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

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's interesting... I don't recall seeing the publisher's ad on the results page when I did it - but then, I habitually blank out ads anyway.

On another note: I was right, word choice and sentence length were the triggers it cued off! (I knew it couldn't be paying any attention to punctuation after I tried Tolkien and got Lovecraft; Tolkien's use of colons is quite distinctive.)

I don't really see why people get miffy that it always gives you some famous author or other, no matter what you put in; it's a computer program. It had to give one of the answers available to it, and "You don't write like any famous author" obviously wasn't an option - not least because if it were included it would be so very common! ;-)

Oh well. It did make me sit down and think about the changes I can see in my own writing style since I got into fandom, and realize that I've been imitating other writers more than I want to. For that, at least, I thank it. :-)

[lolmac]

People got miffy because it's a con job. Yes, it's a computer program; it's a computer program that was designed to suck people in and lie to them, and by doing so to get a fast, widespread web presence that would boost the Google results of the parent company, so that they'd be in a better position to move on to the next step of the con job, sucking money out of would-be writers via the vanity press scam. The writing section of the web got taken for a ride.

Miffy is a good reaction to have to con artists; you have got to have some defensive armour, and miffy works. I don't like being lied to.

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can totally see where you're coming from.

The thing is, my knee-jerk reaction to miffy people is "hey, calm down and look at the other side of things!" That's because 99% of the miffiness I encounter is in politics - usually in situations where I'm familiar with the other side's arguments. Not that it helps, but then nothing helps in politics. o_O

So... I still don't understand why people were taking an Internet meme seriously enough that one ought to get mad about it not doing what it says on the tin, but I apologize if I said anything to make you crankier than you were already. *sends hugs*

Now I am going to go look at some pretty pictures. ;-)

[lolmac]

Pretty pictures are good. And no, you didn't make me cranky. You did give me cause for concern -- you yourself were taking it seriously enough to get pondery about your own writing. And the 'other side' of this particular thing is the underbelly of the internet.

My partner took the time to read through the very long discussion threads on Making Light, which featured the Russian hacker who created the meme getting busted wide open for the fraudulent aspects of his behaviour. He got huffy at being outed and tried to deny that he was doing anything more than having fun -- unfortunately for him, he had already posted to several hacker forums about the app he'd just finished developing, and his plans to make money off it. He ended up having his own greed screeds being quoted back at him in a very widely read public forum.

Con artists, including vanity presses, do a huge amount of damage. If you don't mind my saying this -- I know that your own life experience hasn't been terribly broad as yet, and it worried me to see you (and others) apparently shrugging it off.

I'll happily accept the hugs and return them freely in kind. No scam attached.

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

I'm ALWAYS pondery about my writing... I just don't usually post it in public for fear of boring my flist to tears. Thanks for your concern, anyway.

'If you don't mind my saying this -- I know that your own life experience hasn't been terribly broad as yet'

*grins* I don't mind. It's perfectly true. And it's always nice to know that I have friends watching out for me! ;-)