Discount Strong Bad emails
"What kind of role did you have in mind, Matt? Robot overlord?! "
On March 30, 2019, Strong Bad posted to @StrongBadActual:
>For April Fool's day this year, I wish Bubs would feed all my sbemails into his discount neural network and see what kinda insane, eyeball-covered gold it would spit out.
This Tweet was followed by offers from numerous Twitter users to perform this experiment with actual neural networks. Janelle Shane, the owner of artificial intelligence blog AI Weirdness, extracted the text of every Strong Bad Email from the Homestar Runner Wiki and fed them into her neural network to produce over sixty original emails to Strong Bad, ranging from fairly coherent to unsettlingly bizarre. Strong Bad linked to Shane's "Discount Strong Bad emails" blog post on April 1st. On the 3rd, he shared audio of himself reading and briefly responding to one of the emails, and hinted that it could be made into something like a podcast.
Some of these emails are from familiar faces such as Dan, FL from anything and Clancy from long pants, while other senders, like Neal Haraldsson from Hamburg, are completely invented. The emails display a range of grammatical correctness that reflects that of the real email show, and make occasional oblique references to other parts of Homestar Runner, like the mention of a "pom-pom-pom" and a sender named "trudy marzipan". Additional emails, inquiring about such topics as building a horse and having swamp rats in one's bed, can be viewed by subscribing to email updates from AI Weirdness.
Appearances
- @StrongBadActual tweet (30 Mar 2019) — The original Tweet that started this project.
- @StrongBadActual tweet (31 Mar 2019) — @AnaBlazewing's request for Strong Bad Email transcripts for @botnikstudios's neural network.
- @StrongBadActual tweet (31 Mar 2019) — @daftkifty's request for Strong Bad Email transcripts for @JanelleCShane's neural network.
- @StrongBadActual tweet (31 Mar 2019) — Strong Bad humbly thanks @JanelleCShane for her work.
- @StrongBadActual tweet (1 Apr 2019) — The final celebratory Tweet.
- @StrongBadActual tweet (3 Apr 2019) — Strong Bad posts a video responding to one of the emails.
Fun Facts
- Strong Bad acknowledges the Homestar Runner Wiki in several of the above Tweets.
External Links
- Discount Strong Bad emails
- Subscribe to AI Weirdness and view bonus emails
- @JanelleCShane on Twitter
| April Fools' Day |
|---|
|
2003: kingoftown.com (King of Town Main Page, Revenge of the King, King of Townmail) 2004: Under Construction 2005: HomestarRunner.com: PAY PLUS! 2006: April Fools' 2006 2009: April Fool 09 2010: Xeriouxly Forxe 2014: April Fool 2014 2015: sbemail 206 2016: Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2 2018: the next april fools thing 2019: Discount Strong Bad emails 2022: parenting |
