# Internet Bot Internet Bot is the catch-all label for software that runs automated tasks online, from game grinders and chatterbots to web crawlers and botnets used in DDoS attacks[1]. The idea goes back to the late 1970s in Multi-User Dungeons, and every era since produced its own bot fight, from the WoW gold-farming bot Glider to Cleverbot and its Turing-Test cousins fooling live audiences at intelligence contests[2]. YouTube clips of Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft matches taken over by bots turned the whole thing into a spectator genre[3]. ## Origin The oldest Internet bots go back to the late 1970s, when players hooked modified Telnet clients into Multi-User Dungeons and wrote scripts that fired commands at the game server for a competitive edge[4]. The chatterbot line began in 1981, when British programmer Rollo Carpenter coded a program built to trick users into thinking they were talking to a human, then shipped it online as Jabberwacky in 1997; two Jabberwacky characters, George and Joan, won the Loebner Prize in 2005 and 2006[2]. Game botting hit a legal wall in June 2005 with Glider, an MDY Industries product for World of Warcraft that could grind gold and levels while a player was away from the keyboard[3]. Blizzard sued and won a $6 million judgment in July 2008, and in December 2010 the Ninth Circuit ruled that Glider violated the DMCA[4]. - **Platform:** Multi-User Dungeons / IRC (early), YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 1978 ## Overview Bots split into a handful of families that share little beyond being scripts. Game bots handle grinding, aiming, and gold-farming inside titles like World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike: Source, with recorded matches showing bot-controlled players walking into walls or getting kited for hours[1]. Chatterbots try to fake conversation well enough to pass the Turing Test, an old target the Cornell Creative Machines Lab pushed further in 2011 by recording two of them arguing on camera[2]. Web crawlers do the quieter work of walking pages and building indexes, a use case Matthew Gray kicked off in June 1993 with the World Wide Web Wanderer, and botnets sit at the ugly end, pools of hijacked machines wired together to blast DDoS traffic at a target or push spam in bulk[4]. Slang uses drifted too, with Urban Dictionary posts calling 'internet bot' a jab at users who cannot tell a browser from a search engine[5]. ## How It Spread Bot culture spread on video mostly through gaming clips. On June 1, 2011, YouTuber BosmouZ Valve posted footage of a bot playing an online match of Counter-Strike: Source, an early viral look at what an unattended bot round actually looks like[1]. On January 22, 2015, YouTuber ZybakTV uploaded footage of a World of Warcraft battleground overrun with bots, showing what a large PvP match looked like when almost no one in it was actually human[3]. Chatterbots took a separate path. On August 26, 2011, Cornell Creative Machines Lab uploaded footage of two chatterbots holding a conversation, and the clip pulled in more than 4.7 million views over the next five years[2]. The term also picked up slang uses along the way. Urban Dictionary posts riff on 'internet bot' as a dig at users who cannot tell a browser from a search engine[5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Internet Bot? Internet Bot is a catch-all term for software that runs automated tasks online, covering game bots, chatterbots, web crawlers, spambots, and DDoS-driving botnets[1]. ### Where did Internet Bot come from? The concept traces to the late 1970s inside Multi-User Dungeons, then grew through 1980s IRC scripting and the 1993 launch of Matthew Gray's World Wide Web Wanderer[2]. ### What does Internet Bot mean? The term means any program that performs Internet actions without a human at the keyboard, whether that is grinding a game, faking a chat, or crawling web pages[1]. ### How do you use Internet Bot? There is no shared template. Users run packaged tools like Glider for World of Warcraft or write their own scripts for IRC, game clients, or web crawlers, which is what got MDY Industries sued for $6 million[3]. ### Is Internet Bot still popular? Bot activity is still active in every category, from game bots to chatterbots to botnets, and the word itself picked up slang meanings on sites like Urban Dictionary[5]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGfm0Xaofns]() 2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY]() 3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHeSHT2ZDnU]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-bot]() 5. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Internet%20Bot]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/internet-bot Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library