Sexbot Followers

The Twitter user known as @Retr0Joe noticed recently that he was getting rather a lot of generic females seemingly interested in his (and I don’t wish to cause offence to him, especially since mine is pretty similar) Twitter feed full of retrogaming crap, liking his tweets and stuff.

I’d seen the phenomenon a while back, with these fake ladies following me and liking tweets about Gauntlet and Psycho Fox. At one point I was getting so many a day I just gave up blocking and reporting them. Looking back over the 100 or so that followed me in a single week, most have now vanished, presumably enough people blocked and reported them, but a few remain.

Are you also being bombarded with followers claiming to be women? Maybe you hadn’t noticed they were mostly sexbots? Here’s a handy guide:

How to tell the difference between a Normal Human Woman and a Sexbot

The first massive giveaway is obvious if you ask yourself one question: Why is a semi-naked 19 year old girl following a fat middle-aged man like me when all I do is post about old video games? If you’ve no valid answer (and of course, you haven’t), then it’s likely they’re a sexbot.

Then you need to look at their bio. What’s that? They don’t have one? Or they do and it’s just a link to somewhere else where you can “get to know them *giggle*” or whatever? Sexbot.

Look at how many times they’ve actually tweeted and the number of people they follow. They follow 8,000 people but their only tweet is a picture of a bare bottom? Sexbot.

Look at their avatar. Do a reverse Google Image search on it. What’s that? The same image is used by 50 other Twitter sexbots? Sexbot.

And now, a Quiz

Using this knowledge (and without looking at the filenames), try to guess which of these three people – all of whom follow me – are sexbots, and which are not. You may be surprised (you won’t – it’s bloody obvious).

Follower 1