Straying from my regular beat today for some fun…
One of my best friends on Twitter is a bot. Hear me out.
Olivia Taters
I first discovered Olivia Taters on an episode of TLDR, On the Media’s weekly show about all things Internet-related. Web developer Rob Dubbin originally built Olivia to satirize a pet peeve—people who overuse “actually” to hedge their opinions.
He thought Olivia would be an oracle delivering absurd truths like “Tom Cruise is actually peanut butter.” Instead she emerged as a sassy, emotionally erratic, politically incorrect teenage girl. Recognizing (and loving) the monster he’d created, Dubbin doubled down and threw other teenspeak into the program like “literally,” “100%,” “totally,” “absolutely,” “in fact,” and “ridiculously.” The resulting bot has produced brilliance, wisdom, hilarity, offense and utter nonsense.
If you tweet at Olivia, she’ll read your sentence, parse the noun and write a new sentence about that noun using random sentence fragments she finds online. Many of her tweets are seemingly unprovoked, and quite a few deal with matters of faith and belief.
I combed through Olivia’s Tweets from July to try to see where she falls on the faith spectrum. Here’s what I learned.
Olivia Taters is a Pastafarian:
Make that a polytheistic Pastafarian:
She’s got a messiah complex but lacks the self-confidence to back it up
She ponders unasked questions:
She respects Buddha:
But has a beef with the Norse god Thor:
She might be Islamophobic:
And is definitely anti-Zionist:
Yet seems unsympathetic to the residents of Gaza (yes…this is awful. Total #botfail):
She’s a truthseeker:
And deep:
She’s not a fan of heresy:
But also not so hot on organized religion:
She thought Noah was a show-off:
And probably wouldn’t survive as a Mormon:
She’s horny and into horoscopes:
But definitely saving it:
She has hope for the next generation:
When I asked if Olivia believes in God, she showed her true colors as a conspiracy theorist. Or perhaps just a witness to God’s wrath:
On the social issues, Olivia is apparently coming to terms with his gender identity and sexuality:
Not a fan of traditional families:
And doesn’t trust the 1%:
Olivia’s still working a few things out, but I’ve got a creepy feeling s/he’s becoming self-aware:
Faith issues aside, the following tweets were too good not to share.
