(no subject)

[camwyn]

Oh, barf. You know that "I Write Like" quiz thing from a few days ago? Scam. For googlebombing, basically. It's a vanity press trying to raise their search ranks by getting people to link to their page with that code:

Yep, it’s SEO. And they’re using social engineering to get those links wide-spread and high in the Google stats. Helpful little cut-n-paste code to put in your blog!

They're not even ETA: apparently they're at least partially trying. Nevertheless, when it comes to their purpose, they lie like rugs.

ETA 2: Word from the meme creator when asked why he chose a list of thirty-seven white guys and three white women and all of them wrote in English as their native language except for just one and that's it:

I’ve added more writers into the database
recently. But I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due
to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black,
Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to
differentiate_. All people are equal to me, and equality means not
looking at skin color or different types of chromosomes.

I think the question is closed.

Comments

[derien.livejournal.com]

Weird. I assumed they'd set up some kind of analysis, because the thing I wrote that I'd intended and tried hard to write like P.G. Wodehouse did come up as being 'like' him. And I wasn't surprised that Ennui (http://derien.rulesthe.net/wrote/ennui5-0.txt) came up as like Nabokov.

[camwyn]

I know a lot of people who got curious and dropped chunks of Stephen King or HP Lovecraft or other writers that the results cited into the analyzer, and only came out with the same writer about half the time.

[derien.livejournal.com]

But any writer's complete body of writing might actually analyze differently than any particular small chunk.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Eor just let me know that the inventor of that writing analysis thing (he seems sure it's the same one) was interviewed on NPR last night. So I think it actually was doing something, not just luck.

[camwyn]

Huh. Okay. Well, that's something, at least.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Oh, and look at another kind of fail in the meme (http://zia-narratora.livejournal.com/627422.html). zia_narratora wrote to the coder, asking why 37 of the authors were white males, 3 were white females, and there were no people of color at all. This was the coder's response:

I've added more writers into the database recently. But I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to differentiate_. All people are equal to me, and equality means not looking at skin color or different types of chromosomes.

I think the question is closed.

Yep. All writers are equal. But white writers are more equal than others.

An othering vanity press. We need that so much.

[camwyn]

*face* *palm*

[lilpocketninja.livejournal.com]

Ever notice how people who 'don't care about' race or gender always wind up picking white guys? Why, it's almost as if they believe white guys are inherently superior oh wait.

[camwyn]

Apparently he got bunches of his sample texts for analysis from Project Gutenberg, since that was public domain foo. Which, fine, but Vatsyayana was the single most popular author being downloaded at the time, and funny how he left the text of the Kama Sutra out of his algorithms... Sun Tzu was apparently high up there in the downloads too, and yet he skipped right over his work. Maybe it's changed since this post went up, I don't know- but I doubt it.

I'm using the Megatron icon for this.

[nesmith.livejournal.com]

Oh that's a bunch of bullshit.

I toyed around with that thing a little bit because I was bored, but I don't take any stock in it. I've only read one of Nabokov's works but have been studying/learning from Stephen King and Star Trek writers for decades, so I don't buy the results.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Oh, lame.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Okay, wut?

[chanter1944]

Seconding the comment above - greeeeeat, an othering vanity press. Thanks for nothing, whoever. If I had the icon, Daisy would be giving you the WTF? treatment as only a tortie can.*

I'm very, very glad I didn't repost my results after I took that thing, suddenly. Granted, I'd sooner not make it widely known that significant chunks of my writing read like *Dan Brown*...

Someone should totally do the rebel thing and come up with a properly representative, not-link-seeking literary analysis. Wishful thinking, me? Why neeeeever. :)

*Not you, Cam. Whoever wrote that survey.

[camwyn]

I figured as much. No worries. I'm just gonna stick with my Lord High Protector Megatron Demands An Explanation For This Slag icon, myself.