The Internet Breaks Anti-Abortion Twitterbot Using Rick Astley Lyrics

A lot of it involved 4chan's notorious /b/ messageboard

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by Stevie Martin |
Published on

This morning's WTF news is a tale of two halves. The first is pretty grim: an anti-abortion bot was set up by 50 Million Names to tweet the names of aborted foetuses because 'Naming these children helps heal the wounds of family members, abortionists, and of our nation' (according to the website). The internet didn't take kindly to this and Tweeters (many of them from 4chan's infamous /b/ message board) were quick to find a loophole: the bot would tweet every name submitted.

For five months, they mercilessly trolled the bot, making it tweet lyrics to Rick Astley's song Never Gonna Give You Up, names like '2COOL4BIRTH' and choice phrases such as 'Mr Hitler did nothing wrong'.

READ MORE: It's Worth Remembering That Women Should Be The Ones Who Decide When It Comes To Abortions

The now-inactive Twitter accountwould begin each tweet with 'A new baby was named!' followed by the submitted name. No, 'A new baby was named! HAIL SATAN' isn't big and it isn't clever but it's pretty bloody funny. In an attempt to stop rogue baby-namers, the bot then began to censor swear words, which didn't make much of a difference because 'A new baby was named! ?????? tongue my ????' still doesn't sound anything like a legit name. Neither does '@barackobama go ???? yourself', unless you're insanely political.

While people still submitted legitimate names to the Twitter bot, it seems like the trolls finally took their toll, with The Daily Dot reporting that it's impossible to make submissions, and the account is no longer working. The website and the project is still up and running, unfortunately, but it's still nice to see the power of Twitter and 4Chan being used for good rather than evil this week, non?

Follow Stevie on Twitter @5tevieM

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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