Thlog #5: A Thlog With Style

This week was all about style. The best part was probably the fact that we got to listen to Sublime in class, which I doubt happens very often in other writing classes. We discussed style as a whole, which I had thought about before but never too in depth. I've been thinking about it a lot and maybe my writing style is also non-denominational hipster garbage, but I think I like it so I'll try to make my writing as mine as possible (does that make sense?) The weirdest thing about this week was the way that moves and style changed meaning for me. They are two words I use constantly but had never stopped to consider. It was a pretty cool learning experience because it made me think a lot about my own writing style and moves I use. I went back to my high school writing assignments and noticed that a lot of the time I start out papers with a personal first paragraph, a quote, or a question. It is weird to think I had never noticed this--I guess I kind of knew that I had a writing style but it had never hit me that I had actual moves that I've been unconsciously for years. I know this thlog sounds a bit like rambling but that is exactly how my brain feels, too! Looking back at my previous work kind of blew my mind (both because of the moves I found and because of how bad it was). One of the things that really stuck with me this week is how style is developed. I even remembered a little thing an artist I like once explained; someone asked her "How do you develop an art style?" to which she replied "Just pick a style you already like and fu*k it up as much as possible until you make it your own," or something along those lines. I realized that my style may not be completely unique to me but is a compilation of writing styles I have been exposed to and have picked apart and combined to make my own. I also realized my style is constantly changing but there are little moves here and there that have stuck around, and they are what make my style my style. I am looking forward to seeing how my style will change this year... Maybe it already has. 

PB2B- Watch My Every Move

Moves—dance moves, karate moves, basketball moves. Have you ever wondered what the heck a move is? Apparently I am the only person who had never thought of it until now, but guess what? I’m using my moves on you as you read this. Now you’re probably thinking “is this supposed to be funny?” and the answer is yes. I just used another move on you and you are either smirking stupidly at your computer or really annoyed and possibly shaking your head at what you’ve just read. Either way I have your attention now, which is what I intended to do with my slick moves.

            A move, as defined by dictionary.com, is an action toward an objective or goal; step. However, when we think of moves, we don’t typically think of “writing” moves, or perhaps we do, but we never even stop to think about it. Often times we find ourselves going back to our writing and changing things here and there so that it becomes more interesting to our readers—or maybe more “academic” so our professors will give us higher scores. Whether or not we realize it, we are constantly making moves in our writing and in our daily lives in general. We have a specific audience to cater to, and that leads us to make specific word, subject, and style choices. Moves help students and professional writers alike make their writing as effective as it can possibly be, and these moves can be as small as using a certain word or as big as writing ten pages on a specific subject.

            As I previously stated, a move can be using a certain word. In the case of one of our readings, Writing Spaces by Losh and Alexander, the main move was turning the reading into a comic book. Although it seems obvious, some of us probably did not even realize it was a move at first. If you are anything like me, I’m sure when you saw that the first assigned reading was a coming book, you probably thought something along the lines of: “Sweet!” Just my reaction, and perhaps yours, gives you a good indication of why the authors decided to turn the reading into a comic book—it made the reading fun. Without the illustrations and the very strange situations depicted, talking about rhetoric might have become dull, and that would be especially obnoxious considering it was our first assignment. The authors used this “comic” move to keep the content fun and relevant to college students. The authors approached their piece in a very modern way. They made sure to include relevant topics such as texting, the Internet, and the Human Rights Campaign while introducing visual literacy. They went above and beyond interesting their audience by using a “relevance” move. In other words, they kept it real. The move that most caught my attention was the “alternating” move they implemented. Every several frames, rather than throwing more information at the reader, they included a humorous frame to ease into a new topic—something I’d like to call the “break” move.

            Losh and Alexander, in addition to their “comic,” “revelance,” and “break” moves, used several moves widely practiced by the writing community. They used the I Say You Say “Standard Views” move to introduce widely accepted ideas. For example, while discussing visual literacy, Writing Spaces introduced a widely accepted idea by saying: “Our culture has taught us that depicting closeness or distance in an image might suggest something about the intimacy between the people shown” (12). The authors also used the “addition” word move. They often introduced new ideas and examples by using transitions like “in fact” and embedded voice messages by starting the sentence with phrases like “I often” (9).

