I Write Like... The Ramones?

Ever wish there was a nice, easy way you could analyze how someone writes? Yeah, me neither. However, someone out there has taken it upon themselves to create an algorithm based on a spam filter (alarm bells are going off already) to tell, from only a few blocks of your writing, which famous author you are most similar to in style! Awesome, huh? Well... we'll see about that.

I started out by feeding I Write Like some chunks of my own writing from various points of view, because I am an egoist. Comparisons to David Foster Wallace met every piece of what I wrote for NaNoWriMo. As I started to think this might not be so horrible, I tried some paragraphs from a completely different short story of mine. Two separate parts from this same piece resulted in Isaac Asimov and Stephen King. What?

At this point I decided to have some fun with song lyrics. My favorite piece of an utterly twisted punk song resulted in Kurt Vonnegut, which I found appropriate. But what about something less obvious? The lyrics of Baba O'Riley were attributed to Margaret Atwood. I can't decide whether this is more of a compliment to the song or an insult to Mrs. Atwood. My Humps was compared to Mark Twain. (Mr. Twain, I would like to personally say that I am so, so sorry.) The lyrics to the blogosphere's favorite Insane Clown Posse song, Miracles, were given to William Gibson. A quick search reveals that he is considered the founder of the cyberpunk movement, and is probably not a believer in "pure motherfucking magic."

But no more messing around! It was time for me to pull out the big guns, lyric-wise: The Ramones. I put in I Wanna Be Sedated, careful to include every last repetition, and got... Stephen King. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This certainly obliterated any feeling of being complimented that getting Stephen King earlier for my own writing gave me.

One final fun fact: This post was allegedly written in the style of Cory Doctorow. I wish.