They have some of the most absolutely weakest arguments I've ever heard yet get away with it. It's as if they don't care if the thousands watching the video aren't convinced at all but if they can annoy Jon they have succeeded.
He says the reason he annoys people by making these accounts is because "I want to understand the algorithms that are used by wall street". These aren't really 'robots', they're just scraping wikipedia and pushing out terms in tweets it believes are relevant, which this has shown aren't.
"I don't know how you relate to the economic collapse". I don't understand this guy, I don't know if they're acting but if they're serious then I'm worried.
Just make a half assed bot and ride the wave in the most nonsensical level you are able to perform at. Tip, it's not even interesting at all.
Someone could of have set up that video like this : "Three twats playing clueless to identity theft, manifest in sync when the interviewer calls them trolls".
That was priceless and very revealing of how they want to be regarded. Yet fail so hard at it. Guess neuromarketing was too crowded for these three not so luminous lightbulbs.
At times it strikes like they really believe they are on to something that is worth being "discovered", kind of hard when pushing glorified irc bots around but whatever. The twat in the middle was the funniest, guess they went for a soft target to spare him from contempt of court charges in a identity theft case... you know, for arguing of sitting arrangements. This stuff is priceless, niche priceless.
I don't feel as though these three are merry pranksters just out for a laugh. It's obvious that something about their work kind of rubs us the wrong way. It devalues our online representations, and that's precisely what they're after. They don't glorify their algorithms. Doesn't it sting a little that their simple web bots can emulate a human fairly accurately? Doesn't it really suck when this online persona steps on our toes? Is there no way to tell the public who the real me is without makings lots of videos, online profiles, status updates and tweets.
It's all a little trivial and those three make it obvious.
I don't really have a strong opinion on the actual bots themselves, hell I wrote one to ape the physicist Brian Cox (http://blog.mclemon.cz/notbriancox-i-do-some-stupid-things-w...) after reading about Markov Chains one lunchtime - though I only posted a couple tweets and made it very clear it wasn't impersonating him.
The counter-argument Mr. Ronson could have presented would be: "well if someone goes on twitter, and intends to follow me and they end up following your jon_ronson bot instead, that is fundamentally dishonest to both me (the real Jon Ronson) and the follower".
http://philterphactory.com/2012/04/02/jon_ronson-a-weavr-of-...