PB1B - Generators Schmenerators.

Usually when you set out to write a text message you just say whatever you need to, right? So what about the times when you need to write an essay or an article. Sometimes we’re given things to write about or write in a certain form and we don’t know how to go about doing so. There’s a solution to this mind boggling problem. Genre generators. If you're not too sure what in the world a genre generator is, it’s a website that you can enter information into and it will randomly give you examples of the textual genre you're looking for.

SCIgen genre generator typically produces formal, scientific, reports or papers. These are in fact their own kind of genre. The viewer can enter in an author of some sort, and the generator will put forth a well formulated fake essay. The paper’s I came across all seemed very research based. Most of them started with a long complicated title. Following this was some subheadings, and observations or experiments that the author “conducted.” Then they included resources or a sort of bibliography. The papers produced to me, greatly resembled the key conventions of a science project. Nonetheless, it had important aspects of a good research paper.

Pandyland genre generator was mainly outputting comic strips. These were crude and poorly done comic strips, with basic conventions. They all contained mainly pictures or drawings somewhat relative to the joke of the comic. Then they had speech bubbles containing the punch line and characters dialogue. Despite the fact these are basically pictures with minimal text in them, they are still their own genre. Those are your standard comic strips wherever you see them, whether it’s the internet or the Sunday paper. 

Now the Memegenerator website had a genre of text that was incredibly similar to me, with the comic genre generator. Meme’s are pretty much a fancy word for funny pictures with clever or popular sayings on them used for arguments or laughter. Oh the irony. Back to the point, meme’s start off with pictures, usually funny. Then the writer adds words onto them, it can be a quote, joke, something mean. You can put whatever you want to see on a meme, but most of the time people make supportive or humorous comments on this one.  

The three generators we were told to play around with on the internet dispersed three very different types of textual genre’s. The comic strips and memes shared the conventions that each  would be constructed using pictures, as well as jokes written on them. Some of the memes and comic book strips also shared the convention that the words and pictures didn't always match. The SCIgen generator didn’t necessarily share any conventions with the other two generators aside from the fact that it produces fake examples of the text. 

All in all, as comical as these websites were to look at, they can be very helpful. If someone who doesn't understand the genre they’re writing for, these kinds of websites can be learning tools. The generators work as examples in a way. They can be a little formal or have zero connection between what it talks about in the text; however, when you are stuck with writing a research paper, and have no idea how to execute such a task, generators can help you. These will give someone who does understand genre a general idea of what it is. These can map out how you write for that specific genre, what kind of things to write, and what resources to include. Genre generators can be a good laugh, but they can also be real examples for someone on how to go about writing in a certain textual genre.