I can tell much about you from the way you write

I have two confessions. One: this is a rant. Two: I hate those preposterous, project-detracting analytical gimmicks that whisper hollow affirmations about your creative endeavours. ‘Roll, up, roll up and test your words. See what gender your writing betrays you as! Learn which famous writers you can only hope to imitate!’ said the calculating computer.

Of course, all writers want an audience, and it can be hard, given the rates of production and time constraints of modern society to get quality or constructive feedback. But that’s the rub – it’s not quality feedback, and it’s not constructive, how could it be? It’s based on a series of algorithms – calculations of data set according to a programmer’s basic parameters. (Well, the algorithms for these technological parlour tricks are basic, at least.)

Need an example? Take the Gender Genie, which cites the 2003 NYT article ‘Sexed texts’ as its basis:

Men and women ostensibly write the same language, on the other hand, but according to a recent article in The Boston Globe, they do so in ways that immediately reveal which sex is doing the writing. A team of Israeli scientists, the Globe article reports, punched into a computer some 600 published documents and devised an algorithm that could predict with 80 percent accuracy the sex of the author.

Who knows if the Gender Genie is using the exact same algorithm, but when I submitted the text of my last Meanland post, it concluded I was male.

This test is problematic for, well, numerous reasons really. For starters, how can ‘the’ and ‘around’ be masculine keywords? (Or ‘was’ or ‘with’ be ‘feminine’?) More likely than not, the algorithm presumes a lot of non-fiction is produced by male writers. Thus, I submitted all 2960 words of a short story I’m working on. It again reached the conclusion I was male. Consequently, I’m left wondering if writing about technology – which appears in both my Meanland post and my short story – is reserved for the realm of the masculine. Which leads to my main gripe with the Gender Genie: why do we need something else to reinforce gender divisions and stereotypes, particularly when it comes to literature?

Another classic test that was popular with writers on the internet a couple of months ago was the I Write Like. As with the Gender Genie, you submit a section of text for analysis and it determines whom you most write like. Using the same infallible formula as above, I Write Like says my Meanland post is like Dan Brown, my short story like James Joyce. I don’t know what to say about that, but you can see how testing your text can devolve into many a meaningless hour.

My last example is the WriteWords Phrase Frequency Counter. Which, unlike the others, is actually kind of useful (and sickening) because you submit your text for analysis, and it reveals your repetition of words and phrases. This is only useful, of course, to those poets and writers who do not use repetition as a device.

All of these analytical gimmicks are merely distractions from greater distractions in the writer’s life, like Twitter. And it’s true that I can spend many an hour on Twitter, yet I also feel like it can, at times, be more constructive (note the hedging?).

Why do we need technology to support our writing careers? Well, there does seem to be something in the idea that it’s a simulacrum of a supportive, creative relationship that writing groups, mentors and others fill, typically outside of the digital sphere. These things also alleviate boredom, and I concede that some people may find them fun.

The joke’s on me, anyway, as I just spent 3 hours experimenting with these textual analysis algorithms. And according to the above tests, this post was written by a man, in the style of Cory Doctorow and with the following repetitive phrasing:

4 the gender genie
2 with the gender
2 text for analysis
2 my short story
2 my meanland post
2 i write like
2 i was male
2 for analysis and
2 do we need
2 analysis and it
2 according to a