decontextualize
Allison Parrish: words and projects
task
— everyword (@everyword) September 1, 2013
complete
— everyword (@everyword) January 25, 2009
If it hasn’t already happened by the time you read this, it will happen soon: @everyword‘s seven-year mission to tweet “every word in the English language” has come to an end. I hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride!
My plan is to write a more complete post-mortem on the project later. In the mean time, this post contains some links to things that followers of @everyword might find interesting or useful.
The future of @everyword
But first, a word about what’s next for @everyword. Don’t unfollow just yet! My plan at the moment is to let the account rest for a bit, and then run “@everyword Season 2,” starting over from the beginning of the alphabet. Before I do that, I’d like to find a more thorough word list, and also do some programming work so that the bot is less likely to experience failures that interrupt service.
Writing about @everyword
Here’s some writing about @everyword, by me and others.
- I wrote a short essay about how I wrote @everyword, and how I read it: @everyword in context
- Last year, I gave a short presentation at Darius Kazemi’s Bot Summit called “@everyword and the end of the world: a lexicographical eschatology.” (slides and notes, 2mb PDF).
Leonardo Flores wrote a great post about @everyword on the I ♥ E-Poetry blog.
Adrian Chen’s interview with me on Gawker in 2011 was the first “big” press that the project got, and the piece does a good job of capturing what @everyword is about.- I’ve been talking a lot to the press as @everyword approaches the finish line. This Q&A with Ruth Spencer of The Guardian is probably my favorite piece to come out of that press rush so far.
Writing about Twitter bots
@everyword is a Twitter bot—an automated agent that makes Twitter posts. There are a lot of interesting Twitter bots out there. Here’s some interesting writing by and about bot-makers:
Bots should punch up by Leonard Richardson
A protest bot is a bot so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit by Mark Sample
Who Led the Horse to Ebooks? and The End of Horsebooks Is Hardly the End of Anything, from New York Review of Bots
- Leonardo Flores writes extensively about bots, Twitter and otherwise.
What to follow
Here are some Twitter bots that I think followers of @everyword might enjoy.
- I’d call @PowerVocabTweet, which tweets randomly generated words with randomly generated definitions, sort of a “spiritual sequel” to @everyword. (For the record, here’s a list of all my Twitter bots.)
- Definitely follow Fuck every word—it’s an amazing parody of @everyword, among my favorite Twitter bots influenced or inspired by @everyword.
@MinecraftSigns, “Short-form poetry found in Minecraft maps” is Leonard Richardson‘s newest bot.
Best of Darius’ Bots retweets only the best tweets made by Darius Kazemi’s impressive portfolio of bots.
Portmanteau_bot by thricedotted is a constant source of lexical joy.
ANAGRAMATRON finds tweets that are anagrams (i.e., contain exactly the same characters but in a different order) and posts them in juxtaposition. Check it out on tumblr as well.
Thank you!
The response to @everyword has been overwhelming. When I started the project in 2007, I never would have dreamed that the account would one day have close to 100k followers. And if you’re one of those followers, thank you! It’s a great feeling to have made something that so many people have decided to make a daily (or, uh, half-hourly) part of their lives.
I view @everyword as a success, and I want to note here that I owe this success to all of my friends and family who encouraged me along the way and helped to make @everyword a topic of conversation. I am very bad at finding value in the things I make, and I’m especially bad at self-promotion. Without the help of the people close to me, I’m sure that @everyword would have completed its task in obscurity—if it completed its task at all.
Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
No comments