PB-1B

          I spent more time than I would care to admit playing around with the SCIgen, Pandyland, and Meme generators. One could squander away the hours clicking that little ‘Generate’ button, while rarely encountering the same combination twice- the possibilities are virtually endless. This truly drives home the point that having all the established conventions associated with a certain genre is not necessary, because conventions are not rules. For example, you could keep clicking the ‘Generate’ button until your finger gets sore, and though each one that pops up will be different from the last, they will all fall under the umbrella of the same genre.

          The first generator we will be looking at is SCI-gen, which is an Automatic Computer Science Paper Generator. It claims to use handwritten “context-free grammar”, which completely rings true once you read one of these generated papers and see that it is total nonsense. To begin, you type in up to five authors in the fields provided, and then click ‘Generate’. Up comes a very formal, dull-looking paper titled “Decoupling Fiber-Optic Cables from Public-Private Key Pairs in the Turing Machine” written by Carina Rodrigues, Zac Efron, and Mahatma Gandhi. In regards to its conventions, this paper looks and seems like the real deal. It is broken up into different sections separated by bold headings (a feature often seen in scholarly papers), such as the ‘Methodology’, ‘Implementation’, ‘Evaluation’, and so on. Multiple meaningless graphs and charts are also included, however they are very vague, hard to read, and make no relevant reference to the text. The language is convoluted (much like a real scientific paper is sometimes capable of being) and uses many big words. The generator also throws in a plethora of unexplained acronyms, to further mask the fact that it is chock-full of B.S. Lastly, the end of the paper incorporates an extensive list of made-up references. When someone who does not know any better takes a cursory glance at this paper, it appears to be a genuine, because it follows many (but not all) of the conventions of a scientific paper.

          The next generator we will be examining is the Meme generator. Memes are usually humorous pictures accompanied by a sarcastic, ironic, or simply a comedic phrase. In regards to the text that accompanies the image, there is usually a line at the top introducing a situation or scenario, and a line at the bottom that acts as the comical, ironic part, or the “punchline” if you will. They will often include a pop culture reference to a celebrity or movie/TV scene, and a witty and relatable quote. This convention is a key reason as to why memes have pervaded the internet. The audience (usually younger people) is a generation that desperately wants to relate and connect with one another, and hear that others have the same feelings and go through the same things that they do. A good/successful meme has you saying in your head “Omg that is so true” or “Haha that has totally happened to me.”

          The Pandyland comic generator was an interesting one, albeit crude, random, and often unfunny. The comic consisted of three squares, and featured two simply drawn males named Finlay and Simon, who are always dressed in the same clothes, and pictured against the same backdrop. After clicking ‘Generate’, a combination of random panels appears depicting a conversation via speech bubbles between these two characters, and it’s really a hit or miss as to whether it is funny, or even makes sense. This comic generator does follow a few of the conventions of an actual comic. It is short, so it can hold the audience’s attention and can be read through quickly, it includes speech bubbles to display communication between characters, and it (attempts to) offer the audience humor through a mini narrative.

          The generator that I found is the Hipster Business Name generator (http://www.hipsterbusiness.name/#). This generator is mocking the so-called ‘hipster’ names that businesses as going by nowadays. These names try to be cool and trendy, but upon further examination, they’re just kind ridiculous. The website itself is just a plain white screen with an emblem of two items crossed (often anchors, swords, or rifles) with a random symbol, and below it are two unrelated words (these are usually commonplace items like ‘sink’ or ‘basil’) written in a fancy font that have been paired together in an effort to sound ‘hipster’. The conventions of this genre are meant to poke fun at the hipster subculture that flaunts the “I liked it before it was cool” attitude and desperately tries to avoid being “mainstream.”
     

Looking at these generators, it was interesting to see how each one could vary so much individually, but because they did share some of the same conventions, they could be considered to be part of the same genre. The SCIgen papers did not have to even make literate sense, but because of the format they were still considered part of the academic research paper genre, and despite how nonsense-ridden the Pandyland comics were, they still are comics, and are nevertheless also a part of that genre.