I Write Like . . . a *ing con job

[lolmac]

Aha.

Remember the "I Write Like" meme, which looked like so much fun until we found out that no matter what crap you entered, it told you that you wrote like Somebody Awesome?

Spam, spam, spam, spam . . . it's a baited hook for vanity publishers.

I had mentioned to at least one person that I wondered what would happen if you actually entered the text of the authors themselves; the folks on Making Light went one better than that here, and then Revealed All in this later post.

On the other hand, I no longer feel ridiculous for having played with the thing -- not when such luminaries as Neil Gaiman did too.


July 2010

Comments

[pepper-field.livejournal.com]

Eh. I can't say I'm that bothered - most of the 'What X Are You' memes I see around LJ are not-so-subtly linked to dating sites. At least this one doesn't ask for your email and then spam you forever afterwards (or, like one a while ago, replace the image later with something obscene). It was obviously nonsense, but then they all are.

[lolmac]

Yes, they're all nonsense, but they're fun nonsense. This one wasn't fun; that's why the whole thing bothered me. The very slickness set my teeth on edge. I couldn't figure out what the point was. Now I know.

Teresa Neilsen Hayden did a nice summing up of the annoyance element, even setting aside the spam question:

"Writing an application that could analyze prose style would be a real achievement. Writing one that compares vocabulary (and probably a few other characteristics like sentence length) is trivially easy. I’m not saying I could do it right this moment; I’m just saying it’s not hard.

Foo. Wanted cool; got balonium."

When the meme was in full sweep, I saw a lot of people inclined to take it seriously, and that bothered me also. I was seeing good people having their guards pulled down by the earnest flattery. I've had too many friends fall victim to con artists to feel relaxed or comfortable when something like that happens.

I also remember a Gay Pride some years back. The frothing fundamentalists always show up waving God-hates-you signs; it's part of what you expect. But this year, for the first year, the signs were high quality, professionally printed. That made me worry -- I didn't like seeing them applying more money, time, effort and competence to that activity.

So give me cheerful memes with transparent motives, driven by sloppy websites, and I'll play with them and not wonder if they're trying to steal anything more than a few minutes of my time. This pissed me off.