Midjourney Is Alemwjsl
Key topics
The discussion revolves around the unexpected revelation that not everyone is familiar with the term "transliteration," sparking a lively debate about knowledge gaps and linguistic awareness. Commenters shared their own experiences, with some admitting to being unfamiliar with the term, while others claimed it was a reasonably common word, especially among those with a college education or bilingual background. The conversation took a lighthearted turn with some commenters poking fun at the idea that knowing obscure words is a measure of intelligence, while others empathized with the notion that everyone has gaps in their knowledge. As the discussion unfolded, it became clear that the thread was as much about the word itself as it was about the diverse perspectives and experiences that shape our understanding of language.
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Very active discussionFirst comment
8h
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144-156h
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Based on 56 loaded comments
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- 01Story posted
Dec 10, 2025 at 7:25 PM EST
23 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 11, 2025 at 3:39 AM EST
8h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
42 comments in 144-156h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 19, 2025 at 1:14 AM EST
15 days ago
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Keyboard layout mismatches are common enough that I assume Google has a layout detection stage hardcoded just like they have typo correction hardcoded. And the creators of said algorithms probably understand very well how they work. (The naïve way would be to convert from every possible layout to every other layout, but I think you could build something more lightweight using Hidden Markov Models.)
How?
I think I've maybe occasionally seen "translit." in text used to mark that the following is transliterated, but I could see that being easily glossed over.
Korean -> English makes more sense.
For example, you wouldn't think twice about it if for the Japanese word for washing machine, you not only saw "洗濯機" (which is how it's written in Kanji), but also "sentakuki" or "sentakki" in the search results, because even to non-Japanese speakers it's pretty clear that that's probably the Japanese word for washing machine written with latin character transliteration, and pretty much exactly what you'd say.
With Korean, it looks more jarring, as the input method is apparently very different, and seems to map the keys for unrelated latin letters to Hangul letters? (I have no idea, I don't know anything about Hangul other than it's based on syllables, kind of like Hiragana/Katakana, and apparently very logical.)
More or less, yes. Each Hangul character represents a syllable, and is composed of two or more components (jamo) representing individual phonemes (like vowels or consonants) which make up the syllable. The keys on a Korean keyboard are mapped to those jamo.
Further details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language_and_computers
It is probably more like bopomofo keyboard for Chinese
For example, instead of typing “buzhidao” to get 不知道, you just type “bzd” and pick the top suggestion. Since all the phonetic endings are gone, it does look a little cryptic, but it means if you don’t have a pinyin keyboard, you can still type something fast that is highly correlated with your actual phrase.
For example when you’re searching a movie title on your SmartTV; teenage mutant ninja turtles (similarly abbreviated tmnt) becomes rzsg; some Chinese search tools will pick up on this; whether through statistics, fuzzy matching or specific 简拼 (jiǎnpīn) support, I don’t know.
BTW, this happens all the time in Korea, because it's extremely common for someone to type something while forgetting to switch to the correct input method. Try these, for example:
Hah, this comment is the top result when I searched with StartPage. There are a bunch of Korean results though.
you can also swear in a comedic way by just typing the Hangul sequence in Latin e.g. tlqkf
Also, for people that don’t use bilingual keyboards this is a pretty interesting finding.
I've got nothing to add there that people haven't already been saying - this was a fascinating quirk of humanity and technology. Really good full-circle adventure uncovering the source.
I'm commenting because I have to know what you're doing with your website and blog. It looks like a markdown/obsidian/static site generator. It's gorgeous and amazing. Did you write it yourself? Is it open source software?
The string "alemwjsl" is a classic example of a keyboard input error specific to Korean users. Here is the explanation: The Hypothesis: The "Han/Yeong" (Korean/English) Toggle Error In South Korea, keyboards are bilingual. Users frequently switch between the Korean script (Hangul) and English (QWERTY) using a toggle key. If a user intends to type the Korean word for Midjourney (미드저니) but forgets to toggle the keyboard input from English to Korean, the output corresponds to the physical location of the keys on a standard QWERTY layout. The Proof (Mapping the Keys) Let’s break down the Korean word 미드저니 (Midjourney) key by key on a standard "2-Set" Korean keyboard: 미 (Mi) ㅁ corresponds to the A key. ㅣ corresponds to the L key. Result: al 드 (Deu) ㄷ corresponds to the E key. ㅡ corresponds to the M key. Result: em 저 (Jeo) ㅈ corresponds to the W key. ㅓ corresponds to the J key. Result: wj 니 (Ni) ㄴ corresponds to the S key. ㅣ corresponds to the L key. Result: sl Put it all together: al + em + wj + sl = alemwjsl Why this happens and why they bid on it Muscle Memory: Midjourney is a very popular search term in Korea (113K volume for the main keyword). Thousands of users type it quickly without looking at the screen. By the time they realize they are typing in English mode, they have already hit enter or the search bar has auto-suggested the "gibberish" term. Smart SEO/SEM Strategy: High Intent: Anyone typing "alemwjsl" is 100% looking for "Midjourney." There is no ambiguity. Lower Cost: While "미드저니" might have high competition (CPC 0.31), "alemwjsl" often has lower competition because many advertisers overlook "gibberish" keywords, though in this specific case, the CPC is quite similar (0.28 vs 0.31), indicating the secret is out. Capture All Traffic: By bidding on this, Midjourney ensures that even clumsy typists find their website immediately rather than being redirected by Google to a "Did you mean...?" page or a competitor. Conclusion: "alemwjsl" is simply 미드저니 typed with the keyboard set to English. It represents high-intent users making a very common technical mistake.
Not the first time ChatGPT being inferior in such tasks.
If this was a class essay and the professor had a "no AI" policy, I could see an argument that this complies. It just interweaves the LLM more as a figure or blockquote, apart from the author's voice.
Anyone know of any other writings in this style?
And who knows, the entire thing could have been LLM generated.
As others have said, keyboard mismatches are common enough that Google might have built out logic for it specifically. But thats not necessary and even “old school” search engines could learn these things.
The first time “alemwjsl” is searched you might not have any data, but the user will probably fix their keyboard and retype in Korean. That gives you a query correction mapping. And you can assume if query1 yields no clicks and they update to query2, q1 is a synonym for q2 and serve results for q2 instead.
Then, if a session contains a query “alemwjsl” and a click on midjourney.com and another session “midj” also contains a click on midjourney.com, those are co-clicked queries.
Haven’t finished the article yet but this jumped out at me. This doesn’t ring true to me. Google runs an extortion scheme - since you can buy ads on your competitors’ trademarks, and since no users can tell ads from results (and since the organic results are now buried so far, they rarely get clicks anyway) if you don’t buy your brand keywords your competitors will get all your traffic.