Saturday, May 12, 2012

Getting the picture

Consider the lolcat.

It packs quite a bit of semantic density into a small package. An image says more than a thousand words, it is said, and an image with a few words plastered on it says more than two thousand.

And they are quite easy to make, too. For fun and nonprofit.

This sudden increase in communicative efficiency has caused concern with some. They fear that people will stop writing and talking with each other, and replace their wordy discourse with lolcats alone. They pack so much of a semantic punch that one really won't need to use any other form of communication to get things done -

They are, in short, too effective.

The fact that the very same people who say this doesn't seem to have a problem with the same happening with regards to paper money perplexes me. You'd think the similarity between pictures with words on them and pictures with words on them really wouldn't need spelling out.

Maybe there is a place in the world for a lolcat about that?

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