This ‘social media’ app full of bots constantly complimenting you is intensely bizarre

My first post on Botnet got over 480,000 likes. 

A new social media-style app offers users the chance to live in a world where millions of adoring followers hang onto their every word. There’s just one catch: On Botnet it just so happens that you’re the only real person. Oh yeah, and you’d better believe you’re famous as hell. 

The app, released yesterday, is like a Twitter clone that dispensed with the notion that bots can or should be removed from the platform. 

“Botnet is a social network simulator where you’re the only human along with a million bots who are obsessed with you,” explains the app’s website.

Made by Billy Chasen of turntable.fm fame, Botnet allows anyone bored or curious enough to download it a constant stream of interaction from fake accounts. It’s an oddly fascinating experience, and provides insight as to why Elon Musk just can’t log the hell off.  

“This started as a fun thought experiment around how we can use bots for good (considering all the negative uses lately),” Chasen told Mashable over email. “What if there are always people to talk to and share opinions with? Maybe the world would feel less lonely (albeit simulated).”

The app is a mixture of hilarious and unsettling. When a Botnet commenter told me that “Keanu Reeves” would win the New Hampshire primary, I laughed out loud at my desk. That the app might actually make a person feel less lonely? I’m not sure what to make of that. 

Botnet is free to download, but it does offer up some tempting in-app purchases. Want to spice up your experience with “Dad bot?” That will be $.99, please. 

“This feels a bit more like an art project than actual company,” Chasen wrote, “but we’ll see where it goes.”

Notably, Botnet isn’t the first fake social media app we’ve seen. Back in 2017, Binky offered bored users the chance to scroll through endless pages of fake social posts. 

“Unlike similar apps such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, Binky won’t stress you out or make you hate your friends,” read the app’s description. “It just keeps your attention where it belongs: on your phone.”

Botnet takes this idea one step further, and actually provides feedback to your inane posts. 

Importantly, Chasen told Mashable that this isn’t the type of weird data grab that we might expect from a real social media company like Facebook. 

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“Botnet doesn’t record what people are posting,” he wrote. “There are just some very basic metrics around installs and if people purchase upgrades.”

In other words, feel free to go nuts posting to your heart’s content. Your millions of Botnet followers will surely thank you.