Thlog #2

Already done with two weeks of writing two which means that we are (unfortunately) one fifth of the way through this quarter already. This week I feel has been a rather deep dive into the course writing assignments. PB1 A and B are now behind us, while the first full writing project is quickly approaching. This week, while exploring PB1B, I discovered the creations and capabilities of a genre generator. While before this class I knew what a genre was, and what a generator was, I had yet to put them together into a “genre generator.” Conventions, I learned, are perhaps the most important aspect of these generators. I found myself overlooking the glaringly obvious conventions of different genres, and thus work on not overcomplicating an analysis. For example, in the meme generator, I failed to mention the bold, white, black-outlined, capital font. This is something that before our in class discussion I thought to myself was too obvious to be worth stating. Wrong. Very wrong. After Wednesday’s class I realized that those “obvious” features of a genre are a huge part of what distinguishes it as its own. I tend to find myself struggling with hunting for minimal, complex, and buried details (in this case conventions), and overlooking what is directly in front of me. Not everything needs to be complex, and this project builder was a reminder of that to me. I’m interested to see how the project builders for the first writing project will tie in with it, and to bring together the concepts and skills that we have been focusing on for the last two weeks. Until next week thlogging—we will catch up again soon!

PB1B

When I first read the prompt which focused on the concept of a “genre generator” website, I was immediately a bit confused. I know what a genre is, and what a generator should do, but the concept of putting the two together seemed foreign to me. Before trying to determine the different conventions of each of the three sites, I spent some time playing around with the different results that I could obtain from each one. The three websites each had a distinct structure each time the “generate” button was clicked, though the content within this format differed. Thus, amongst each genre there was to some extent an element of consistency that remained no matter how many versions were generated.

The first generator I looked at was Pandyland, a website which created a new comic strip with each push of a button. The comics that were generated each had three boxes which seemed to be randomly placed together. Often times I did get new boxes, but I found some to be repeated more frequently than others. Boxes that I tended to see repeated were “What” in a jagged edged bubble which I believed to imply shouting, “Um… that was awkward,” and “Hello Finlay what is up.” Some of the conventions that I found within the comic strips were conversations bubbles (with different edges likely implying different tones), animated drawings (of one or two men), emotions, entertainment, and humor (to some extent). Due to the nature of a generator website, sometimes what is generated is more successful, per say, than others. I chose to add the words “per say” in the last sentence because what is considered successful is up for interpretation. Each time a new comic was generated, it did stay true to many of the conventions; however, some made much more sense than others. Here are a few examples: the first on the less successful side, and the second on the more successful side (in my opinion).

Next is SCIgen, “An Automatic CS Paper Generator,” or as we briefly discussed in class, more so a “Nonsense Paper Generator.” At the top of the page the website notes that the goal is to “maximize amusement, rather than coherence” (SCIgen). When I typed my name into the “authors” box and clicked generate, I discovered I “had written” some rather interesting CS papers. “Simulation of Write-Back Caches,” “Emulating Simulated Annealing and Courseware,” and my personal favorite and masterpiece, “A Methodology for the Understanding of IPv7.” The conventions of this genre lie greatly in formatting, as the basis of the generator website is that the content is irrelevant. I noticed nearly every “paper” had large, bolded section titles which would typically be found in a sophisticated research paper. The headers included abstract, table of contents, introduction, methodology, related works, and so on. Another convention of these “papers” was the usage of charts and graphs which, along with the section titles, draw the reader’s attention. Both of these features, along with mature word choice, in text citations, and a reference section, cause who only skims the paper to be tricked by its illegitimacy.

Finally, I explored the Meme Generator website, which adds a few short lines of text to popular photos. After looking at the “popular page” of memes I noticed that there were a few pictures that were repeated over and over, with only the text changing. One of the main conventions of these memes seemed to be humor, though it seemed to be a specific type of “internet humor” as seemingly random images such as the “Philosoraptor” and “Grumpy Cat” must have gained popularity at some point in time. The minimal text above and below the photo is an important convention of memes as it is meant to be short and sweet—additional text may deter the reader from potentially reading the meme or otherwise finding much humor in it.

Each of these websites generates different versions of the same genre repeatedly. As I explored each of the three websites I found similar trends amongst what was generated. Each genre had a specific structure that the generator formed content into. This content may have served a purpose, as in the case of the comic strips and memes, or simply for visual aid, as in the CS papers. The generators, regardless of what was produced, incorporated the conventions of each genre, which is, essentially, why it works. A genre is unique from the rest because of its conventions. Thus, in order for these “genre generator” websites to successfully generate output of a specific genre, the creators of these genre generator websites must have established its conventions. One other example of these websites is http://songlyricsgenerator.com/step1.php, which generates music lyrics of a chosen genre!