As an average music fan, receiving the opportunity to interact with your heroes can be one of the most joyous and rewarding things to happen. Whether meeting them after a show, receiving a hand-written letter or posing for a quick photo, the interactions come as small moments for the artists to give back to fans and for listeners to show them how much their music has affected them.
In this new day and age of social media, however, the easiest and most effective way to communicate with your favorite artists comes through tweets, Instagram tags and Facebook statuses. When your short message receives a favorite, repost or comment, it can garner a similar feeling of excitement among fans who would never get the chance to speak with their idols otherwise. When this type of interaction is traded to an automated response system, however, the magic is sorely lost.
The practice of employing Twitter and Instagram bots has become very common within the EDM sphere, with DJs like Jauz, Marshmello, Flosstradamus and Dada Life contributing only a small portion to the bot pool. In exchange for an automatic service that instantly likes, favorites and even comments on posts with keywords, tags or references, these accounts can see a boost in followage and interaction, albeit a very minimal one.
By scrolling through the often late-night likes of these DJs’ popular social media accounts, very strange and sometimes illicit posts from obscure users can be found with a custom Marshmello comment or a like from Breath Carolina.
Whether it’s a blurry photo of food, an irrelevant inspirational quote, or simply a post with the correct EDM-related hashtag, you can bet that these DJs’ bots will find it and show it some love.
Other than coming off as creepy, the bot-using practice is effective in removing a good portion of the unique and special substance of a real fan-to-artist interaction. Even though these artists retain access to the accounts, and can post real likes and comments at their leisure, the addition of endlessly weird favorites on posts that have nothing to do with themselves or EDM only create a thicker barrier between them and their listeners.
Have a look at some of the strangest bot interactions from the DJs listed above.
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