New York Times First Said
Since the New York Times is the paper of record, it’s significant, in one way or another, when the newspaper uses a word for the very first time. That’s the premise behind @NYT_First_Said, a robot that tweets when the Times prints a word it’s never used before. Recent examples include “autonoetic,” “herbalicious,” and “pocketlessness.”
Congratulations to this robot that tweets words the first time they're printed in the New York Times. Today it got to tweet its own name https://t.co/rVc7LBPYbv
— Thomas Germain (@thomasgermain) July 7, 2019
People like this robot, but it’s mostly thankless work, with one exception. Back in 2019, the New York Times wrote an article about it, which means the robot got to tweet its own name. It was the first and almost certainly the last time @NYT_First_Said will ever get to talk about itself, which has the undeniable ring of melancholy to it.
The robot is no longer running on Twitter, but you can see its work on Bluesky and Mastodon.
