Sam Lavigne’s @CSPANFive has found its moment

It’s not new; it’s just much, much better.

C-SPAN 5 is a Twitter bot from beloved Brooklyn internet weirdo Sam Lavigne that chops up blocks of previously drab C-SPAN programming and makes supercuts from a few keywords found therein. Consider this piece featuring beleaguered Press Secretary Sean Spicer and you get the point:

PRESIDENT and CONGRESS and PEOPLE and WHITE pic.twitter.com/EnhCeWdysp

— CSPAN 5 (@CSPANFive) February 24, 2017

Lavigne rolled out C-SPAN 5 in March 2015. Two years later, it all seems to make a lot more sense. Here in the Trump administration things are increasingly surreal.

“Generally speaking, I’m interested in exploring techniques for shrinking down large inventories, lists, and bodies of texts,” Lavigne told Vice’s Creators Project back in 2015.

The bot is programmed in Python using audiogrep and moviepy, according to Vice. Whatever the mechanics, one thing is for sure: It is Good.

Ummmmmmm pic.twitter.com/f0XiLLq0p1

— CSPAN 5 (@CSPANFive) February 28, 2017