Update June 2016

 

Cutupbot is a modernized and revamped version of Cutup written for Twitter. It’s a simple bot that creates haiku using the style of any given profile on Twitter. To interact with Cutupbot, simply send a message on Twitter @cutupbot indicating which account you wish to plagiarize. For instance “@cutupbot could you write for me a haiku of @dalailama?”, or simply “@cutupbot @dalailama” if you feel imperative.

 

Usually results will be more interesting or convincing if the account selected has at least several hundred messages. If Cutup doesn’t find a certain amount of words, it will refuse to generate a haiku.

 

Options:
You can specify to generate five messages at the time adding on your message the hashtag #gimmefive. If the account you are plagiarizing uses the English language, you may try the optional hashtag #kigo. Looking for a kigo works well only on a few accounts and your mileage may vary. Options can be combined together. “@cutupbot @dalailama #gimmefive #kigo”

 

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Cutup rearranges the words of the messages you receive and generates small composition of depthless wisdom and questionable hilarity. If you exchange a lot of SMSes with your buddies, this app is for you. The generated snippets of poetry try to follow as closely as possibly the haiku rules and will match the writing style and themes of your friends.

 

The app attempts to imitate two of the three haiku qualities: the “cutting” (kiru) and the 5-7-5 rule. The rule of kigo (seasonal reference) was implemented and later discarded in favor of a more desirable property, language independence. If your peers write to you SMSes in any latin-scripted language, you will probably be able to run Cutup. Very interesting haikus were generated in the following languages: english; portuguese; italian; spanish, french. I suspect that it wouldn’t work so well with German due to the larger average letter-count of the deutsche Sprache, but feel free to try it out for yourself.

 

In order to get the best results, use Cutup with the person you exchange the highest amount of interesting message. For this funny app I express my love and gratitude to: Paulo Patricio, Mark V. Shaney and Apophenia.