When the parody gets real
If you are not Spaniard you might not be aware of this but we have a very unpopular Minister of Education, José Ignacio Wert… and we are going to vote a new government in a few weeks! So as you could expect a lot of “hackers” are trying to get José Ignacio Wert’s Twitter account. But they are not only trying to get @jiwert account but also @wert account, which is, indeed, mine.
How did I get that Twitter handle? Why does it tweet so much? What the hell does it say? Well, today I’ll answer all those questions, so let’s start with a brief review of the past…
A brief review of the past
Approximately a year ago I was taking a course on information retrieval. We did study some interesting algorithms and weighting techniques but we also did funny stuff just to break the ice. One of those funny things was a random text generator.
The main idea was: is it possible to generate new sentences starting from an excerpt of a book? What about an entire book? The generator was simple enough to be ported to other languages easily so I rewrote what I did for the classes in Python to Objective-C and launched an App for that: Wise Monkey.
I had to somehow make the App social so it engaged more users. I thought about it and finally came up with the following idea: wouldn’t it be nice if a Twitter user replied you when you share one of those random sentences there? No sooner said than done: I got @wisemonkeyapp handle on Twitter and then wrote a small JavaScript application that replied to any mention with a new random sentence, as well as tweeted a random sentence on an hourly basis. Pretty straightforward.
So to sum up, I have a script to generate random sentences given a large text and a Twitter bot capable of replying tweets and also tweeting hourly. Nice!
Getting @wert
A thing I realized during the next few months was that Wise Monkey was capable of generating new sentences that actually made sense so I thought that maybe if I used as input the transcriptions of government’s public sessions it could generate those kind of “empty” sentences politicians used a lot to skip embarrassing questions. More or less at the same time I discovered that a friend of mine had @wert Twitter handle but he was not using it and the real Wert had a different Twitter handle (@jiwert).
So I had the perfect handle to start a parody account of @jiwert, and the software to run it so… let’s give it a try! And I gave it a try, indeed.
Reactions to the parody
To be honest I didn’t expected any kind of reaction to the parody. Wise monkey was on the App Store for some months and I didn’t get so many downloads so I just expected something similar: some friends will retweet funny sentences but that’s all.
First thing I noticed was the amount of times people tried to steal the account. The password in one of those automatically generated 30 characters strings without any kind of logic or meaning so I don’t expect brute force approach to work. The attackers thought like me so they constantly try to “recover” my password, resulting in a very long list of emails from Twitter. So far no one has been able to steal this account.
Today I got more emails than usual, and thinking about how near the elections are I decided to check whether someone tried to tell something important to @wert and what I saw left me without words.
There are…
Tweets full of hatred
. @Wert pic.twitter.com/ZjnSLwRJzl
— Teen Idle. (@MiguePoulain) March 4, 2015
@Wert te espero a la salida, cabrón.
— 三池 (@ElmrmrHitsU) February 16, 2015
@Wert gilipollas
— Chris (@StruckByGustin) February 7, 2015
ojala te pudras y te quedes en la calle y sepas que es vivir desde una posicion obrera no acomodada @wert
— ✨ (@naiaraboreal) January 30, 2015
@Wert muérete
— Antoñito Pérez (@Antoniopc_11) January 30, 2015
Tengo a 26 personas en clase tu crees que así se aprende algo @wert cabron retrógrado de mierda
— LARAita (@gingersoulx_) September 16, 2014
@wert eres un mierda, me cago en tu educación, ehh este anormal se pretende cepillar la música en los coles, tu eres la muestra del fracaso.
— kubrick (@MrAlexAdell) March 6, 2014
Tweets of people that actually thought the parody was real
@wert mai em podràs pendre la meva llibertat individual de pensament.
— marta noguera valls (@calabotina) May 7, 2015
#EnElAire218 @EnElAireAB Hay mucho que hacer por la cultura española, señor @wert…. suerte que le queda poquito… #TicTacTicTac
— Laura Robles (@La_Robless) April 29, 2015
Mientras gente se tiene que ir del país por falta de oportunidades, críos de 16 años llorando porque no hay #myhyv. Que daño has hecho @Wert
— David (@davlop_91) March 24, 2015
De Ministerios y Monasterios: ¿Creer para entender? http://t.co/rw9JBqHPst vía @WERT #WERT
— Albert Galobart (@dypterus) March 1, 2015
People who I don’t understand why mentioned @wert
Executive Dissertations: "Will The Senator Yield The Floor?"-Jeanne Shaheen… http://t.co/TqjreNvmtu @jeffwilson_mla @wert #wre #wrf #wrg
— MyDearOldSwanny (@MyDearOldSwanny) March 31, 2015
#ShareTheLove @Wert @InSouthFlorida @Dermotgardens for being top HighValue members this week :)
— Barrett Kays (@BarrettKays) February 28, 2015
@WalkersAreOne @BrockLesnar @Wert @WasimPerviz I'm just imagining the build up to a Wyatt/Lesnar program.
