Bots on Patrol
You know that annoying guy who interrupts your story to correct you on a fine point of grammar? I have been that guy, I admit. But at least I try to pick my spots.
Now consider a world in which conversation has gone global. Sure, there are still isolated pockets where information is conveyed from one person to another via sound waves with limited range and a very short half-life, but a great part of our intercourse takes place in the network. In this world, some of the conversationalists are not even people. They are not-very-complicated software.
What do we get? We get Twitter creatures like this one: @ComposedOf. Its motto: “Fixing the English language one grammatically flawed tweet at a time. Purely educational, no offense intended.” Apparently this entity scours the entire Twitterspace, more or less in real time, for tweets containing the phrase “comprised of” and replies with a tweet of gentle correction:
“Comprised of” is poor grammar. Consider using “composed of” instead
with a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject. For example, the other day a person called Chuck Halt tweeted to a couple of other people, apparently in reference to ISIS:
How about a cult comprised of pedophiles, bestiality fans, misogynists, murderers, and foul smelling members?
Busted! As someone does on Twitter every few minutes, Chuck heard from @ComposedOf:
“Comprised of” is poor grammar. Consider using “composed of” instead
He engaged his new friend in conversation:
@ComposedOf I’m on my 3rd tequila…..cut me a little slack….
This, by the way, was far politer than most of the responses the bot receives. Other people find it quite irritating. Farhad Manjoo, the New York Times tech writer, tweeted as follows:
As you can see, his tweet contained the offending phrase; so he immediately got the corrective reply.
Many kinds of bots are allowed by Twitter’s Terms of Service, but I don’t think this one is, so it may not survive long. It will not be the last. Nor is it the first. For three years, the tweeter known as @StealthMountain did nothing but tell people who typed “sneak peak” that they must have meant “sneak peek.” This bot seems to have more than 26,000 followers. I’m not sure what more they’re looking for.
And so on. I have never used (or even heard) the expression “bone broth” in real life, but if it occurs on Twitter there is a bot ready to complain. “That’s also called stock,” it will say. It does this a couple of hundred times a day. It is tireless.
