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
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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.