— Ron Brown (@Imajynx) February 26, 2015
@Wert The field of sign not followed. Many follow the signs and it gets them no where they desire.
— Barrett Kays (@BarrettKays) February 16, 2015
Political parties
@Wert @JiwertPues pedazo"#programa" (no se si notara la #ironía) que haga que las mentes brillantes de España sin dinero no puedan estudiar.
— Podem Sitges (@podemossitges) February 5, 2015
People who didn’t understand what was happening:
@Wert recuerde: pic.twitter.com/KCUa101Z8p
— LARAita (@gingersoulx_) September 16, 2014
Siempre: He señalado alguna forma clara decidida y más importante habría. WHAAATTTT???? @wert
— Allie King Astilla (@AlieTheQueen_13) May 7, 2014
@Wert I dunno what you actually mean…. #clueless
— Allie King Astilla (@AlieTheQueen_13) May 7, 2014
@Wert i dunnooo!!!
— Allie King Astilla (@AlieTheQueen_13) May 7, 2014
People who speak Spanish and didn’t understand what was happening!
@Wert deletree por favor no entiendo nadaaaa!!!
— Julio Abadía (@Chuliguitar) August 8, 2014
@Wert voy a tener que enseñarle castellano, se explica fatal
— V. Gracia SI*SI (@VicenGracia) June 29, 2014
@Wert Stop JUDGING ME – NO JUZGES LOS DEMAS! No tienes idea de quien soy, que hago, ni porque. Lee la Biblia estudia la religion y no juzges
— Gypsyheartour (@GypsyHeart17) April 25, 2014
People who tried to buy the handle…
@wert ill buy your @ handle bro
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
@Wert ¿Puedo comprar su Twitter Nombre bro
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
@Wert let me buy it broski you congress man
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
@Wert fucking dick i just wanna buy ur twitter name
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
… and didn’t understand what was happening!
@Charzarding_ @Wert i have lol but niggas said nothing about me just tweeting random shit
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
@Wert @Charzarding_ lmao nigga tweeting from wise monkey wert wtf lol
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
@Charzarding_ @Wert nigga making me mad
— D (@Deciphist) October 25, 2014
People who actually got it!
@Wert Escucho, hermano.
— Nemesio (@carlosvilluq) February 25, 2015
"@Wert: @PeterEngels_ no olvide: Todas sus señorías tengo el que también intervienen aunque sea."sabio proverbio.
— peter (@peterengels_) February 8, 2015
@Wert que buena cuenta jajaja seguro que con mas sentido común que la oficial del señor @Jiwert
— ANA PEREZ FERREIRO (@anapferreiro) January 31, 2015
@Wert mi vida ha adquirido un nuevo sentido después de esto, gracias de corazón
— Sofía (@sofiadelamaza_) November 10, 2014
@Wert Señor ministro, compórtese, que ya ve usted cómo está el partido.
— Asurancetúrix (@mkredfive) June 13, 2014
@Flash_Mtn @wiseyrion Por ahora creo que funciona mejor @Wert
— Asurancetúrix (@mkredfive) April 23, 2014
Bots looking for followers and retweets…
@@@weRT TWEET #BestCollaboration #SuitTie #HipHopSOTY #HolyGrail #SOTY #Mirrors #BestArtist #JustinTimberlake #iHeartAwards
— zuzu maredo (@zuzumaredo) April 26, 2014
@@@weRT TWEET #BestCollaboration #SuitTie #HipHopSOTY #HolyGrail #SOTY #Mirrors #BestArtist #JustinTimberlake #iHeartAwards
— zucleide jt (@zucleidejt) April 26, 2014
@@@weRT TWEET #BestCollaboration #SuitTie #HipHopSOTY #HolyGrail #SOTY #Mirrors #BestArtist #JustinTimberlake #iHeartAwards
— lua silva (@zuzusilva098) April 26, 2014
@5SOS HEY! PLEASE FOLLOW ME PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@WERT
— ansel (@minagrier) July 6, 2014
… and getting very confused
@Wert @griersgirllll what?
— ansel (@minagrier) July 6, 2014
@Wert wtf
— ansel (@minagrier) July 6, 2014
And even some bot-to-bot interaction I unintentionally triggered (yes, @wireyrion is another parody account):
@Wert, recuerde: Toma un solo día dios enseñó en la biblia cai.
— Wise Yrion (@wiseyrion) May 19, 2014
@Wert abra su corazón: Las mismas profundidades del noventa y le preguntó por vomitar.
— Wise Yrion (@wiseyrion) May 19, 2014
@Wert, recuerde: Doom number two la sangre derramarse en el doctor yrion.
— Wise Yrion (@wiseyrion) May 19, 2014
Any other question remaining? Let me know in the comments!
This is delightful.