Introducing the 101-A-Tron

I sometimes run into people on Twitter who could use some basic information for various subjects. I usually end up either quoting people my consulting rate if they want more of my time or telling them to learn to use Google (or both), and while that saves me some energy, it doesn’t really…help much, beyond giving me an opportunity to reassert my boundaries around what is and is not my job on the internet.

And so I created a Twitter bot.

Here’s what it does:
Random person on twitter: “blah blah rape joke blah blah”
Random person #2: “@randomperson yo that is awesome, LOLZ”
Me: Hey, @101atron tell @randomperson about rape jokes and why they aren’t cool, please. cc @randomperson2
101atron: @q0rt @randomperson @randomperson2 http://bit.ly/S1g5nY

It’s a bot that looks for people tweeting at it using a certain pattern and keywords, and when it finds tweets that match that, it replies to all users included in the message with a link to a relevant article or website.

How To Use the 101-A-Tron:
at-reply to it, @101atron, using this pattern: “@101atron tell [username] about [keyword]”. You can put words in front of that pattern (as in my above example: “Hey, @101atron…”) and you can put words after it (eg: “…and why they aren’t cool, please.”). You can include multiple people, so long as their usernames come after the pattern (eg: “cc @randomperson2”). As far as the 101-A-Tron is concerned, it’s [noise][pattern][noise], so as long as you don’t mess up the pattern bit, it’ll work for you.

All of the keywords for the 101-A-Tron are kept here. Whenever I update the keyword list, I will have the 101-A-Tron announce it on Twitter.

This is not a comprehensive list of ANYTHING, EVER, it’s just stuff that I’ve found myself having to dig out and link to people over and over. There are entire swaths of activism and social justice and progressive stuff that are missing right now. While I hope this is a useful tool for many people, at the end of the day, it’s still my bot, and I’m not putting something in the keywords that I wouldn’t use. (Sorry to everyone getting ready to email me a bunch of men’s rights links.)

But! I absolutely don’t think that this collection of resources should be static. If you’re like, “oh I would love to be able to one-button link people to [awesome resource]”, or if I’ve overlooked some additional great information, or if it’d be way easier to have a certain keyword be phrased a little differently, please email me and let me know. Not because I think you have to or nuttin’, but if you want to, I am very excited to get those emails. Likewise, feel free to criticize gaps in my link set or call me out if I’m linking to bullshit, or …really, any and all feedback related to this project is welcome and appreciated.

(graphic by Sean MacEntee)