Botnik Studios
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About
Botnik Studios are a team of comedy writers who, with the help of a predictive-text generator, create parodies of pop culture by inputting words from that piece of pop culture into the generator, creating idiom-specific keyboards. Comedy writers then select words from the keyboards to create surreal humor. Several of the studio's creations have gone viral.
History
Botnik Studios was created by comedy writer Jaime Brew and former New Yorker cartoonist Bob Mankoff in 2016.[1] They launched the website with the tech support of Techstars' Alexa Accelerator program. The Botnik website[2] launched in July of 2017. Their first creation was a parody of a Seinfeld script, and was posted September 17th, 2017 to Brew's Tumblr. [3]
The Seinfeld script was covered by the AV Club[4] on September 21st. On October 19th, Botnik created a Scrubs parody[5] that also saw some viral success. Their tweet of the parody gained over 8,000 retweets and 17,000 likes (shown below). It was covered by Digg.[6] On October 23rd, the studio was covered by Wired.[1] Other parodies by the studio include Star Wars: The Last Jedi user reviews, Arrested Development, and Fire and Fury.
The studio has also created video content. Their most popular with over 56,000 views is a parody of a turkey-preparation cooking video.
Harry Potter Predictive Text Chapter
Harry Potter Predictive Text Chapter refers to Botnik Studio's Harry Potter parody. On December 12th, 2017, @BotnikStudios tweeted a fake chapter of Harry Potter written by a robot trained on the books using predictive keywords as the text. The tweet of the chapter, from a fake book titled "Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash," gained over 33,000 retweets and 70,000 likes (shown below). The story was covered by many media outlets, including Daily Dot, Twitter Moments, Bustle, and Refinery29.
Coachella Lineup Poster
On January 23rd, 2018, Botnik Studios produced a fake Coachella poster by running thousands of band names through a generator, ending up with band names like "Fanch," "Billions of Mario," and "John x4." The poster went viral as many found the names humorous, and it was covered by publications including The Verge, Complex, and Digg.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Wired – THE SURREAL COMEDY BOT THAT'S TURNING AI INTO LOL
[3] Tumblr – Object Dreams
[4] AV Club – A bunch of comedy writers teamed up with a computer to write an episode of Seinfeld
[5] Twitter – @botnikstudios Scrubs
[6] Digg – A Hilarious 'Exact Average' Episode Of 'Scrubs' Written By AI And Four Comedians
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