Rhetorically Constructed, or: We All Write Like White Men, Part 2

[teaberryblue]

Thanks, fourzoas, for the subject line :-P

I wrote to Dmitri of Codingrobots, the site responsible for “I Write Like” yesterday, after I posted about it, and linked him to my post.

I would feel remiss to share his response as it was a private email and I did not ask to, but he replied swiftly and promptly.

His response was in two parts. The first part disheartened me, as he said that the software couldn’t tell what race or gender the authors were. He seemed to think that my complaint was that *I* didn’t get a woman of color as my response to the meme.

He also said that he thinks men and women are stylistically similar so he didn’t see the big deal.

However, he closed by saying that if I wanted to recommend him some authors to add, to please do so.

I’ve sent him a list. If you want to send him one, his email address is dmitry [at] codingrobots [dot] com.

intrepia compiled a list of authors in the meme as of yesterday afternoon. If Dmitry’s estimate that there were 40 authors included is accurate, this is a complete or near-complete list:

Douglas Adams
Isaac Asimov
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
L. Frank Baum
Ray Bradbury
Dan Brown
Raymond Chandler
Lewis Carroll
James Fenimore Cooper
Daniel Defoe
Charles Dickens
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ian Fleming
Harry Harrison
Ernest Hemingway
James Joyce
Stephen King
Rudyard Kipling
Jack London
H. P. Lovecraft
Vladimir Nabokov
George Orwell
Chuck Palahniuk
Edgar Allan Poe
Mario Puzo
J. K. Rowling
J. D. Salinger
William Shakespeare
Iain Sinclair
Robert Louis Stevenson
Bram Stoker
Jonathan Swift
J. R. R. Tolkien
Leo Tolstoy
Mark Twain
Kurt Vonnegut
H. G. Wells
Oscar Wilde
PG Wodehouse

That list contains 37 white men and three white women. There is not a lone single author of color anywhere on the list. If I’ve somehow mistaken someone’s racial background, I apologize, and please correct me.

In other news, this post has gotten me a +1 for the day and a -1 for the day.

In +1 news, Margaret Atwood retweeted my tweet!

Pix, because it happened:

That sort of makes me feel like I’ve entered a magical alternate reality!

But in bad news, I had to screen a comment on my blog because someone actually left hate speech! With words I don’t care to repeat in it and everything. I was somewhat shocked. Fortunately, that is what screening is for.

ETA:

The (once again prompt) reply I got from the creator of the meme is so frustrating that I’m no longer feeling that I owe his privacy any respect. Here you go:

Tea,

Thanks for your reply. 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.

–
Dmitry Chestnykh
I Write Like

I got my keys to my apartment, so next post will be empty!apartment pics!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Comments

[rougebaiser.livejournal.com]

I agree that he should not add writers to a database because of their race or gender. They should be added because they are good writers. This person does not seem to see this.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

He doesn't distinguish between quality of writing because he sees all writers as equal.

[oneonthefence.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. I definitely consider Dan Brown "equally" as talented as Shakespeare or Tolkien. *rolls eyes*

A lot of people on FB took this meme really seriously. I kept telling them to chill out, it wasn't really based on *their* legitimate writing style, but all people did was complain about it constantly. That was a good reason to stay off FB last night, except for when I got harassed by someone myself...

Gotta love the Internet.

[kid-lit-fan.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to try to figure WHY it thinks you write like that author, but I couldn't take it seriously (James Joyce. Really? I am neither as rich nor as obscure as Joyce, so I'd love to know what was so Joycean about that post.).

I am a fan of Stephen King, but I can't class him with Shakespeare, so wtf with "all writers are equal?"

I think he wanted to say that it's -ist to pick writers because of race or sex, but it looks like he's got some serious aversive -ists going one because writers = white men, pretty much.

[oneonthefence.livejournal.com]

I agree with you completely, although I thought the meme was random - but apparently, it looks for buzz words those other writers use, or that relate to those writers (I think it was explained, and I'm explaining it so poorly here...) and that's how it "judges" your writing. I took it about as seriously as a juggling circus bear, honestly.

The "all writers are equal" remark, in almost every context, is just, honestly, batshit insane. It's like hiding behind honesty with a politically correct statement since he was called out on all of the writers being white men (except for three white women). Again, another reason I could never take something like that meme seriously.

[nimbrethil.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to say there's no compelling reason to look for why the program deems your writing to be Joycean.

People have reported that any Harry Potter fanfic comes back as writing like Rowling, irrespective of the actual writing style of the sample. Likewise, someone wrote "fuck shit fuckity mcfucking fuck" and was told they write like JKR. Someone else copied in a portion from Catcher in the Rye, and got Salinger. When they went back through and tossed in random typose and misspellings, it came back as Dan Brown.