I never in a million years would have done this. I would have replaced “God” with “your vagina.”

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*A psychologist once taught me to take anything as a compliment if it can be reasonably construed that way. Depression-prone veterans of cognitive therapy will recognize this tactic as an antidote to taking everything—literally everything—as a validation of our worst and most irrational convictions about ourselves. But then I thought, why stop there? Instead of simply negating those persistent negative thoughts with reality-based assessments, why not take everything as a compliment that can possibly be construed that way, even unreasonably? I mean, if unreasonable interpretations of everyday messages and events are a core part of the depressive psyche, why can’t they be a really fun part of the cure? In any case, it’s very satisfying to deliberately react with ostentatious gratitude to intentional insults lobbed in your direction; you feel great, and it confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Comments

  1. yaque says

    Yeah. I’ve never understood why “fuck you” is an insult. It should be like

    “Fuck you mister!”
    “Why, thank you sir! And may you have a pleasant evening yourself!”

  2. cmutter says

    I don’t see how it would be possible to take the comparison as an insult. Dick jokes have a long, proud history as a comedic art form, and these are pretty good. Now I’m annoyed that robots are taking our dick-joke-writing jobs.