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Sunday, December 17, 2006

Reverse-Engineering Other People’s Prompts: A Contest

Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman on 12/17/06 at 09:39 PM

The following searches brought potential plagiarists to Acephalous the last two weeks. What do you think the prompts prompting their searches looked like? Consider, for example:

“Is Tyler Durden a masculine character?"

Really? Someone needed Google to answer that? I find it difficult to imagine the motivating prompt:

Is the central character in a novel epitomizing the compensatory masculinity of “a generation of men raised by women” really all that masculine? Your answer should take the form of a “Yes” or a “No.” Students choosing the latter must also identify the occupant of Grant’s Tomb. Failure to do so correctly will result in my friends and I reconsidering our position on compulsory sterilization.

Some searches resist identification by virtue of their excessive generality, like the one demanding Google produce a “good reading [of] ode on a grecian urn.” Do such searches betray the desperation of a beleaguered and waning faith in student intellection?

Over the course of the semester, your profound ignorance of history, literature, culture and the fundaments of English grammar convinced me that anything resembling an argument written in anything approximating standard English is almost too much to ask. I would no more entrust you with a sentence than a baby with a machete, but as an oral exam would remind me that you exist outside the nightmare my therapist recommended I consider the fifty minutes I spend with you demons three times a week, I have no choice but to suggest someone else write your paper for you. Straight plagiarism is preferred, since your transparent paraphrases will only force me to spend ten seconds resenting everyone who decided the world would be a better place if no one strangled you.

Then there are the students who leach the fun from this contest by including the prompt in their search, e.g.

“What are the elements of our personality? Which of these elements are the result your heredity and which are the results of your environment? Was nature or nurture more important in your development? How did you become the person you are? free sample essays."

That search inspired me one of my own:

What is social darwinism? Did it really exist? Or did people believe in different evolutionary theories, like those of Lamarck? Were they aware that they did, or did they think they were good Darwinians? free sample essays

Sadly, I’m one of the only people capable of answering those questions. But enough about me. What prompts do you think compelled savvy undergraduates to venture the following searches?

“Chiasmus? Examples of in [The] Crying of Lot 49?"

“What does biology have to do when you have a chemist botanical gardener kicking your ass?"

“Corey Haim’s comment [about] Darwin was?"

“[What] academic experiments [have been] done on fish with controlling pills?"

“How [do you] cite a blurb [in] MLA [style]?"

Comments

My favourite was a search simply for “endolphine” [sic], which naturally turned up some absurdist nonsense I wrote back in April, and which I genuinely hope some misguided soul will take for gospel truth.

By Conrad H. Roth on 12/18/06 at 02:01 PM | Permanent link to this comment

#5: Discuss [name of book] without opening it. Refer to front and back cover, at most. Any reference to the actual text will be penalized. Extra credit for fatuous generalizations about life that the book’s title reminded you of.

By on 12/18/06 at 02:39 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I wish I could say the many searchers for information on “spermatorrhea” had only an academic interest. (The one who thanked me by email for my valuable medical service, I was able to disabuse. But who knows what all the others have done with the misinformation?)

Mostly, though, I like looking at the queries. The last couple of days have included “little leather library”, “altus oklahoma movie theater what is playing”, “the pomares royal family of tahiti”, “does a misogynist build you up to break you downdown”, “eggnog samuel delaney”, “play guitar like verlaine”, “hilgard’s hypnosis awareness”, “ryan is a fanny”, “the song cuba cuba cuba is my home”, “is genius linked to fainting?”, and “1998 fantasy novel blond protagonist darkness coal women men rights ceremony”. Spam’s really begun to get me down, but these are pretty cheering.

By Ray Davis on 12/19/06 at 10:07 AM | Permanent link to this comment

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Sunday, December 17, 2006

Reverse-Engineering Other People’s Prompts: A Contest

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