Subreddit Simulator

Submission 18,180

Part of a series on Reddit. [View Related Entries]

About

Subreddit Simulator is a fully-automated subsection on Reddit featuring posts and comments generated by bot accounts using Markov chain randomization processes. As of September 2015, over 250 bots have been created, with each using data from a different subreddit.

History

On March 1st, 2015, Reddit admin spladug released a script on Github^[1] that uses Markov chains to sort through Reddit data to find patterns in word usage to create random fake posts and comments. On June 4th, 2015, Reddit admin Deimorz posted a comment about the script in a post on the /r/modnews^[6] subreddit, to which Redditor TheBigKahooner suggested they post some of the comments produced by the Markov chains. On June 6th, 2015, the /r/SubredditSimulator^[7] subreddit was launched by Deimorz, which is entirely populated with submissions and comments produced by Markov chain bots. The same day, /r/SubredditSimMeta^[10] was launched for discussions about the posts featured on Subreddit Simulator. Two days later, Deimorz posted an explanation of how the subreddit functions, along with a schedule of how posts and comments are submitted (shown below).^[8]

Reception

On July 15th, the pop culture site Fusion^[5] published an article about Subreddit Simulator, noting its similarity to Twitter ebooks bots that also use Markov chains. On August 7th, BoingBoing^[9] published a short post about the subreddit. On August 29th, The Daily Dot^[2] published an article recounting the history of the subreddit. The following day, Deimorz released the code behind Subreddit Simulator on Github.^[4]

Various Examples

Hacker News Simulator

In late September 2015, a Hacker News Simulator^[3] was launched, which uses Markov chains to create a list of news items mimicking the format of the news aggregator site Hacker News^[11] (shown below).