Friday, October 16, 2020

I’ve Been A Fool

 




Inktober 2020 Day 4:

Our older son loves a video posted by @yeehawwsadcat of a teary-eyed cat, singing a Japanese ballad through the courtesy of creepy face morphing. 

The human lips....truly nightmare fuel.

Our younger son explains that is an example of a “cursed image.” One might briefly think this terminology originated with my own clever child...well, one might think that if one is close to my advanced age perhaps. But I have learned to think twice. I googled, and discovered on Wikipedia: “ a cursed image refers to images that are perceived as mysterious or disturbing due to their content, poor quality, or a combinations of the two. Since 2016, such images have become popular online.”

This one brings together two memes, that are each their own deep rabbit holes (or entire warrens): “Crying Cat” and “Baka Mitai”

According to Know Your Meme, the earliest know usage of the Crying Cat image was in 2014, which oddly, was a photoshopped version of Serious Cat.

It proliferated on a German image board in 2015, known there as “Schmuserkadser,” before moving to 4chan in 2016. 

Baka Mitai (I’ve Been a Fool) is a karaoke song that appears in the Yakusa series of games for the PlayStation. Baka Mitai, also known as “Dame Da Ne” for the first line of the lyrics, is a widespread meme of its own, sung by various game characters and real people. In 2020, Deepfake technology allowed many more people and characters ranging from Super Mario to Obama to sing the song without their participation in the real world.  The face morph template was apparently provided by Youtuber shaggySuave. 

No question, the queasy distortion generated by the low quality morphing is part of the charm.... if charm is the word we need here.

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