            Another move I noticed while revisiting Writing Spaces was that they included conversations throughout the writing. This “conversation” move was between the characters but sometimes included the reader (me) in the comic but gave the piece a fun and conversational vibe, which consequently made me more interested in the piece (example on page 11 on page 9 of reader). Much like Writing Spaces, Kerry Dirk, author of Navigating Genres maintained a conversational tone throughout his piece. However, Kirk introduced a new move: the “scenario” move (see page 24). Kirk put the reader in extraordinary situations, such as a kidnapping, in order to illustrate his point—genres. Kirk also included some of the You Say I Say moves on his piece, such as “Agreeing with Disagreeing Simultaneously” by using phrases such as “I will admit” when stating his opinion, which helped him successfully state his opinion while also incorporating humor (19). In order to smoothly include more sources into his writing, Kirk used the “Signaling Who Is Saying What” move. On page 18, he introduced other writers’ experiences by stating: “some writers admitted that they did not know anything … and others went as far as to admit ignorance” (18).

            There were many more moves included that I did not examine or possibly even notice while revisiting our past readings, but one thing I realized was the importance of moves. Some moves are universal and some unique to certain writers. By using moves, writers are able to cater to a variety of different audiences and successfully get their points across. Moves give paper character, and they also help build the reader’s knowledge. Without moves, papers would be dull and difficult, and neither writers nor readers would ever accomplish anything, as brash as that may sound.

Even Spoopier: Thlog #4! #why #hashtag

Week four of class: Moving up in the world of writing!
This week felt totally different than last week. I was still kind of anxious the whole week but this week was more about self-discovery than "rules!" We did so many activities that I felt were helpful to my development as a writer. My personal favorite was the "moves" activity. Not only did I love hearing about AJ (so dreamy!--pic?), I also loved the moves activity. When we were asked to define what a move was I honestly had nothing to say. I was so perplexed at the fact that Zack asked what a move was. At first I was like "Is he serious? What are we, like 5 year olds?" but then people's other definitions blew me away. I know that people all have different definitions for things but that one was just out there. This week I also rediscovered the love of my life: italics. Like I said in class, all throughout high school I wanted to incorporate italics into my writing because I always thought italics were great for emphasis, but teachers only ever wanted italics used for titles and whatnot. I felt so restricted but now I know that italics are good used in moderation-- like little butterflies spread throughout the paper. This week has been one of my favorites. The activities made it feel so much more fun than usual and I definitely enjoyed how many f-bombs Zack dropped this week. This week was so engaging and it actually felt like I improved, even if it was only a little. Reading wise I thought it was kind of boring but next week's reading will apparently make up for that. I really hope that we have more weeks like this, it felt nice to have such a fun and uplifting week after the shock of seeing my first essay grade. Seriously, I've done bad before but never that bad. Actually, yes I have. Funny story: In 10th grade I was put into the "hardest" honors english class at school. I was freaking out because I was barely fluent in English and the class turned out to be as hard as expected. My teacher had some weird way of making herself feel like she helped us improve by giving us Ds on every essay and then asking us to rewrite it and giving us an A without even reading the paper. I am glad that Writing 2 is actually helping us improve rather than making it look like we are. More interactive activities, please!

PB2A - SCIgeneric vs. SCOOLarly

You type the word “also” into the search box on Thesaurus.com. You then furiously scroll down and through 3 pages of synonyms, but you don’t find anything. The mustardy yellow of the website irritates you and you finally decide to just use the word “also.” Scratch that. You erase the whole sentence and decide to integrate the information in a different way. You look at the time and realize your paper is due in two hours and decide to start it all over because it just didn’t sound “scholarly” enough. You look at the clock again and realize it has been half an hour and you still have nothing. Finally, you decide to look up “how to write scholarly paper” on Google. Success. The first thing to come up is a “Step-by-Step” guide to writing a scholarly paper. There are apparently sixteen steps to write a scholarly paper so you try it out. You finish within in forty minutes and your paper sounds fancy as hell, but for some reason it still sucks. Your paper sounds like a robot wrote it but it will pass through peer reviews and maybe even fool your professor. But how does this happen? It is all thanks to genres and conventions. Conventions are the unifying traits of genres. Conventions can make your paper fit into a genre, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will make it good or convincing.

