There's this silly little gadget that I found today. You enter a part of your blog writings into a box, it "analyzes" it and comes up with a famous author with a similar writing style. I wanted to write like Joyce Carol Oates. Even though I know I could never write anything like she could, I would be so tickled if I had a doofy internet gadget that said I wrote like JCO.
So I copied a blog entry and pasted into the little form and hit submit.
I got this:
James Joyce. I know the name and kinda-sorta, know why he's famous, but I have never read anything James Joyce has ever written and after perusing his Wikipedia, I'm pretty sure my blog writings have nowhere near the class or charisma of anything Joyce has ever jotted on paper.
So I picked a different blog entry and entered again.
James Joyce.
I reloaded, thinking it's a random glitch, entered in the same blog entry... James Joyce. Picked yet another entry, and still, James Joyce.
This gadget machine must be broken.
So I picked an entry that was so obviously not in the style of the blogs I entered before... and got this:
I don't even know who that is.
One more try, a different entry. JCO FTW.
I write like
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
I'm sorry, who?
I think the gadget must work by calculating your average paragraph length. It has nothing to do with my actual writing or skills. What they don't tell you is that this gadget has an unmentioned, unintended side effect.
Suddenly, I feel really... really. Stupid.
I need to read more.
I just did it and got James Joyce also...didn't try again, but thinking maybe it is random? Or maybe it's powered by these authors to get you to look up their work? Just a thought....
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