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The Horse is a Lie: 'horse_ebooks' Twitter spam is performance art
Twitter is quite the medium. An endless source of looping GIFs, "viral" videos, and, sadly, bad advertising. Most of the latter category is quickly dismissed by the block and report spam features of Twitter, but the occasional spambot elevates its "craft" to a level of surreal bliss which begs attention. "horse_ebooks" is perhaps Twitter's best example of that phenomenon, offering indecipherable (and delightful) missives that are heavily retweeted and always nonsensical. "How to get the best bargains in satellite," for instance. Sadly, it looks like we've all been had. What many (ourselves included) thought to be an accidentally hilarious spam account for a low-rent eBook publishing firm is actually a long-running art installation by Jacon Bakkila (a 29-year-old Buzzfeed employee). Bakkila outed the ruse this morning in an exhibit at New York City's FitzRoy Gallery named "Horse_ebooks 2," where Bakkila himself and two friends are answering phones all day (from 10AM to 9PM ET) and giving users a verbal taste of the content you'd normally read on...well, the horse_ebooks Twitter account (the phone number is 213-444-0102 if you'd like to call). It's unclear if the account will continue from here. It sounds like a no, though, as Bakkila tells The New York Times that, "The goal was not to appropriate the account but to become the account," referencing the account's previous Russian owner and its original use (to sell eBooks). Gawker's got a walkthrough of the art gallery installation right here, should you wish to dive even deeper into this madness.
WRUP: I will make sure you never buy knives again
Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too! Ladies and gentleman, there is a Twitter account I'd like you all to meet: @horse_ebooks. On its surface, it's nothing special -- just a Russian-owned Twitter spam account designed to sell (predictably) ebooks about horses. To appear as if it were a human, the account employs a comically bad algorithm that tweets seemingly random sentences fragments. If @horse_ebooks is an attempt to pass a Turing test, it fails on every level. Little it says seems relevant to horses; nothing it says seems to make sense. It's short dispatches are internet-age poetry at its finest -- absurd works of art, all. It's my inspiration. But that's not the only Twitter account I'd like to introduce you to. There's also the must-follow @WoWInsider. And @mikesacco. And @foxvanallen. And ... well, this kinda brings me to the week's bonus question that I asked our columnists: If there's one Twitter account you'd recommend everyone follow, what would it be?