A website that is better than you at so-called “BSing” papers is called SCIgen. SCIgen can turn you into the published author of a fancy gibberish research mess with the click of a button. SCIgen papers make no sense—that is easy to see—but how can a website possibly generate a paper that could go as far as fooling someone? The answer is easy: genres and conventions. Through careful use of the conventions of a research paper, SCIgen can “write” a paper that will fit into the genre of a research paper.

In order to find out more about the conventions of a research paper, I found an actual research paper that studies the effects of stress on the brain. The paper looked much like I expected. Simply accessing the paper made it feel like a research paper. I had to go through a library database to find it, which I was only ever required to do for AP Chemistry laboratory reports. The article appeared similar to SCIgen. They were both aesthetically similar—they were presented in a boring manner, on a boring website, in a “formal” font, and in a seemingly reader-friendly format. Both SCIgen and the research article I found started out with an informative title and a quick overview of the content of the paper. Both also contained a conclusion, and of course, they included fancy “jargon,” lots of names, impressive transitions, and page after page of data.

The scholarly piece, despite its many similarities to the SCIgen article, made SCIgen look like what it is: a whole lot of BS. The scholarly piece, unlike SCIgen, actually had a point to make. It was filled with research and names, but again, unlike SCIgen, the scholarly piece had data that you could actually find on the works cited and maybe even read it if you had the time and interest. Under the titles of both, you could find the authors, although on the stress articles, a number linked to similar articles and author affiliations followed each name. In that sense the actual research article appeared more trustworthy than SCIgen. Both SCIgen and the research article were broken up into different topics pertaining the subject, but only the scholarly piece’s organization seemed to make sense. SCIgen appeared as more of an experimental process, while the article on stress was neatly broken up into human and animal research as well as some further results of the study. Furthermore, the scholarly piece went above and beyond the expectations of a research paper. It expressed the many aspects of stress, but in the end, the scholarly piece actually discussed stress and the fact that it is not always a bad thing. A person evidently wrote the scholarly piece, which is what SCIgen could not simulate. It is hard to explain how this was evident, but one of the main separating traits of SCIgen and the scholarly piece was that I could see and feel the effort that went into the scholarly piece. The scholarly piece seemed almost passionate when compared to SCIgen, which at the end of the day, seemed like someone slapped a keyboard for two hours and the result was a bunch of autocorrected nonsense. Just because something fits into a genre does not mean it will have the same effect as another paper of the same genre.

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n6/full/nrn2639.html#a2

http://scigen.csail.mit.edu/scicache/870/scimakelatex.31533.Nat+Politron.Gaby+Flores.Tiffany+Velasquez.Grecia+Jimenez.html

Thlog #3 - A Very Spoopy Thlog

As I get farther into the course, I get scared. This week in class we started to step away from the "Fabulousness" professor and got to know the "Rules!" professor. Well, not completely. I feel that we experimented with both, but the strict writing definitely came into the picture this week. We talked about our writing process and the things we should look for in our papers. We discussed having a working thesis that passes the "arguability" test, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like--although blogger tells me arguability is not a word. Basically, there needs to be another side to your argument--there has to be some sort of opposition. Even though it sounds easy, thinking back on my WP1, it almost feels like I didn't pass the arguability test. WP1 was very challenging for me, and therefore scary. I felt a little out of place while writing it. I didn't exactly know what I was doing even after reading the prompt OVER and OVER again. I feel like it had most of what the prompt asked for, but it was missing part of me. Our peer reviews were helpful but they basically reassured my notions-- my paper was and is not good enough. The reverse outline we completed in class was definitely more helpful than my self-criticism. It allowed me to see how I could further connect my paper, and I also loved seeing all the colors coming together and overlapping from time to time. It gave me a better sense of what WP1 was looking for but still not enough. I hope that I at least gave my group members good enough feedback for their revisions. I feel like I tried to give this week my all but it didn't translate into my paper. The whole process was very stressful for me and at times I didn't even want to go back to look at my paper. I felt like the pressure of the course finally dropped on me. I hope that this is a sign that I will improve. I am definitely looking forward to working on WP2 because this time I will be able to use the tips and tricks we learned in class earlier in my writing process and be able to revise my paper more times than I did this time. 

