Saturday Q&A

Questionable Regulation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to a special Saturday edition of the Friday Q&A. I'm back from vacation and ready to once again examine the issues that matter most to Fark's Photoshop community. Debate was sparked this week over a humorous entry created for the recent "planking" theme contest by Abe Vigoda's Ghost, venerable Photoshopper and friend (or possibly enemy, I can't remember) of the Clinic.

Q: Why did people get so butthurt?

A: It appears that AVG's entry has escaped into the larger world of the Internet, and is wreaking havoc as out-of-context Fark entries featuring the Kent State massacre are want to do. Debate has primarily centered around the appropriate use of that image, as well as many others. The rationale presented was that dead bodies are sad, even dead hippies, and we should not use widely circulated images of them out of solemn respect. And possibly because their ghosts could come back and haunt us.

Q: Where do you draw the line?

A: Quite simply, I don't. The path to victory in Fark Photoshop is paved with broken taboos. If you don't push the envelope, someone else will. There's an old saying: "You have to break a few omelets to make a chicken cross the road." Or something. See, if someone had slipped in a joke about the holocaust, that proverb would be way more memorable.

Q: What if someone gets offended by my work?

A: This is a delicate situation, made all the more difficult by the fact that Internet communications do not yet allow you give the offended person the wedgie they so greatly deserve. Don't worry, our top scientists are working around the clock on a solution. Until then, you'll just have to deal with butthurt the old-fashioned way. By casually mocking the other party for still having remnants of a soul.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. I'm glad we had a chance to explore this issue, as AVG is hardly the first to have faced it. I'd like to congratulate him for creating something that made a lot of people laugh. A few will always try to act offended, but it's my opinion that most people do this strictly to troll and receive attention.

Stay tuned for more misanthropic generalizations from the Doctor!