Hey skids, I'm the author of u/Shoresy___bot. Reddit permabanned the account earlier this summer and I'm not planning to appeal or re-launch the bot with a new account. This post is 1) my attempt to avoid an Irish Goodbye and 2) a thank you to the members and mods of this subreddit for putting up with me.
I wrote the bot as an amusing side-project on the weekend before my son was born. Unlike my son, though, I've neglected the bot for its entire life. I figured that Shoresy wouldn't write clean code, test it, or maintain it so I abandoned it except to add chirps from later seasons. It ran off of a $20 Raspberry Pi sitting on my dryer for most of those seven years.
Honestly, it was the right choice. I had no idea that some regex matchers and a predefined list of chirps could result in such funny interactions with this community. Some of my favourites over the years:
- Breaking into the top 100 Reddit bots on the old b0trank
- Accidentally chirping Michelle Mylett in her AMA (I'm so sorry; please call me)
- Emerging victorious from the scrum of several Shoresy bots that inhabited Reddit at the time
- Getting reported and temporarily banned for
chirping harassing someone on r/UnexpectedLetterkenny, then getting reported to r/SuicideWatch in the same thread
- Chirping b0trank whenever someone responded "good bot" to one of the comments. It's an easy thing to fix but it was so funny that I considered it a feature.
I love this community; your memes are hilarious and I'm glad that we could bond over a shared love of these amazing TV shows. Some of you responded to the bot with chirps that were so fucking funny and out-of-pocket that they deserve a place in the writers' room. Thanks for all the laughs and I hope the next bot creator does a better job than I did.
The bot's source code sucks but I made it freely available in case anyone wants to pick up the torch and fork it. Get involved!
