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Genre generator websites allow the possibilities of creating a genre in the click of a button.  Whether it is coherent enough to make sense or not, it is still producing the genre in front of our very eyes. 

Furthermore, SCIgen is a prime example of exactly that.  SCIgen is a genre generating website that generates random computer science research papers.  All you have to do is enter in author’s names (which can be anything) and click generate.  After doing so, you find yourself in front of what seems to be exactly what the website tries to do: a scholarly science research paper.  At first glance, I didn’t believe that the paper was a phony because it looked so well put together and even reading a sentence or two seemed very academically inclined.  But when looking closer at the specific conventions of a computer science research paper, I was able to understand why the genre generator was able to have its readers believe that they were indeed scholarly papers.  The conventions that drew me in were the structure, syntax, and semantics.  Every paper was very well structured and included categories such as an abstract, introduction, methodology, etc.  Also, graphs were included which made the paper look cohesive and interactive.  Another important aspect that made it believable was the syntax and semantics.  The wording was very academic and a lot of the time I didn’t even know what half the words meant.  In my experience, although I didn’t know what the words meant, I brushed them off and believed they made sense even if they didn’t to me.  SCIgen is a very good example of how and why a genre generator works. 

Another genre generator is Pandyland, a random comic strip generator.  With comic strips, I believe it is a bit easier to create a genre generator because most people are familiar with comics and what they contain.  With saying that, comics often have the conventions of boxed images, speech bubbles, and corky, satirical humor.  Pandyland also has these conventions which make it a great genre generator.  Saying that, a lot of the time the speech is completely random and not connected, which in my mind kind of makes it funnier because you don’t know what to expect every time you click generate.

Additionally, memegenerator is a very common genre generator in today’s world.  Memes are posted by people all over social media because they are meant to be odd but also wildly hilarious (which most of the time they are).  Memes take popular people, photographs, or cartoons and create captions alongside them.  These captions relate to the facial expressions usually which make them very funny.  A lot of the time on picture or cartoon has hundreds of different captions because the facial emotions of that picture can be relatable to a number of different phrases or circumstances.  The conventions that make up a meme are a photograph or cartoon with a caption or sentence.  Also, a lot of the times they use a play off words.  For example, a meme may be a picture of the guy that does Dos Equis commercials with a caption saying “I don’t always plan to overthrow the government, but when I do, I always bring snacks.”

A genre that I found among the vast interweb was a music genre name generator (http://jbdowse.com/genres).  All you have to do is click the link to the page and a random and fake music genre pops up in the middle of the page.  Some genres contain real musical genres attached to another genre that I have never heard of before.  For example, two genres I came across were “2-step Euroobscuro click-funky” and “e-ambient ragtime-funk.”  As you can see by those genres, this genre generator has conventions of actual genres but also includes random words that could possibly be a genre if you were to think about it.

When you think about what is happening in the websites, you are able to understand and get a better grasp on genre.  When you look closely at the conventions of a genre generating website, you begin to recognize what and how the website is able to do this.  You investigate how that genre becomes that genre.  Piecing together different similarities between different memes or different comic strips allows you to cognize the genre much more thoroughly.