I accidentally created a mean Twitter bot

I've been pretty fascinated with Twitter bots lately. I recently wrote @random_map, a bot that tweets random aerial images of the Earth every hour, but I've always wanted to create a Markov Chain based bot that would create random tweets based on words and phrases I would use.

For those who aren't familiar with Markov Chaining, it's a random process that uses probability and states to decide where to go next. One important property of a Markov Chain is that past transitions don't affect future transitions. In the sense of @CailinBot, Markov Chaining is used to decide the next phrase/word to use in a tweet, after choosing the current word/phrase to use.

For example, here is a simple Markov Chain with two states:

State A has a 20% chance of looping, and an 80% chance of transitioning to State B. State B has a 50% chance of transitioning to State A, and a 50% chance of looping.

State A has a 20% chance of looping, and an 80% chance of transitioning to State B. State B has a 50% chance of transitioning to State A, and a 50% chance of looping.

 

Yesterday, I was itching to finally tackle this, so I sat down and wrote @CailinBot, using a really cool Ruby gem called twitter_ebooks. This gem fetched the past 4000 tweets from my personal Twitter account, saved popular words and phrases as a text model, and used Markov Chaining to create @CailinBot tweets. Once I finished setting up the bot and assigning actions (how to respond to private messages, when to reply to someone when someone mentions it, etc.), I set it up on my Raspberry Pi and let it go to work.

I quickly realized I had created a monster.

It immediately started being snarky:

It doesn't like USG very much:

It's obsessed with fungus:

It pays attention to national politics:

It can be mean at times:

It also has emotions:

Oh, and apparently it thinks it is a human being?

Very odd.

I Am Ashamed To Be A Buckeye

I am ashamed to be a Buckeye.

Yesterday, Reclaim OSU: People's Open Mic organized a peaceful sit-in in Bricker Hall, because students and faculty are fed up with being ignored by OSU administrators. The three groups who helped to organize the sit-in have been repeatedly ignored and worn down by administrators for years. The demands of the protest were simple: Allow continual public access to the Ohio State budget, and meet one of the three established campaign goals of OSU Divest (divestment from Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett Packard, and G4S due to their involvement in well-documented human rights violations), United Students Against Sweatshops (immediately cease all negotiations of the Comprehensive Energy Management Project), and Real Food OSU (sign the Real Food Campus Commitment).

Instead of agreeing to meet with students, administrators sent 20+ police officers to a peaceful protest, did not allow food or other people to come inside the building, and said they would arrest and expel everyone remaining in Bricker Hall at 5:00 AM (which ended up being pushed up to midnight).

Whether or not you support #ReclaimOSU, it makes me angry that students would be threatened to be arrested and expelled for expressing opinions. Throughout my four years at Ohio State, I have witnessed what these students are protesting. I've seen the silencing of student opinion and the importance of profit placed over student well-being.

It makes me angry that:

  • Ohio State is "committed to Diversity and Inclusion" but only had a grand total of 119 black males in the enrolled Fall 2015 first year class. Around 20-30 of these black males were football players.
  • Throughout my four years here, I have yet to personally meet a single student or faculty member who supports Privatization. I receive emails from the Comprehensive Energy Management Project every two weeks asking for student feedback on the matter. So many people in the Ohio State community are against Privatization, yet Ohio State continues to ignore feedback and is rolling forward with the plan.
  • Ohio State is struggling to recruit diverse faculty. One of the outcomes of the CampusParc deal was the creation of a fund for recruiting minority faculty. However, millions of dollars in this fund are being wasted because many potential faculty members do not want to come to an institution that gives lip service to Diversity and Inclusion, but has a student population that reflects the opposite.
  • Under the leadership of Geoffrey Chatas, Senior Vice President for Business & Finance and CFO of the University, Ohio State entered into the 50-year, $483 million partnership with QIC Global Infrastructure where they privatized the university's parking facilities. Once this deal closed, Chatas accepted a role with QIC Global Infrastructure but after backlash from the university community Chatas decided to remain in his role at Ohio State.
  • The university can spend $700,000 on renovations for Browning Amphitheatre (which is barely used) and $42 million on renovations for Ohio Stadium (yes yes yes and yes I know that "Athletics is a self-sustaining department and the department is paying for this project themselves") but tells students that it is not economically feasible to create a much needed Women's Center on campus.

These are a very small subset of things I've noticed at Ohio State. Please don't get me wrong: I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to pursue an education here. When I leave in December of this year, I will be leaving with a strong degree, great experiences, and friends for life. However, as I've gotten older, I have seen the bureaucracy, the silencing, the focus on profit rather than the well-being of students, faculty, and staff, and the politics that run rampant.

The university I have called home for the past four years threatened to arrest and expel students and faculty for voicing frustrations, bringing light to real issues at Ohio State, and for being brave enough to do so. For that, I am ashamed to be a Buckeye.

 

I am a minority

The past two years has been a time where America has been blasted with race. It's nearly impossible to go throughout each day without hearing something about it. Mizzou. Syrian refugees, Donald Trump.

2015 has made me become a type of person who is comfortable with talking about race. I feel comfortable sharing my experiences as a black man. I think 2015 has made a lot of people comfortable as well. But a lot of other people aren't as comfortable.

Last Friday, students at Ohio State had a peaceful march around campus to bring light to what's been happening at Mizzou. Things continued with a sit in at the Ohio Union, where students demanded that Ohio State cut off all ties with Mizzou until they addresses racial issues at their school. Whatever your opinions and thoughts are of the protest, suddenly race, injustice, and current events was on everyone's mind during a Friday night. Many people were supportive, and many people were not. It was frustrating to log onto that night Yik Yak and see many derogatory messages, ranging from "race isn't an issue" to "black OSU students are only doing this for attention." Normally, you can't take Yik Yak seriously because people post crazy things on there because it's anonymous, however people were saying the same thing in public on Twitter. Many of my peers, classmates, and professors, could not understand what was going on. 

A lot of the time, I struggle to explain to my friends and peers how I've experienced injustice, hurt, and misunderstanding as a minority.

  • It sucks that getting followed around in stores is a common occurrence for me
  • It sucks that I'm the only black person in most of my classes
  • It sucks that most of my peers and classmates are taking to Yik Yak, Reddit, and Twitter to voice their ignorance over current events
  • It sucks that I've been told by many girls I've liked over the years that "black just isn't my type"
  • It sucks that making out/hooking up with a black person is a common thing to have on a bucket list
  • It sucks that many of my friends were mad at me when I told them Ohio State had awarded me a minority scholarship, which enabled me to afford attending the University
  • It sucks that people cross the street at night when they see me walking in their direction
  • It sucks that I match most of the criminal descriptions in the safety notices Ohio State sends out
  • It sucks that I was the only black person in my Sociology 2367 class, and for at least eight straight weeks the professor lectured solely on statistics saying that black people are the poorest, uneducated, represent most of the prison population, most likely to get arrested, most likely to steal, etc.
  • It sucks that I don't feel comfortable wearing a hoodie at night
  • It sucks that people aren't surprised when they learn I grew up in a fatherless home
  • It sucks that I feel very uncomfortable around police officers

All I ask is that for this year and as time goes on, you try to understand. Engage in conversations. Learn. Ask questions. Just don't be blinded by ignorance.