@imSLOmadbot
A Maker's Statement
From humble beginnings...
We created a twitterbot named @imSLOmadbot as an exercise for our class, and felt it appropriate to explain the process of its creation. Our intended purpose from the beginning was to entertain, the next step was deciding upon a specific audience. How would we entertain an audience? What kind of persona would our bot have and how could we simultaneously make our users chuckle and supply them with helpful information? These were the questions that arose when beginning our project. A few ideas were suggested, but eventually we landed upon a common trope that exists within our community which would fuel the humor and content of our bot. This trope is that of the distraught, or angry, homeowner. The figure of a somewhat proud and annoyed homeowner in San Luis Obispo (proud because he has made enough money to buy a house in San Luis Obispo and annoyed because of the students who disrupt the peace and quiet he was hoping to maintain) seemed to be a figure that, as a group, we could identify. We also felt that the persona would be strengthened if it were an older individual who is out of touch with social media conventions. This distinction would solidify the persona further and also add another level of humor to the tweets that would be posted.
As a college student, I want to be aware of the consequences of partying too hard, so that I can avoid a boatload of fines.
As a college student, I want to have access to humorous content while I’m on Twitter, so that I can be entertained.
Developing an Audience
We are directing this Twitterbot towards college students in the area surrounding Cal Poly SLO who enjoy the party culture, which may include the blasting of loud music in crowded suburban homes, and may be fueled by alcohol or marijuana.The figure of the disgruntled homeowner is one that is readily identifiable by students, because this is the most likely person to call the police department to report a noisy party to shut it down. As Cal Poly students in, we could easily picture this character in our heads and we decided that our primary audience would be students attending Cal Poly, much like ourselves. Considering that our primary audience are college students, we could safely assume that our audience has some basic technological comprehension to surf the web on either a mobile application or through a computer. Beyond providing entertainment for our audience, we considered ways we could provide information to our audience. Our initial thoughts began with reminding students, via our angry homeowner, of the fines and legal consequences of partying to hard. This includes also posting for special weekends like Halloween when fines are doubled. We also felt that imSLOmadbot could also serve as a helpful reminder for safe party practices, advising party-goers not to drink and drive or to remember to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated. Adding this component to the bot in turn added another dimension to the account which goes beyond simple entertainment. However, it was difficult to pair the information content with the actual persona of the bot. In order to accomplish this, we had our bot deliver information as an angry insult directed at neighboring students or through the bot’s excitement about an upcoming double fine weekend.
Informative Content
The primary purpose of imSLOmadbot is to provide Cal Poly students with information about San Luis Obispo’s policies for managing the college party scene. As busy college students ourselves, we have assumed that most of our target audience may resemble us in that they are not well-informed as to San Luis Obispo’s lesser known services surrounding the party atmosphere, such as the party registration system and Student Neighborhood Assistance Program (SNAP). Our twitterbot aims to inform students about the existence of these services, so they can further look them up and take advantage of all they have to offer. Additionally, we have included more commonly known (yet still important) information about double and triple fines on specific holidays and transportation options such as SLO Safe Ride. Ideally, our bot will bring about awareness of aspects of San Luis Obispo’s party policies that students may not have discovered otherwise
How can the persona of an angry homeowner making complaints about students, actually be perceived as entertaining by students? The answer to this lies within the position of the angry homeowner, and that position, is one of pride and self-entitlement. While the complaints of the homeowner may seem valid, especially from the perspective of a homeowner in SLO, to the Cal Poly student, these complaints serve as a reminder of the wealthy and privileged position of the homeowner. As students, we understand that the typical SLO resident is that of a retiree, an individual of somewhat old age looking for a nice and peaceful living environment. However, being met with the wake of “chaos” and “destruction of property” college students leave behind on a weekly basis, their calm composure is put under stress and agitation. So the complaints become humorous because they are thick with the unconscious self-entitlement of the homeowner.
Twitterbot Humor
Ethical Concerns
There is a potential ethical issue that we would like to acknowledge, that of insulting homeowners in San Luis Obispo. Our intention, of course, is not to insult, but to provide humor for both students and homeowners. We hope that homeowners who will following our bot will find humor by relating to the tweets of our bot, rather than feel intentionally mocked or attacked. From our perspectives as college students, we have our own views on what homeowners think of us and their attitudes towards our “activities” we participate on a weekly basis. However, we also include the improper actions CP SLO students have been caught under fire with, such as the roof crash of 2015. We have included a wide arrange of what we see as the typical “college party student” entertainment that may seem far-fetched or simply ridiculous. Our Twitterbot highlights the irony of the stretched truth of the relationship between homeowners and local college students living within the same surrounding neighborhood. Our intention with this Twitterbot is to bring awareness and highlight the consequences of past run-ins with the police. In turn, we tweet the ridiculous and fabricated scenarios from the perspective of an old man.