Twitter Contest Winning as a Service

August 4, 2015 5:54 AM

Hunter Scott wrote a Python script that automatically entered 165,000 contests on Twitter. "My favorite thing that I won was a cowboy hat autographed by the stars of a Mexican soap opera that I had never heard of."
posted by artsandsci (29 comments total)

Hmm...doesn't seem to reference Real Genius. Kids today, no appreciation for the classics.
posted by jedicus at 6:04 AM on August 4, 2015 [23 favorites]

Came in for the Real Genius comment.
Was not disappointed.
posted by blurker at 6:11 AM on August 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

Also the list of prizes contains 25 occurrences of the word "pokeman". I can kind of understand how someone who graduated from college in 2013 hasn't seen Real Genius. But the 'pokeman' thing...he's doing that ironically, right?

I suppose it's only a matter of time before code to do this gets out and Twitter-based sweepstakes* undergo an anti-bot arms race. The first step would probably be some kind of CAPTCHA, e.g. "to enter, RT with the answer to 8 + 7".

* Technically a contest must be based on skill, not chance. These were sweepstakes, i.e. free to enter with an element of chance. Compare to a lottery, which is based on chance but is decidedly not free to enter.
posted by jedicus at 6:24 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reading through that prize list, I realize there is so much out in the world that I know nothing about. I need a twitter bot to expand my horizons by winning contests.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:35 AM on August 4, 2015

This fucker won the Mexican soap opera hat I desperately wanted? I hate tech boys.
posted by mullacc at 6:42 AM on August 4, 2015 [17 favorites]

The first step would probably be some kind of CAPTCHA, e.g. "to enter, RT with the answer to 8 + 7".

I spend a ton of time on Twitter, which I love absolutely, but reading this and knowing some of the folks I've seen/interacted with, I couldn't help but think of the time in Clueless when Tai gets knocked out by the shoe at the party and they as her questions to keep her conscious. ("What's seven times seven?" "Stuff she knows.")
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:43 AM on August 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

I'll take the fashion week prize!!!
posted by oceanjesse at 6:45 AM on August 4, 2015

This reminded me of some soft news article I saw years back on a family that entered every contest they could find, and as such, they won a decent number of things, except he made it easier. I feel sorry for people who have to figure out how to manage their time while entering daily contests and sweepstakes.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:05 AM on August 4, 2015

Hidden gems from the prize list: [[ with editorial comments]]

-Copy of the book Dogfight at the Pentagon signed by editor in chief of Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker [[Not THE Gerard Baker?!?!!]]

-250 Dogecoin [[I sort of know what this is, but what is that? Is he rich? Or is it like 14 cents?]]

-steam copy of Dark Shadows: Army of Evil [[Pretty cool, if you can play as Barnabas]]

-whatever I want written on some girl's body in chocolate (tried to get her to write Maxwell's equations, but she said no)

-tour for 4 people of Avon and Summerset police mounted unit [[Would you like to pet a police horse? YES I would!]]

-2x CD "Yesterdays" by Pennywise [[Oh HELL NO! And one for a friend because Pennywise always wants to make new friends...]]

-Tickets to JouMaSe Comedy Club in Cape Town, South Africa ("Cape Town's only dedicated comedy club!")

-bowl of fruit preserves [[okay...]]

-2 tickets to Ramen fest in LA [[the implication being that there's something called Ramen Fest in LA.]]

-DENIED winning a shirt that said the name of a bodyguard of the backstreet boys who had died because I wasn't a true backstreet boys fan. (the shirt was made/sold by a backstreet boys fan, of course). [[A bodyguard? Yeah, you'd have to be a pretty serious fan to do that, I suspect.]]

-Palpitoad (?) [[I agree. ?]]
posted by Naberius at 7:13 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does Weth (previously) know about this? Must find out.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:13 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

-Palpitoad (?) [[I agree. ?]]

It's a Pokemon.

Or someone misspelled the Evil Galactic Ruler of the Star Wars Universe. Your call.
posted by Twain Device at 7:18 AM on August 4, 2015

I won tickets to the ballet from a local arts promotional twitter account. They make you retweet only part of their tweet, I guess to avoid bots like this.
posted by interplanetjanet at 7:23 AM on August 4, 2015

whatever I want written on some girl's body in chocolate (tried to get her to write Maxwell's equations, but she said no)

She would only do the Navier-Stokes equations.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:25 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

0.5% seems like a decent contest return rate, actually. 1 in 200 is way better than most sweepstakes odds! Too bad most of the prizes were crap.
posted by maryr at 7:34 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

250 Dogecoin [[I sort of know what this is, but what is that? Is he rich? Or is it like 14 cents?]]

It's about four cents, actually.
posted by mightygodking at 7:38 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Twitter can be a lot of fun offside from regular usage. Once I've invested five dollars to buy 13,000 followers for a friend who had signed on to Twitter mere days before. I never told him it was my doing and I got a lot of mileage out of that investment, as he regularly came up with the craziest theories about his twitter fame (especially in the Russian and Arabic world, according to the writing systems these bots/throwaway accounts used).

Oh joy.

(I know I'm a bad friend, shush.)
posted by bigendian at 7:39 AM on August 4, 2015 [19 favorites]

I once won an online contest by writing an x11 automation script to click on a little embedded java app faster than anyone else. It was a contest for a flooring company that just put up their first web site and wanted to drum up attention (this was precrash late 90's) but it was $700 so not a bad return for a few minutes work.
posted by Poldo at 8:00 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I imagine that bigger prizes won't use Twitter as a means of entering.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:05 AM on August 4, 2015

I dunno. Sure this is legit within the parameters set forth by the various sweepstakes, and, yeah, it's a bit funny, but still, it seems likes kind of a dick move. Just because the "rules" permit something doesn't mean it's not a shitty thing to do.

I mean, make fun of the autographed telenovela hat all you want, but there were probably at least some folks who really wanted it and would have appreciated it. Good for the Backstreet Boys fan who told him to piss up a rope.
posted by dersins at 9:07 AM on August 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

and to think I've been wasting my time using Python for data analysis!
posted by piyushnz at 9:29 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just sad I didn't think of this first.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 9:38 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's a Pokemon. Or someone misspelled the Evil Galactic Ruler of the Star Wars Universe.

Emperor Palpitoad
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

See, I feel like "tweet to win $Prize" contests are really annoying marketing campaigns, so anything that makes them less frequent is a net positive.
posted by JDHarper at 10:18 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Reminds me of my recent contest spree. For a week or two, when work was slow, I found a google dork for a popular contest widget. So after sorting them by timeframe, I could enter a lot of them by repetition. Always wanted to set up a macro for it, but I got a decent haul anyhow, and I was able to be selective about what I entered.
posted by pragmaddux at 12:18 PM on August 4, 2015

I see lucky Hunter Scott won a package of Dude Wipes. Now there's a valuable prize.
posted by DrMew at 1:40 PM on August 4, 2015

I once won an online contest by writing an x11 automation script

That in itself should be grounds for victory. X11 (shudders).
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:45 PM on August 4, 2015

250 Dogecoin [[I sort of know what this is, but what is that? Is he rich? Or is it like 14 cents?]]

Such coin.
posted by Chuffy at 4:57 PM on August 4, 2015

I thought it was a dick move too until I read the article. He says he would always contact the prize givers if he didn't want or couldn't use the item and ask them to give it to someone else.
posted by lollusc at 1:30 AM on August 5, 2015

x11's awesome. Sure wayland will probably be the end of it, but in the meantime it's served me well for 30 years. Can't say that about much other software.
posted by Poldo at 2:25 PM on August 5, 2015