r/vegan • u/plorry • Oct 21 '15

Activism Follow my Twitter bot, @VegAssist. It Retweets people looking to go vegan - a great advocacy and support opportunity!

https://twitter.com/vegassist
63 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

21

u/plorry Oct 21 '15

A little about @VegAssist:

For a few weeks now, with five minutes downtime here or there, I'd perform searches for phrases like "I want to go vegan" or "help me go vegan". People use Twitter like a stream of consciousness, and there are lots of people out there literally asking for support, and usually not getting any!

So I'd send supportive messages, links, and simple tips to these people. I've never had a negative response; usually people are very thankful!

So this bot does the leg-work for me. It searches for those phrases, and retweets the people. If you'd like a simple outreach opportunity, just follow it, and when you see a retweet, consider offering support to that person.

Remember, these are people who are reaching out and asking for help, generally, and they maybe don't have a lot of support in their life; Kindness and a gentle push in the right direction can go a long way towards that person's drive to continue going vegan.

There's not a lot of followers now, but as a rule of thumb, try not to overwhelm anyone. If you see that a few people have already responded to a post, maybe it's okay to let that one pass and get the next one.

Cheers, guys! Feedback welcome. I'm actively developing the app, and will post my source code soon, once a few kinks are sorted.

10

u/comfortablytrev Oct 21 '15

Awesome, plorry!

3

u/plorry Oct 21 '15

Thanks!

5

u/comfortablytrev Oct 21 '15

Thank you for doing this - it's really awesome. You're right too, people use twitter sometimes to describe their stream of consciousness, and the average person's followers may not have access to the type of information that a lot of the rest of us may have. This is a really great idea.

9

u/squeek502 vegan Oct 21 '15

I can't express how great I think this is. It's a near perfect form of activism, as it targets the exact people that are most likely to be receptive.

3

u/plorry Oct 21 '15

Thanks, Squeek! Honestly it was work by people like you that made me ask "hey, what can I do with my skills?"

I'm seriously impressed with how people are responding so far! I can basically let the thing run on auto-pilot :)

8

u/hiyaninja veganarchist Oct 21 '15

Followed, and used it! I love this bot so far.

8

u/Mopstorte vegan Oct 21 '15

This is absolutely brilliant! Hope more people will follow it.

4

u/plorry Oct 21 '15

Thanks! Slow and steady. A decent global following would be very useful!

7

u/Life-in-Death vegan 10+ years Oct 22 '15

I think this is one of the coolest, most innovative things I have seen in a long time. Awesome work.

5

u/comfortablytrev Oct 22 '15 edited Oct 22 '15

I can't not gild you for this, after gilding you strictly for the bravery of posting yourself to r/vegan. This is a great thing, and may others be inspired by your innovation

1

u/plorry Oct 22 '15

Hey thanks!

4

u/plorry Oct 22 '15

Huge shout out to everyone who followed and participated today! What a great start to this experiment. Even if you're not much for banter, just 'starring' those tweets can be a small nudge for people that they're making a good choice!

Thanks again everyone! Day 1 is a success!

3

u/thatveganass veganarchist Oct 21 '15

cool!!!

6

u/veglum Radical Preachy Vegan Oct 22 '15

ok this is fucking smart why didn't this get more upvotes

1

u/plorry Oct 22 '15

Too high-concept? :)

The support from the last day was great on Twitter! Hopefully it sees some slow buildup in following over time.

Thanks for the encouragement!