Freudster

July 24, 2006 12:00 PM

"Freudster is a textual analysis system that explores how Freud's theories might be understood by the millions of people presenting themselves via text & images on MySpace. "
posted by jrb223 (18 comments total)

Who I'd Like to Meet:

My mother.
posted by justkevin at 12:05 PM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

freudster's description of itself is exceptionally misleading.

it should say this: "we color a small amount of text from freud's writing to match myspace photos."
posted by shmegegge at 12:15 PM on July 24, 2006

I don't need to click on the link to find the problem. MySpace users != understanding Freud's theories.
posted by ninjew at 12:18 PM on July 24, 2006

From the description:

"When an About Me text of sufficient length is found, the application uses Flesch's algorithm to gauge the reading level of that user's writing. Simultaneously, the program loads in a section of Freud's essay and gauges its Flesch Index. Through synonym replacement of multisyllable words, the reading level of the Freud paragraph is then adjusted to match the user "reading" that portion of the psychoanalyst's essay. Other stylistic flourishes such as the profile’s use of capitalization, emoticons, and key phrases also appear in the recombined Freud paragraphs. Finally, the application imports the MySpace user's image and converts its pixels into characters from the text."

Seems like they're doing more than just coloring text, shmegegge. I thought the example given at the bottom was interesting.
posted by thethirdman at 12:19 PM on July 24, 2006

A program that rewrites text as gibberish? What's the point? What does it have to do with Freud?
posted by clockzero at 12:21 PM on July 24, 2006

ah, this is true. i misinterpreted.
posted by shmegegge at 12:22 PM on July 24, 2006

yeah, i totally take that back. this shit is fucking hysterical.
posted by shmegegge at 12:24 PM on July 24, 2006

Not ugly enough to have anything to do with myspace.
posted by srboisvert at 12:26 PM on July 24, 2006

Interesting algorithm -- I wonder where it's getting its synonyms. "Removes" becomes "dig outs." "Hysteria" becomes "mirth." Presumably no synonym was found for "psychoanalysis," so the substitution is "WTF."
posted by Acetylene at 12:30 PM on July 24, 2006

Every person in a myspace photo with a sideways ballcap has oral fixation issues.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:33 PM on July 24, 2006

This is a beautiful, beautiful combination of absurdist humor and a very open-ended college programming assignment. Bravo!
posted by gurple at 12:35 PM on July 24, 2006

Too bad it can't be pointed at other URLs.
posted by IronLizard at 12:43 PM on July 24, 2006

ten dollars to anyone who can analyze this one. for real.
posted by ackeber at 12:48 PM on July 24, 2006

It's almost enough to make me wish I were part of the Myspace circus. Awesome.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 1:43 PM on July 24, 2006

ooooo....i wanna do this. i wanna copy of this program!!!
posted by Doorstop at 1:53 PM on July 24, 2006

This was projected on a wall in real time at the BAPlab exhibit at 3rd Ward last Saturday- I didn't know what it was until I saw this post!

And I'm not sure if I should be disturbed by this: out of the millions of MySpace profiles that could have been analyzed, the one freudster chose to display for my example was of my former hairdresser.
posted by Sidthecat at 3:37 PM on July 24, 2006

Yeah sidthecat, BAPlab is actually where I saw it first, and led me to look it up. There was a lot of other cool stuff there too that I'd love to find again online, if it's out there.
posted by jrb223 at 5:27 PM on July 24, 2006

out there on the web, I mean...
posted by jrb223 at 5:27 PM on July 24, 2006