I write like...

There's a website (iwl.me) which allegedly analyses your writing and it tells you which famous author your writing style most resembles.  Yes, I've done this before with other websites, but this one has the gumption to pop up a window offering to sell you a special course to improve your writing while simultaneously saying you write like a famous author.  Audacious!

So I figured I'd give it a try.  I pasted into the input box my earlier post reviewing the Hot-Can.  IWL told me that I write like some guy called David Foster Wallace.  I go to check him out on wikipedia.  Cool - he's acclaimed.  He's ironic.  He's innovative.  Oh, and he's dead.  Hung himself.  That's not so great for either of us.

Now I'm wondering if maybe I should try a different bit of my writing.  So I paste into IWL's input box my earlier post on how I got antidepressants mixed up with painkillers.  And it tells me I write like David Foster Wallace.  Perhaps choosing a post about antidepressants wasn't such a good idea.  Way too obvious.

So I try IWL on a previous post of mine about wearing a new type of scrubs at a new hospital.  And it tells me I write like David Foster Wallace. My post about my cat's medical history?  David Foster Wallace.

What the heck?  My working theory is that IWL is just telling me the same thing over and over no matter what I put into it.  To test this I try typing in the phrase "You have a face like a bum", but it complains that I need to enter several paragraphs of text.

So I go back to the wikipedia page about David Foster Wallace, whose name I am starting to tire of, copy the section on "Themes and Styles" and paste that into IWL.  And it tells me I write like H.P. Lovecraft - who is the author that I'm currently quoting at the top of this blog, and who invented the self-same Yog-Sothoth that appears in my fermented dairy quiz right at this very moment.

Something sinister is going on.  I think Wikipedia has been taken over by the Elder Gods.

[postscript: it gets stranger yet - continued in the comments section...]