26 November 2008

Snarky enough for a man, grammatically enhanced for a woman

I was browsing Cute Overload earlier as I am wont to do. There was a post about adopting a turkey for Thanksgiving - which I did; her name is Serendipity and she is so ugly she's cute. See?

ANYwho.
I had to comment in response to a nuffer who objected to people donating to animal causes when there are people causes out there in need of monetary help. Whilst browsing the comments, I came across one that mentioned something called the Gender Analyzer, a site wherein you can enter a URL and, using some sort of complicated algorithm or something, GA will tell you whether the page was written by a man or a woman.
I tested out a few websites and GA got it right. Then out of morbid curiosity, I tried the URL of my blog.
GA decided my blog was written by a man. Ditto my Domo blog (although in my defense, the site is mostly graphics). This interested me. What about my writing would lead GA's text classifiers to think I'm a dude? (Obviously the text classifier hasn't taken a good look at my rack.) I've decided it's either my complex sentence structure, my excruciatingly correct grammar (if I'm in the mood for it) or my snarky humor.
I think the humor might be more of a typically masculine thing than the grammar, and I'll tell you why: I don't know of any men since Strunk and White (except perhaps my late father) who could diagram a sentence or differentiate between a verb and a gerund. I don't mean to imply that men are stupid, I just mean that men tend to communicate more directly than women, and with fewer nuances and details.
But whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes - no, wait, that's the Grinch.
But whatever the reason, GA decided I write like a man. To the side of the results is a poll: did GA give the correct result? I clicked "no" and was taken to the survey results page. 53% said yes, and 47% said no. So much for their fancy text classifier. I'm inclined to believe that the folks behind GA are bigger turkeys than my new sort-of pet. Which is a shame, I think it's a cool idea. Almost as cool an idea as Cute Overload.


Do me a favor and fill out my poll, won't you? Otherwise I'll be forced to rant about undergarments again, and that wasn't fun for ANYONE.

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