Is nothing authentic anymore?

I must be getting old, but this morning I learned about an entirely new concept called “inauthentic text.”

An old post was pinged by a blog which linked what I said, and when I went there to read the post and possibly thank the blogger, I saw that the link had absolutely nothing to do with the point in my post. Nor could I make any sense out of what the “blogger” was saying. I thought she might be schizophrenic, because she would use certain stock phrases, but also, the grammar and syntax were in other places so twisted that the text appeared to be computer generated translations.

The blog is nothing but a spam blog promoting a book I will not mention lest I help the S.O.B. who wrote it.

It consists of what is called “inauthentic text.” I copied and pasted a paragraph to this “Inauthentic Paper Detector”

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 32.0% chance of being authentic text

OK, so for control purposes, I copied and pasted every word from this recent post, and to my horror, I got this:

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 40.3% chance of being authentic text

So what’s up? If my writing is inauthentic, what is to become of me?

Not wanting to take this personally, I entered M. Simon’s latest post, and it, too, was labeled “INAUTHENTIC.”

Next, I copied and pasted Sarah’s great post about the Republican “war on women.”

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 34.0% chance of being authentic text

What could be going on? How about Dave? According to the miserable excuse for an authenticity detector, Dave’s writing was said to be even less authentic:

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 18.1% chance of being authentic text

Could all four bloggers here be writing inauthentic text? I tried entering randomly selected news articles, and even an editorial piece by Glenn Reynolds. (All were called inauthentic!)

Is it possible that the “Inauthentic Paper Detector” (which I found linked at the Wiki entry on the subject) is itself less than authentic? It is quite clear to me that it simply labels whatever text is entered as inauthentic. Why would Wiki link such fraud? What’s more shocking than that is that scientists seem to have taken it seriously.

For control purposes, I thought I would try entering the text of the Gettysburg Address.

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 17.4% chance of being authentic text

Well, at least the detector reveals what we write here is more authentic than the most famous speech by Abraham Lincoln, written by him at a crucial period in our history.

Small comfort that.

UPDATE: In my vain attempt to find any redemption in the “Inauthentic Paper Detector” I noticed that the site’s emphasis seemed to be on scientific papers. So I copied and pasted the first page of Einstein’s famed paper, Relativity: The Special and General Theory:

Einstein, it turns out, was inauthentic too!

This text had been classified as
INAUTHENTIC
with a 32.2% chance of being authentic text

If Einstein’s relativity is inauthentic, the world is in bigger trouble than I realized.