GIF and circumstance

Only nine months too late to truly capture the zeitgeist, I made an automated parody of #whatshouldwecallme-style tumblrs. It’s called GIF and Circumstance. (Warning: potentially NSFW.)

A “#whatshouldwecallme-style tumblr” is one in which animated GIFs are paired with a title expressing a circumstance or mood—usually a clause beginning with “when.” I wrote a Python script to make these kinds of posts automatically. Here’s what it does:

(1) Search Twitter for tweets containing the word “when.”
(2) Extract the “when” clause from such tweets.
(3) Use Pattern to identify “when” clauses with suitable syntax (i.e., clauses in which a subject directly follows “when”; plus some other heuristic fudging)
(4) Post the “when” clause as the title of a tumblr post, along with an animated GIF randomly chosen from the imgur gallery.

The results range from nonsensical to eerily appropriate. Not bad for a weekend hack.

UPDATE: GIF and Circumstance on Metafilter!

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