
Horse_ebooks Is Human After All - dominicgs
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/horse-ebooks-and-pronunciation-book-revealed.html
======
sambeau
Am I alone in being slightly disappointed to discover that Horse_ebooks is not
a robot?

I've had to conduct a mini-self analysis on this news, as I find myself
disappointed. Why?

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'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?

It reminded me of Steven Frank's "Spamusement!" (which I also found very funny
back in the days of email.)

[http://spamusement.com](http://spamusement.com)

And Panic's love of Horse_ebooks is where I first learned of it.

EDIT: I'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!

~~~
ritchiea
I'm relieved. It never occurred to me that horse_ebooks was a spam bot until I
started reading other people stating with certainty that it is a spambot. It
always struck me as a human posing as a spambot because it was too clever and
poetic.

It also surprises me that so many people think we're more likely to encounter
a legitimately clever spam bot than a clever human impersonating a spambot.

~~~
Shish2k
> It always struck me as a human posing as a spambot because it was too clever
> and poetic

I dunno, I've seen some pretty clever and poetic quotes from my own markov-
chain powered IRC bot:

[http://quotes.shishnet.org/quotes?search=MrCuddlemews](http://quotes.shishnet.org/quotes?search=MrCuddlemews)

(#cuddles on darkmyst to poke him yourself; hilight by name or by starting a
line with "@")

And the inspiration:
[http://www.jibble.org/montyquotes.php](http://www.jibble.org/montyquotes.php)

------
adelevie
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.

Also, iron_ebooks uses Iron.io, so you get all the fun of an _ebooks account
with all the "serverless" greatness of IronWorker.

[1]
[https://github.com/harrisj/iron_ebooks](https://github.com/harrisj/iron_ebooks)

------
commanda
@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 "computers" were at the point where they could create consistently
hilarious phrases, and are disappointed (and even outraged) today when they
find that we're not there yet. The artists have imparted the audience with a
sense of disillusionment. Perhaps we'll see more art in this style in the
future, although part of (or all of) the magic seems to be in the audience's
belief that there was no human intelligence behind the content, so perhaps
this isn't duplicatable. If only I could set this experience to a Kraftwerk
soundtrack, and maybe play Bladerunner on a screen in the corner.

I can't wait to see what this group comes up with next!

~~~
guspe
The NY Times has been running an automated haiku experiment for some time now.
I think it has a lot to do with your comment. Check this: haiku.nytimes.com

~~~
commanda
Ha! That's great, thanks! I had a feeling Jacob Harris was behind that, as he
was also behind @nytimes_ebooks.

------
abecedarius
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter) was
another case like that (apparently; I haven't followed horse_ebooks but I was
gulled by Racter at the time: I found it hard to believe but I wasn't cynical
enough to disbelieve it).

------
mccr8
Horse_ebooks was the inspiration for other novelty Twitter accounts such as
horse_js ( [https://twitter.com/horse_js](https://twitter.com/horse_js) )
which is somebody taking quotes related to JS out of context, and
horse_esdiscuss.

~~~
prehkugler
As an iOS developer, I always enjoy @Horse_iOS.

------
seiji
Gawker has a writeup of the event at [http://gawker.com/horse_ebooks-has-been-
a-buzzfeed-employee-...](http://gawker.com/horse_ebooks-has-been-a-buzzfeed-
employee-since-2011-1377183209)

The exhibit is three people sitting at a table answering phones (specifically
not interacting with the gallery) along with formalistic artistic ambiance.

Sidenote: You've got to give them credit. This has been their endgame for
_years._

------
sk5t
Horse_ebooks, meet Pet Rock. Pet Rock, Horse_ebooks.

------
caprock
For those interested, here's some background on the pronunciation book side of
the story:

[http://77days.wikia.com/wiki/Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_W...](http://77days.wikia.com/wiki/Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_Wiki)

~~~
650REDHAIR
Thank you, this was an interesting read.

These guys are good and definitely know their audience.

------
bcjordan
What I'm still wondering... was Horse_ebooks was linking to completely
unaffiliated spammy content, or did they build an entire constellation of
shitty websites?

And, most importantly, who actually wrote this visitor-triggered cron job
script[1][2]?

[1]
[http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php](http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355)

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.

------
eli
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't get it.

------
api
My favorite mystery blog:
[http://moneyistheway.blogspot.com/](http://moneyistheway.blogspot.com/)

He's the world's foremost financial shaman. The blog ranges from the bizarre
to the illucid.

Another awesome one along a slightly different genre line:
[http://www.johntitor.com/](http://www.johntitor.com/)

~~~
unimpressive
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4697400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4697400)

You're in for a treat.

------
kylelibra
To be totally honest, it wasn't until I saw the pronunciation guide that I
realized it might be called "horsey books" instead.

~~~
seiji
I used to work with people who called it horsey books. I thought they were
morons for doing that. Turns out they were morons for completely different
reasons now?

------
nemo1618
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

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

~~~
untog
Because it was funny, and it was interesting to see what an entirely random
algorithm would turn up.

Of course, it wasn't an algorithm but it's not like the people following knew
that.

~~~
eli
According to Gawker, the current owners purchased the account from a Russian
spammer in 2011. Before that it presumably was indeed an algorithm for
promoting crappy ebooks and not an art project.

~~~
untog
Yes, I think it's been known for some time that it "changed" in 2011 (it
stopped being posted "from web", IIRC). Still, an interesting story.

