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To test the efficacy of this application, I pasted in several paragraphs of random gibberish (Edsfuyxvhc bkasdafh sfguvy ...), and again, I received the response of James Joyce. Several paragraphs from a german newspaper yielded Kurt Vonnegut. So, we can conclude this app is quite reliable.
Apparently, I write like HP Lovecraft. The text that I pasted in was a brief I wrote at work - perhaps that explains why the application thinks I write horror fiction.
Using my own favourite MeFi comment, it tells me I write like Mario Puzo.
I'm not convinced that they have this thing fully sorted out...
I got James Joyce from a passage with a lot of italics, Lovecraft came from a passage with a lot of very long complex sentences using somewhat archaic formal. grammar, and Shakespeare from a very dialogue-heavy bit.
all from fanfic
Every sample I've tried has given me a different answer. I don't have very many "long" writings on the internet, just long-ish comments here and ancient posts on LiveJournal, etc, so nothing that I think represents my actual writing "voice" (which is totally different from my chit-chat voice on places like MetaChat and Twitter).
It just told me mygothlaundry's blog is written like Dan Brown, though, and I find that impossible to believe.
Clarke and Adams were huge favorites of mine, so I guess that makes sense. Funny that none of my writing drew a Hemingway, since that's the comparison I used to get most often.
My blog was judged Lovecraftian and my last 4 articles are James Joyce (writing about "Lost"), Chuck Palahniuk (about "Undercover Boss") and Stephen King twice ("Despicable Me" and Betty White). My editors will be delighted. I then fed it my "Goon Show" inspired radio script at the bottom of the MetaTalk Datafun thread and the first part was like William Gibson, and the second part like David Foster Wallace, (and I was totally aiming for Douglas Adams, dammit).
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