Letting neural networks be weird

New ways to market your self-affirmation talk, thanks to a neural network

There’s a self-affirmation talk on Spotify where a voice says things like “I am confident” over a synthesized choir. It has been rather vigorously marketed, not just for general self-confidence skills, but also under titles like:

I Will Win the Lottery
I Will Improve My Meteorology Skills
Attract Your Dream Car
Lord Help Me to Improve My Trainspotting Skills
Improve Your Ear Health
Lord Help Me to Improve My Bongo Skills
Improve Your Beekeeping Skills
Learn Welsh

In fact, it has been listed under 4,510 different titles, and Glenn McDonald has posted the full list at furia.com.

Clearly, more names for this talk are needed. Fortunately, advanced machine learning is up to the task. I gave the full list of talk titles to a character-level recurrent neural network, which is an algorithm that learns to imitate patterns it finds in the data I give it. Neural networks are used for everything from face recognition to mortgage financing to language translation - but I use them for generating candy heart messages, weird paint colors, and proverbs.

Here are some great new marketing ideas for this talk:

I Will Improve Otter Skills
Improve Your Tater Skills
I Will Overcome Fear of Stanks
Improve Your Spud Training Skills
I Will Boost My Hat
Lord Help Me to Improve My Boots
Improve Your Scab
Lord Help Me to Improve My Walk Tricks Skills
I Will Improve My Dish Success

People seem even less likely to search for these particular outcomes, but you never know.

Improve Your Kite Faith
Become More of Mice
Become Less Snorty
I Will Improve My Jelling Skills
I Will Become More Water
I Will Find Sweep Think
I Will Become More Hay
I Will Overcome Fear of Hair Address
I Will Improve My Snow Beat Skills

The neural net also came up with these ideas, but I would suggest offering them at 50% off.

I Will Improve My Hater Making Skills
I Will Find Headaches
Become More Dirty
I Will Become Less Carefree
Improve Your Dull Skills
I Will Become Less Strong
I Will Become More Fatigue
Become Less Discreet
I Will Become More Faint
I Will Become a Strong Lose

It is possible that the following titles will get flagged by some kind of spam-detecting algorithm. Still worth a try?

Improve Your Handsoming Skills
I Will Attract Human
Overcome Fear of Scare
Lord Help Me to Become More Studflistic
I Will Develop Happinessiration Skills
I Will Overcome Fear of Fails
Overcome Fear of Thinks
I Will Improve My Mathical Skills
I Will Reverse Freaky
I Will Learn Criticizinate Your Bady
Lord Help Me to Become More Rumorousible
Overcome Fear of Guy
Learn Good

Some of the skills it wants to teach seem more suited to a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. If you’ve read the neural net’s D&D spells then the bit about Dave will make a lot more sense.

Improve Your Lore Skills
Improve Your Pike Making Skills
Improve Your Handsting Skills
I Will Overcome Fear of Thorks
I Will Improve My Wander Skills
Improve Your Sting Skills
I Will Overcome Fear of Wobkars
I Will Overcome Fear of Blanders
I Will Become More Daving
I Will Overcome Fear of Daving
Overcome Fear of Daves

I don’t understand what it is about Roy and Frank though. Or what the rest of these are about, honestly. But at least there’s a talk to help you through this.

Relieve Frank
Become Less Roy
Cled My Wrinders
Stop Crocking Your Loter
Become Less Uplickoos
Improve Your Scubbet Skills
I Will Become Less Snortanite
I Will Become a Still Drive
I Will Improve My Batography Skills
Improve Your Han Making Skills
I Will Become a Star Graces
I Will Become More Insectiving
Lord Help Me to Learn Hind Thinking

You may not be surprised to hear that the self-affirmation talk was originally marketed to help with all sorts of sex-related things, and that the neural network followed along. I won’t print them here, but want to see that class of titles? like “I Will Become a Star Sex Addicient”? Enter your email here and I’ll send them to you.