Fail and Meme's: About politically uncorrect visual humour

One of the views that STS provides (when putting on the STS-glasses, hats or any other suitable pedagogical headgear-metaphors) is how technology enables or disables certain actions. Lately I have been fascinated by how imaging and visual representations have become modifiable and spreadable by pretty much everyone. In the development of better internet connections, as well as better PC processing power; You don't need fancy or expensive websites in order to hold the space that images takes, sending emails with large attachements wont slow down your working day and lots of sites are now providing free hosting of your pictures. In addition programmes such as Photoshop have opened up the image to modifications, for play and making images your own - adding comments or morphing pictures to tell other stories.

One trend in particular is the meme's in the form of running jokes, through images - on the internet. A particular feature of these is the need for them to be completely politically incorrect.

Whether this is a sign of increased discrimination, racism, lack of tolerance - or simply a "We don't care" statement I am not so sure, though I lean towards the latter. Either way it shows a new area where the layman can tell stories (and in this case jokes) through a visual medium. No need to be a great artist, or even a master of cameras or Photoshop. In many cases all that is needed, is helping the spread and recycling of these images - ensuring their place on different forums, boards and websites.

I guess I now will do my part. Here is a small sample.