WPs are very scary. 

Thlog #2

This week I struggled more than the last--both academically and emotionally. I enjoyed learning about audiences and how they can change writing, but somehow the concept of genres and conventions became more complicated than at first. I am not exactly sure at what point I lost notion of how conventions played part in genres. I guess the many conventions of a convention itself jumbled up my understanding of what I learned last week. I feel like I simply did not give my all, which might be why I struggled to understand the concepts we learned in class. I did, however, enjoy our assigned reading this week. In high school I was taught to be formulaic but subtle at the same time, while college composition has only encouraged creativity and being as explicit as possible. I am not sure if my writing has improved thus far, but I do know I have enjoyed my experience much more than I ever have before. I learned how to analyze rhetoric while still keeping my writing "fun." Again, this week I discovered more about my own writing process. I have continually examined my first thoughts and how I come across them--and also how I even get to putting them down on paper or, in this case, on the web. Learning so many things in such a short amount of time almost feels like it is pulling me back. Every time I learn something new about genres and conventions I feel like I am back at square one. To put it simply, as my Antarctica professor said last week: "when you get to college you realize you don't know anything." That is exactly how I am currently feeling. Now I am mentally preparing myself to write a super long paper on something I was stupid enough to think I understood, but now I realize I do not. I hope that next week will feel different than this week. Good vibes = good writing? 

Genre Generator

Genre, as defined by dictionary.com is "a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like." Genres can be anything from mystery novels, letters, to even texts of Twitter posts. Almost everything we see, read, and perceive is a genre of its own. This definition can make genres sound like meticulous and strict groups of identical items, but if we really take time to examine genres around us we are able to discern the vast variety of possibilities within one genre. Because of the flexibility of genres, the internet has been flooded with "genre generators" that can pretty much generate just about everything within a genre without necessarily wandering out of the genre's conventions. These "genre generators" can help the ordinary genre novice to learn more about genres by allowing him to examine which conventions prevail throughout the randomly generated genres.

In order to understand more about genres and their conventions in relation to genre generators, I visited four different genre generators. The first genre generator I visited was SCIgen,(pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen) which is a website that can supposedly publish a research paper "written" by you or someone else by simply entering your or any other name. Now, just because it generates a paper doesn't necessarily mean it makes any sense. Through not so careful examination, it's easy to see that the generated paper, well, makes no sense. However, at a quick glance it could fool just about everyone. But how is this possible? Well, when you think of a research paper there are several things that come to mind in terms of what it should include and what it should look like. When someone thinks of a research paper they probably think of an extremely long paper with countless so-called "big" words and an extensive list of sources and just as many authors. This is exactly what SCIgen provides you with. It generates a "research" paper with a fancy title, the "authors," plenty of "big words," many, many pages, and a lengthy list of sources. So, if to the regular onlooker this paper looks like any other research paper, then these expectations might represent the conventions of the genre of a research paper. This is not to say that research papers are by any means simple, but that by meeting certain expectations or conventions, anything has the ability to pass of (at least for a short period of time) as a certain genre.

