PB1B: Inspecting Genre Generators

            The “genre generator” websites work by applying a fixed pattern of conventions to each piece no matter what you plug into them. Each genre has a very specific set of conventions that make it up. A genre can be defined by its conventions so it is important to be able to identify them in a piece of writing.

            In the SCIgen generator, it creates a computer science-related research paper when you enter one to five authors at random. Each and every research paper may be different in topic, but they all consist of very similar conventions. Each paper starts off with the title of the paper in big letters and underneath it is the authors that you have entered in. The first part of the paper is the “Abstract”, which gives a brief introduction and their goal of the experiment. The next convention is the table of contents, which includes six parts with short paragraphs expanding on it. The six parts include the introduction, related work, methodology, implementation, evaluation, and conclusion. All of these are typical of a research experiment so it not surprising to find them as conventions of this research paper. Also, at the end is a list of references, citing all the sources used to write this paper. The references are numbered and in MLA format. In addition to the paragraphs describing the experiment, there are also graphs and figures to further describe the experiment by displaying the data.

            The next generator is a comic strip generator, creating various comic strips. There is a certain set of pictures displaying one scene and the generator will randomly order three of them into a comic strip even if they don’t make sense. Each picture displays a situation between the two characters, Simon and Finlay, where some kind of action or conversation is occurring. The speech bubbles coming out of each of the characters mouth display conversation between them. All of the comics have a purplish blue background with a grey ground. The dialogue between them is quite vulgar and harsh with a lot of profanity said. The tone of these comic strips is intended to be funny because of the things they say and the randomness of the scenes. The randomness of the comic is the biggest convention to this comic strip generator.

            The meme generator allows you to create your own meme by picking one of the general meme pictures and writing your own captions to it. A meme is usually a funny picture that is very popular among internet users and universally known by them. The biggest convention of a meme is the image being used. This image is usually a person from pop culture with a reaction that is related to the caption. Some examples of the characters used in memes are Willy Wonka, Bad Luck Brian, and the Forever Alone potato. The captions of these memes are usually on the top or bottom (sometimes both) of these pictures. These captions are usually very funny and witty while expressing a relatable thought or a realization.

            After using these websites, it can really help you to understand genre because the generators all have a specific formula they follow to create a certain type of genre. The generators take all the conventions of a certain genre to create an example of it. When you play around with these websites and create a couple pieces, you will start seeing the patterns the generators use. For example, in the computer science research paper, all of them have an abstract, table of contents, and references. These are some of the conventions that make up this genre of research papers. All of these generators show the similarities in a certain type of genre, distinguishing them from other genres.