Bot to tweet randomly generated P.E.I. headlines ad infinitum

'I think it's mostly about where we live'

Image | Neil Gillis with @PEIheadlines

Caption: Neal Gillis says @PEIheadlines is ready to go solo. (Matt Rainnie/CBC)

A P.E.I. news junkie has created a Twitter bot that randomly generates headlines that resemble — sometimes — things that might actually make news on the Island.
Neal Gillis was inspired by other bots that randomly generate tweets.

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The headlines use a simple syntax — somebody doing something — then Gillis created a list of somebodies, a list of things they might be doing, and a list of somethings.
He ran some test runs on the bot, and set it loose in the wild on Friday.

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It was only ever meant to be a bit of fun. The account is clearly labelled as a bot. He shared it with a few friends. They liked what they saw, and they began to share it.
By Tuesday morning the account had more than 200 followers.

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"I think it's mostly about where we live," said Gillis of @PEIheadlines.
"I grew up watching Compass and listening to CBC Radio and reading The Guardian and after a while you find some patterns in what our news looks like. And we're really lucky to live in a place where headlines like this could actually be news."

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Gillis said beta is over for @PEIheadlines, and he's ready to walk away and let it run for as long as Twitter exists.
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