The second website I visited was pandyland.net/random. Pandyland is a website that generates a random and probably ill-humored comic strip by randomly assembling three random pre-drawn images including the same two characters, Simon and Finlay. Seeing these two average looking dudes on the same, monotone, purplish gray background again and again can seem boring, but the combination of terrible jokes and awful facial expressions makes it a worthwhile experience, at least for some. While I did not find all the generated comics humorous, certain combinations made me chuckle. After generating many of these comics I realized that not much about them changed. As previously stated, the three pictures always include Simon, Finlay, or both plastered on a monotonous purplish gray background. Both of them are always wearing the same boring outfits. Finlay wears a green long sleeved shirt and jeans and Simon wears a burgundy long sleeved shirt with khakis. All these traits sound awfully boring, but add some crude humor that somehow makes fun of modern society, funny facial expressions, and bam-- you have created a hilarious comic at the click of a button. Pandyland didn't always turn out funny, but the conventions of a comic strip were always present.

The third genre generator I visited was memegenerator.net. MemeGenerator required a bit more effort than the previous, as I had to choose an image and then caption it myself. I was too lazy to make my own, but by looking at the already existing memes I was able to decipher the conventions of a meme: a funny picture, a not always funny caption, and the uncomfortable feeling of having seen the meme (just kidding, or maybe not, judge this yourself).

 The final genre generator I visited was http://www.everypoet.com/haiku/, which generates a random haiku at a click of a button. Much like SCIgen, this website generates a Haiku based on the conventions of a haiku: "seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world" (google.com). Again, much like SCIgen, the haikus don't necessarily make sense, they merely follow a pattern.

Genre generators don't always generate something that makes sense, but by giving the generated genres a second look it is easy to see that these genre generators work because they all do one thing in common: they all meet the conventions of a genre.

Tinder Is Weird

Does this icon look familiar? You have probably seen it on your phone or someone else's phone. It is the Tinder App icon. Tinder is a mobile dating application used by millions and is known for being slightly creepy. Tinder’s most important claim to fame, however, is the Tinder “bio” or “biography.”

Tinder bios are a way for people to "put themselves out there." The most common reason Tinder users add a biography to their profiles is to lure “scrollers” or to catch a potential lover’s attention. Tinder allows you to narrow down your search for that one creepy cyber lover by inputting your age and your location. This feature rounds up all the weirdos in your area who are within your age range.

Consequently, you can narrow your search further by examining the famous Tinder bios of people around you (and probably rating them as “hot or not”) and swiping right if you think they are compatible with you or left if you do not. Tinder bios are known for being funny, awkward, weird, and sometimes even a joke. Nevertheless, these biographies are not limited to jokes. Believe it or not, there are people out there who take mobile applications like Tinder seriously. People in the search of love write serious biographies about themselves hoping that their soul mate will somehow stumble into their profile. No matter the situation, Tinder users are most likely trying to seem interesting whether it is by being funny or not.

 Tinder biographies usually include the following pieces of information (in no particular order): name, age, interests, a suggestive “emoji” or two, a link to your Instagram or Facebook so that your cyber admirers have the ability to stalk you even more than they already have, and sometimes even some sort of clever or pensive quote that will make you seem like less of a desperate wreck to other users.

 Serious users tend to express their desires in their Tinder biographies, often describing what they are looking for and what they are willing to reciprocate. Usually these biographies are written in a casual and flirty manner in order to seem laid back and, again, interesting. In less serious cases, Tinder users fill their biographies with possible scenarios of what a date would look like if you would only “swipe right” on their profile. Sometimes they include crude or nonsensical jokes that will allow their effervescent humor shine through. Other times they simply leave their biographies blank. The enthrallment with Tinder biographies has reached such an all-time craze that by Googling “how to write a Tinder bio” you can effortlessly find websites dedicated to writing the perfect biography, for example: http://tinderadvisor.com/tinder-bio/.

The humorous Tinder biographies, however, are the ones that have claimed the most fame and have gone viral. These electronic oddities can be found if you search "funny tinder bios" on Google. Tinder biographies are often meant to attract potential love interests, but on occasion they are directed towards anyone looking for a good joke while swiping left and right creepy dude after creepy dude. Despite originally being meant for finding romantic relationships or flings around your area, Tinder biographies have evolved into Internet memes and absurd sensations that never fail to make people smile.