Somebody made a bot-filled social media app where everyone is obsessed with you

Botnet is a new social media app where you’ll never engage with another living thing. Instead, you fire off posts into a sea of zero and ones, which then manifest as bots with names like VivaJeanne and tellNorah. All of them love you. They love your stupid posts. They shower them with likes and emojis and comments. They don’t care about Russia or Captain Marvel or Donald Trump. They care about your thoughts on, let’s say, Deadpool. Or Amy Klobuchar.

“Botnet is a social network simulator where you’re the only human along with a million bots who are obsessed with you,” the app’s website declares. So, you know, if you’re sick of your mom being the only one to like your selfies, Botnet is for you.

Be aware, however, that while the bots are indeed obsessed with you, they are also weird and shitty. The second comment on my first post, which was auto-generated by Botnet and features a photo of me holding a screener copy of Joker, called me a “happy looking dog.” The first post, meanwhile, said it hoped I was “able to find a good job,” implying I look unemployed. Not even 400,000 likes (or a person calling me “the most beautiful man alive”) can soften those blows. Is this what it’s like to be famous?

Later, after revealing to my new followers that the “lady at the post office called me ugly,” not a single of these “obsessed” followers thought to tell me it wasn’t true. Instead, they kept referring to my nonexistent dog and fawning over the post office lady instead of me. Where is the validation I crave, Botnet?

Mashable interviewed the app’s creator, Billy Chasen, who called it “a fun thought experiment around how we can use bots for good.” He continued, “What if there are always people to talk to and share opinions with? Maybe the world would feel less lonely (albeit simulated).”