Horse_ebooks Is Human After All

Am I alone in being slightly disappointed to discover that Horse_ebooks is not a robot?<p>I&#x27;ve had to conduct a mini-self analysis on this news, as I find myself disappointed. Why?<p>All I can come up with is that I found joy in the befuddlement caused by my brain trying to make sense of the non-sensicle almost-marketing speak. The fact that it was (supposedly) accidental somehow added to the joy. But I can&#x27;t think of a good reason why. Was it that I thought some spammer was wasting clock-cycles making me laugh rather than selling me viagra?<p>It reminded me of Steven Frank&#x27;s &quot;Spamusement!&quot; (which I also found very funny back in the days of email.)<p><a href="http://spamusement.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spamusement.com</a><p>And Panic&#x27;s love of Horse_ebooks is where I first learned of it.<p>EDIT: I&#x27;ve just been back to spamusement.com and, yes, it is still really funny. DO NOT start looking unless you have half an hour to waste!

If anyone is interested in running an _ebooks account of their own, Jacob Harris of the New York Times wrote a Ruby library called iron_ebooks[1] which does just that. Using iron_ebooks, Harris has two accounts: @harrisj_ebooks, which uses his main twitter handle (@harrisj) as an input, and @harrisj_ebooks2 which uses @harrisj_ebooks as its input. The generated tweets have actually been pretty funny and well done.<p>Also, iron_ebooks uses Iron.io, so you get all the fun of an _ebooks account with all the &quot;serverless&quot; greatness of IronWorker.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/harrisj/iron_ebooks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;harrisj&#x2F;iron_ebooks</a>

@Horse_ebooks is (was?) an excellent piece of performance art. I think the modern audience still has a sense of wonderment when it comes to the computer-generated (as though it is the computer itself doing the generating and not really the programmer who wrote the algorithm). People were willing to believe that &quot;computers&quot; were at the point where they could create consistently hilarious phrases, and are disappointed (and even outraged) today when they find that we&#x27;re not there yet. The artists have imparted the audience with a sense of disillusionment. Perhaps we&#x27;ll see more art in this style in the future, although part of (or all of) the magic seems to be in the audience&#x27;s belief that there was no human intelligence behind the content, so perhaps this isn&#x27;t duplicatable. If only I could set this experience to a Kraftwerk soundtrack, and maybe play Bladerunner on a screen in the corner.<p>I can&#x27;t wait to see what this group comes up with next!

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Racter</a> was another case like that (apparently; I haven&#x27;t followed horse_ebooks but I was gulled by Racter at the time: I found it hard to believe but I wasn&#x27;t cynical enough to disbelieve it).

Horse_ebooks was the inspiration for other novelty Twitter accounts such as horse_js ( <a href="https://twitter.com/horse_js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;horse_js</a> ) which is somebody taking quotes related to JS out of context, and horse_esdiscuss.

Gawker has a writeup of the event at <a href="http://gawker.com/horse_ebooks-has-been-a-buzzfeed-employee-since-2011-1377183209" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gawker.com&#x2F;horse_ebooks-has-been-a-buzzfeed-employee-...</a><p>The exhibit is three people sitting at a table answering phones (specifically not interacting with the gallery) along with formalistic artistic ambiance.<p>Sidenote: You&#x27;ve got to give them credit. This has been their endgame for <i>years.</i>

Horse_ebooks, meet Pet Rock. Pet Rock, Horse_ebooks.

For those interested, here&#x27;s some background on the pronunciation book side of the story:<p><a href="http://77days.wikia.com/wiki/Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_Wiki" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;77days.wikia.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_W...</a>

What I&#x27;m still wondering... was Horse_ebooks was linking to completely unaffiliated spammy content, or did they build an entire constellation of shitty websites?<p>And, most importantly, who actually wrote this visitor-triggered cron job script[1][2]?<p>[1] <a href="http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;quotestatusjoke.com&#x2F;twitter&#x2F;tw.php</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6171355</a><p>EDIT: A ha! It appears they purchased Horse_ebooks from an actual Russian web developer in 2011 (who ostensibly actually built quotestatusjoke.com), and linked to legitimate crappy third party self-help ebook websites.

A gallery installation where you can watch the artists read tweets to callers on the phone seems like an odd and unimaginative way to end it, but maybe I just don&#x27;t get it.

My favorite mystery blog: <a href="http://moneyistheway.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;moneyistheway.blogspot.com&#x2F;</a><p>He&#x27;s the world&#x27;s foremost financial shaman. The blog ranges from the bizarre to the illucid.<p>Another awesome one along a slightly different genre line: <a href="http://www.johntitor.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.johntitor.com&#x2F;</a>

To be totally honest, it wasn&#x27;t until I saw the pronunciation guide that I realized it might be called &quot;horsey books&quot; instead.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

So this was an account that posted random Tweets, and it somehow has 200,000 followers? Why? What am I missing?