When I first plugged in the names Shirly Ribak, Shiri Arnon (my roommate), and Leigh Rybak (my cousin) into the first of three different genre generator websites the result was interesting. I ended up with a piece of writing that I would assume to be a research paper. I would assume that the paper generated by the SCIgen is a research paper due to its rhetorical features and its conventions. First, the audience of this paper is clearly someone who is interested in the science of the Web and the way in which algorithms are used to develop various aspects of the Internet. I am able to infer that this is the probable audience of this piece of writing because while reading the paper I noticed that the reader is asked to “suppose,” “consider,” and “see” various things depicted by the studies that are being discussed. Second, the style and tone of this writing is very formal, clear, concise, and educational. The word choice is scientific, ranging from scientific nouns to titles and names of scientific articles, authors, and discoveries. Next, the purpose of this piece of writing is demonstrated by its abstract, which works to give a heads up to the reader of what he/ she will be reading about before he/ she begins to read. Finally, this piece of writing obtains many conventions that are common to research papers. These conventions include an informative title, graphs, organizers, diagrams, an abstract, a conclusion, references, and examples.

            Next, I believe to have generated a comic strip from pandyland.net. Again, I am convinced that I have generated a comic strip due to the specific conventions that are apparent in the images that were generated. Some of the conventions that convinced me that the genre generated from this website is a comic include the specific font used, speech bubbles, illustrations, color, humor, curse words, the use of blocks to separate the various images, and the way in which the images are placed in a sort of chronological order from left to right in order to depict the order in which the dialogue of the cartoon characters is supposed to be read. Also, the audience of the comics generated by this website is probably composed of surfers of the web looking for entertainment while the purpose of the comics generated by this website is to entertain the very Internet surfers who are looking to be entertained. Thus, I am convinced that the genre generated by pandyland.net is a comic strip.

            Lastly, I surfed memegenerator.net and unsurprisingly the genre that was generated on this website was a meme. One of my favorite memes on this website has coined the title, “Bad Luck Brian” Meme.  This meme is especially humorous due to its rhetorical features. The audience of the Bad Luck Brian” memes tends to be composed of surfers of the web who are looking to be entertained. Likewise, the purpose of the “Bad Luck Brian” memes is to make surfers of the web laugh either in their head or out loud. A “Bad Luck Brian” meme has certain conventions that separate it from other pieces of writing and essentially, other memes as well. The conventions of the Bad Luck Brian include, of course, Bad Luck Brian, who is a white adolescent male with red hair and braces wearing a plaid red sweater vest on top of a light blue collared shirt. Besides Bad Luck Brian himself, the conventions of the “Bad Luck Brian” memes include a specific font of white block letters that usually spell out funny situations. For example, one of the “Bad Luck Brian” memes had “Checks under bed for monster, find one” written on it and another had “wins golden ticket to Wonka’s chocolate factory, gets diabetes” written on it. Thus, through what is written in the white block letters and the fact that they are written on top of a picture of “Bad Luck Brian” allow the reader to infer the genre of the image as a meme.

PB1A

The word lyric originates from Latin root “lyricus” and by definition means the words of a song. Song lyrics is a genre of writing that varies greatly depending on its source. The source is ultimately the artist of the song, thus artists’ individual intentions tend to influence the audience, purpose, context, and style of his/ her song. Although lyrics’ rhetorical features obtain many differences from song to song, their similarities are apparent through their conventions. Some of the conventions included in most song lyrics are stanzas, verses, intros, rhymes, shout outs, onomatopoeias, and hooks. Stanzas, verses, and hooks are essential in lyrics for the sole purpose of organization. These conventions allow the songwriter to intertwine his/ her writing with a rhythm or a beat while encouraging a pleasant flow. Rhymes, hooks, and onomatopoeias are imperative when writing lyrics for these conventions enable the artists’ audience to subconsciously connect with the song. For example, Drake’s song “Marvin’s Room” entails many conventions associated with song lyrics. His intro is characterized by a real voicemail from an ex- girlfriend, the hook has a rhyme scheme of “aabb,” and he also uses, “uh,” an onomatopoeia. Although many artists’ lyrics obtain conventions common to most songs, the way in which these conventions are used display the artists’ purpose.

“Marvin’s Room” is essentially Drake’s attempt to prove that he could be insensitive to women and that he is not as soft as people make him out to be. Since the beginning of his rap career, Drake garnered the reputation of a sensitive man. Marvin’s Room specifically falsifies this notion and makes the point that Drake could be both insensitive and sensitive to women. He admits that sometimes his relationships with women do not turn out well causing him to “make monsters outta the women [he] sponsors.” In addition, Drake uses lyrics in order to convey the way in which his relationship with women are negatively affected. He makes the case that other men, his lavish lifestyle, and money are all aspects of his life that end up hurting the relationships that he has with various women. Through the lyrics of “Marvin’s Room” Drake complains that “the woman that [he] would try is happy with a good guy” thus portraying his difficulty competing with other men. Also, he mentions that he is “ashamed” because he “paid for [women’s] flights and hotels.” Thus, he makes the point that having so much money makes it tough for him to find a woman who appreciates more about him than his bank account. Finally, although he constantly parties at the end of the day he realizes that he does not have “much to believe in.” This upsets Drake because although he enjoys his lavish lifestyle, the one girl that he wants to be able to come home to does not want to listen to him so through these lyrics he lets her know how much her indifference hurts him. All in all, song lyrics’ rhetorical features such as their audience, context, and style along with the way in which lyrical conventions appear in a song assist the author with delivering what they want to convey to their audience.

About Me Blog Blurb

01/06/2015

My name is Shirly Ribak and I am a first year pre- Economics major. I was born and raised in Rishon LeZion, Israel until the age of nine when I moved to the United States. Once in the United States, I resided in Santa Monica. Santa Monica has become my favorite city in the world. The deep blue oceans, green hills and mountains perfect for hiking, mesmerizing sunsets, and a picture perfect view of a lit up urban city during dark hours are just a few reasons why I became so appreciative of living in this city. When it was time for me to graduate Santa Monica High School and move out of my parents’ house I realized that I needed to move to a location that could bring me as much joy as Santa Monica. I was therefore drawn to UC Santa Barbara. I had never given UCSB much consideration as my potential future home. Once I had visited, however, my opinion of the school altered drastically.

            While realizing how similar Santa Barbara and Santa Monica are, I also realized my unwillingness for major changes in my life. So, since moving out was an inevitable major change, I thought I’d lessen my encounters with differences by going to UCSB. Now that I have lived in Santa Barbara for two months, I am so glad that I chose to come to this university. I walk around campus everyday so blissful to be a part of such a tight- knit and interconnected community full of incredibly intelligent and lively students from a variety of different locations. Since moving to Santa Barbara, I have become involved in many clubs. For one, I am involved in Model United Nations, which is a club that hosts and attends multiple annual conferences in which students debate real policies that are currently being discussed by delegates in the United Nations.

As much as I love SM and SB, Israel will always occupy the biggest space in my heart because it is such a wonderful place yet its image is too often falsified by the media. Thus, I am also involved in AIPAC and Mishelanu, which are political and social American- Israeli organizations that work to shed a more realistic light on behalf of the small Middle Eastern country than the one put forth by the mass media. I believe that the places I have lived in and traveled to have greatly influenced me and I cannot wait to be able to greatly influence them as well.