We spoke to the creator of Boy Bye Bot, the bot that rejects boys for you
The best way to bid farewell to fuckboys and Tinder weirdos
In a world where our phones are constantly blowing up with texts from the latest fuckboy, DMs from some random Tinder guy and rude tweets from internet trolls, women have finally been given a breath of fresh air via the Boy Bye Bot.
The bot, which can be reached at 626-466-3293, (626-GOODBYE), carries on a seemingly normal conversation for multiple messages, until informing the sender that they are, indeed, talking to a chat bot.
We spoke to the creator, Hassan Ali, to learn more about the bot and the tremendous response it has received from women around the world who are tired — so tired! — of having to constantly respond to unwanted textual advances.
In the time you’ve created the bot, have you received negative responses from either people who’ve had it used on them it or have heard of it?
No negative responses that I’ve heard of, but just to reinforce the harassment policy that I’m committed to, I programmed the bot to come clean after a few texts. So it says, like, “Hey, this is actually a bot. The person who gave you this number wasn’t quite interested (sorry!). To stop receiving texts, just delete this number.” While this bot is supposed to be fun, I still want to make sure people don’t feel like they’ve been completely tricked. That’s not cool either. One love!
Do you find that people, generally, refuse to accept that it’s a bot and will continue trying to text it?
A few people actually DO continue to interact with it, even after getting the “this is actually a bot” text. They’ve texted back stuff like “I know this is a bot but this is kinda fun.” Funny to see that! Glad that people are having fun with it, rather than taking it too seriously.
What was your impetus to create the bot? Was there an exact moment you realized that something like this needed to be created? And why have it differ from the Rejection Hotline that came before it?
Obviously, the fact that women have to deal with advances isn’t anything new. I’ve been dabbling with chatbots recently, and after a night of hanging out with some female friends and actually reading some of the gross texts they received on Tinder, etc., the idea just spontaneously sprung to mind: a chatbot that handles texting back fuckboys. I remembered how Rejection Hotline was a similar idea, but that was only for phone calls. It’s 2017, everyone be texting, yo! So it needed a 2017 update. It also differs from Rejection Hotline because the bot offers up a bunch of different talking points, rather than one universal “rejection” message anyone would hear when you called the Rejection Hotline.
And, along similar lines, your bot will often send men links to Jezebel articles. Do you think there’s a need for men, especially, to be exposed to women’s journalism?
I love Jezebel. As a matter of fact, I work at The Onion, and Jezebel is a sister company of ours. I think sites like Jezebel do a huge, critically needed service. For women, but also for men out there. I’m astonished at how many female journalists are harassed on Twitter by men who feel their power is being threatened in some way (look at what happened with Lauren Duca recently!). I’ve never really understood it. But whatever, more men do need more exposure to sites and journalism like that to understand that one, this isn’t just a man’s world, dudes, and two, we need to be active allies to help support issues concerning women.
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Bucknell University