There are plenty of people online who get their thrills from being a nuisance to others. Consider:
the spammers who pop onto our message boards to post an advertisement and then disappear. They have to register, it has to take them a little time (it’s not like sending out a zillion spam emails), and their pleasure if from being a nuisance. (Last night, we had one person who registered under five different names, posted the same spam message in five different forums, then left. Maybe it was a 'bot, but someone had to create the 'bot.)
the hackers who create and distribute viruses that damage computers
the drive-by posters who think it’s funny to disrupt discussions
the petty thieves who try to get away with not paying membership fees
the nutcases who think it’s funny to make the moderators chase after them and ban them, making no (or little) effort to hide their identity
Yeah, it’s a sad existence, and amazing how many jerks there are who (one presumes) go orgastic over this kind of behavior.
Maybe I just don’t care enough but I have never been able to read something and immediately be able to identify the author by style.
On a certain anon board people take great pleasure “identifying” other anon posters but I think that’s just an attempt at humor and not some educated guess or the result of real analysis.
I’m not trying to be snotty, kniz. I wanted a discussion about writing styles, not what a poopyhead Poster X was, which is why I didn’t name names. I didn’t feel it was appropriate, since this isn’t the Pit.
I got the feeling that your purpose was sincere, but there was also that feeling that I expressed. I’m glad I didn’t upset you too bad. That was not my purpose, I just had to get something off my chest.
This thread set me wondering how easy it would be to counterfeit a new style of writing.
As a chess player, I reckon I can tell roughly how experienced any player is after seeing just one game played by them in their normal style.
Probably a musician could do something similar if they heard you play.
Let me try an experiment (as it says in my profile, I’m a teacher)…
Do NOT try your experiment by creating a new screen name to see how long it will take to catch you. That would be a bannable offense, even as an “experiment.” Testing to see how long it takes the Moderators to discover a sham name is NOT a good idea. Period.
You might go to Cafe Society, you could open a thread on writing the introductory paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities in the style of various authors or something of the sort.
Sorry, glee, I saw your first post and leapt to an unwarranted conclusion. Simulposting can be an awkward thing. My apologies, but my warning does go to anyone who’s even thinking about it.
The real question is not whether you could make a single post in a different posting style, but how long you could keep it up.
This would have been an immediate give-away that it was you. Well, that it was someone from England, in any case.
Have the mods ever had someone set up an alternate account and do just that, just to test their abilities/capabilities? Sort of like the security firms that hire old bank robbers to consult on their product.
It involves a Ouija board, communing with the dead, and a big iron pot of boiling stuff that smells pretty bad. Trust me, you probably really don’t want to know anyway. Best not to ask what the mods do.
Your warning was perfectly sensible!
I am glad that my experiment was legal.
I agree it can be a pain to keep up a pretence.
However I would quibble slightly that being polite is automatically English - a teacher letting a pupil loose on the SDMB would naturally insist on it.
Gaps are for losers!