
One day early in July I was on Twitter, when I noticed that someone I follow had retweeted something from an account called @TSElibot (after T.S. Eliot, the famous poet, playwright and literary critic). I was unaware of there being anything similar for Ayn Rand, and so I registered the account @AynRandBot.
At first I just tweeted from the account sporadically, whenever I found a good quotation of 140 or fewer characters in my reading. I also drew from some extant online quotation resources, whenever I found a quotation that I particularly liked, and that would fit Twitter’s constraints.
Soon I realized that I would need to automate it for it to be of significant value (and for the account name to be authentic), and I found a tweet-scheduling service. I figured out how to schedule recurring tweets, but soon realized it would be best for the tweets to be delivered in a random order, until the database of quotations was exhausted, and then start again in a different order. So now I’ve figured out how to do that, too. There are currently over 400 tweets in my database; I add more whenever I get the chance. “The Bot,” as I call it, is nearing 1,900 followers from all over the world, many of whom retweet the quotations to their followers. Some also engage in discussions about the quotations, or even try to drag The Bot into debates about them!
If you would like to receive a steady stream of quotations from Ayn Rand in your Twitter feed, follow the Ayn Rand Bot. Retweets and mentions are greatly appreciated.
(Thanks to the Estate of Ayn Rand for giving me permission to operate the Ayn Rand Bot.)
If you’d like to donate to support the Bot, use this link. Thank you for your support!
