You know that awkward moment when you can tell a first date isn't going well? Or your coworkers haven't shown up for a work event and you're alone in a room full of business casual strangers? Or you're watching "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" (again) at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night?
The instinct in all of these situations – and many, many more – is to reach for your phone and feel busy. You're not alone, you're multi-tasking! You're making plans for later, or responding to that important text message.
The problem there, of course, is there isn't always something to respond to when you need it most. You can pray your roommate will inadvertently save you from Todd the investment banker's eg0-fest. Or you can just text BaeBot: (617) 315-4161.
"I went on one too many bad dates in a row and half-jokingly (I stress "half" here) told Rob 'I'm done with dating, I just want to make something that will always text me back,'" Jess Whittaker, who came up with the idea for BaeBot with her roommate Rob Erskine, told me. (Both are pictured above.)
Erskine "started building it that night," she went on. "I wrote responses that would work for a variety of texts. We knew we wouldn't be able to answer specific questions but we still wanted the responses to work regardless of what was said to BaeBot. We had it up and running in about a week."
The result is a charmingly simple and effective auto-texting tool. You can text "Sup bae?" as I did, and immediately receive a "How's your day babe?" in response. A couple innocuous texts later and you might arrive at an exchange like this:
To anyone observing me during this exchange, I looked appropriately involved in a digital conversation with someone important. My fiancee, perhaps, or a significant other. Maybe Todd the I-Banker. The point is I looked busy, when I was really anything but.
BaeBot began as a fun pet project for the duo, who live in Brookline. Whittaker is a copywriter at CTP and Erskine is a senior creative technologist at Hill Holliday.
"It really just started as a fun one-off thing, but since we launched in late February we've gotten over 10,000 messages to it," Erskine told me. "With such a great outcome we've certainly given some thought as to how to monetize it. I joked that we should reach out to Tostinos or something and ask if they want to sponsor a text: 'I don’t wanna cook tonight. Want to just Tostinos® Pizza Rolls™ and chill?'"
There's a bank with over 100 responses that the duo is adding to all the time. They've also experimented with changing responses based on major events going on, like the Oscars.
"During the Oscars we added responses like 'I bet I'd win Best Original Screenplay if I wrote about you,' 'We'd be such a power couple on the red carpet,' and 'You're the Best Picture of my heart,'' Erskine added.
They did something else unprecedented during that event, too. "We actually sent an unsolicited response from BaeBot to everyone who has ever texted it before, the moment after Leonardo DiCaprio finally won his first oscar," said Erskine. "You could see the surge of usage after it was sent out, and people really loved it."
If BaeBot is anything, it's fun. You're basically having a text conversation with a witty robot, after all. But it could also be useful, given the right social scenario. Like that date or work event. Or maybe something a bit more personal: "Maybe you need a screenshot to destroy your horrible ex with."
Someone asking to have dinner with your parents or whether the two of you should get a puppy ought to suffice.
