Amabie: A twitter bot that tweets hope

Hope is lost. People are scared of the unknown virus, uncertain about what is to come, and are scared of deaths. People lost faith in the government /1 1/ From managing health infrastructure to managing migrant workers . State governments, although are pulling all-nighters and trying their best, are failing in the face of calamity. Image sourced from Wikipedia Amabie Amabie is a yokai with three legs, a body with scales and a beaked face. She's cute

Some governments are losing their shit because of their poverty, while some intentionally because of ignorance and stupidity. Hope is lost.

Social isolation has taken a personal toll on me. My primal mind is not able to comprehend about the impact of uncertainty on me, but time will tell that. In such testing times, a psycho-mythological concepts comes to save my mental health–Amabie. It is a Japanese powerful creature called Yokai who said to a farmer that the coming three years will bear good harvest or an epidemic. Worried farmer asked if anything can be done in case of a pandemic. Kind Amabie instructed him to show people her picture to spare them from the disease.

This myth was adopted by Japanese artists and started drawing images of amabie and posting it on twitter. And what followed was beautiful. Artists, graphic designers, people who can draw started drawing pictures of Amabie and posted in bulk on twitter. These posts came along with prayers, blessings, and hopeful invocations to amabie. It is just beautiful /2 2/ The Japanese have this amazing way of using repetition to get rid of anxiety. At an individual level, the psycho-mythology of folding 2000 paper cranes gives person a wish is on the similar lines. It frees one from worry, anxiety, shows new direction and makes one hopeful. and was the exact thing I needed–Hope without rational convinces about vaccines or promises to get back to normal life. I decided to collect all the hope in one place and spread it to as many people as I can.

I made a twitter-bot to represent this collective hope.

In case the hyperlink does not work, here is the url https://twitter.com/amabie14 The automation of this interaction of retweeting every image of amabie fills me up with joy, as I made something that spreads hope! However mythical it be! Endnote: A rhetorical question. Can a twitter bot be art?

The initiation

One of the first tweets with a beautiful image of amabie: