YTMND is dead. Long live YADN.
January 25, 2016 12:30 AM   Subscribe

You Are Dog Now is a Twitter account that matches pictures sent to it with 'doggie doppelgangers'. Since being discovered by BuzzFeed last week and forcibly made viral, YADN has matched hundreds of people with dogs, some simply by appearance (1, 2, 3), others based on expression (1, 2, 3), location (1, 2, 3) or props (1, 2, 3). And yes, some Celebrities Are Dog Now (1, 2, 3).
posted by oneswellfoop (14 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
If this is a bot, it's damn clever.

But it can't be (considering horse_ebooks turned out not to be, I mean).
posted by flippant at 12:32 AM on January 25, 2016


This makes me want to get back on twitter so I can have them do me.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:25 AM on January 25, 2016


For some reason, clicking through on my iPad I was only seeing the "before" pictures, which made this seem like a masterful postmodern joke you were all playing along with.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:56 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I just keep scrolling through these and asking How... how?...
posted by jinjo at 5:26 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


This can't be a bot but at the same time can't not be a bot, and so therefore obviously doesn't exist.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:41 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


The system went online January, 2016. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, January 25th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Skynet pairs them all with funny dog pictures.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:56 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


This is amazing! I am dog now.
posted by moonmilk at 6:11 AM on January 25, 2016


My favorite: you are dog and your baby is duckling now
posted by moonmilk at 6:20 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


All I can see are the befores on my phone. I am sad dog now.
posted by deludingmyself at 7:27 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


PHEW! YTMND is still up.
posted by Zerowensboring at 8:38 AM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


This...seems like it could be a lot of work for a not-bot.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:55 AM on January 25, 2016


I really want to know how this works. On the one hand there are only ~750 posted, which is few enough that there's probably a human at the end deciding what to post.

On the other hand, most of these pairs don't seem outside the realm of what a computer vision system might detect as similar. And it seems like you'd need some kind of similarity search, it would be totally infeasible to look through the images manually. My guess is it's a human manually using some kind of CV system and picking the best of the hits that come up.

But where do you get such a comprehensive corpus of dog photographs?? Pretty sure there's never been a better case for open access to research data.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:37 AM on January 25, 2016


I tried a quick test with a few of the most recent Dogs Now.

Google image search for "two dogs with ice cream" - the picture they chose is in the first page of results.

"dog with broccoli" - ditto

"dog with pool noodles" - same

I wouldn't want to do that all day, but --

actually, yes, maybe I would do this all day. Hey YADN, are you hiring?
posted by moonmilk at 10:49 AM on January 25, 2016


Where is all this bot discussion coming from? Neither the Twitter site nor the MeFi post mention anything about bots.

Anyway, this is super cool. If it's some guy/gal doing this, it's super cool. If it's a bot doing this, it's super cool. If it's Hitler's ghost doing this it's...okay, well, then, it's not super cool, but it's really something.
posted by Bugbread at 3:34 PM on January 25, 2016


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