

You may have heard that Amazon is selling a "KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT" t-shirt. How did such a thing come to pass? Well, as Pete Ashton explains, this is a weird outcome of an automated algorithm that just tries random variations on "KEEP CALM AND," offering them for sale in Amazon's third-party marketplace and printing them on demand if any of them manage to find a buyer.

The t-shirts are created by an algorithm. The word "algorithm" is a little scary to some people because they don't know what it means. It's basically a process automated by a computer programme, sometimes simple, sometimes complex as hell. Amazon's recommendations are powered by an algorithm. They look at what you've been browsing and buying, find patterns in that behaviour and show you things the algorithm things you might like to buy. Amazons algorithms are very complex and powerful, which is why they work. The algorithm that creates these t-shirts is not complex or powerful. This is how I expect it works.

1) Start a sentence with the words KEEP CALM AND.

2) Pick a word from this long list of verbs. Any word will do. Don't worry, I'm sure they're all fine.

3) Finish the sentence with one of the following: OFF, THEM, IF, THEM or US.

4) Lay these words out in the classic Keep Calm style.

5) Create a mockup jpeg of a t-shirt.

6) Submit the design to Amazon using our boilerplate t-shirt description.

7) Go back to 1 and start again.

There are currently 529,493 Solid Gold Bomb clothing items on Amazon. Assuming they survive this and don't get shitcanned by Amazon I wouldn't be at all surprised if they top a million in a few months.

It costs nothing to create the design, nothing to submit it to Amazon and nothing for Amazon to host the product. If no-one buys it then the total cost of the experiment is effectively zero. But if the algorithm stumbles upon something special, something that is both unique and funny and actually sells, then everyone makes money.