As a collaborative exercise in engineering an as hands-off as possible mememaking tool, I teamed up with Nathan Springman to program a DrawBot script that yields letter-sized memes, typeset in a range of artful and contentious fonts. With melting, machine learning-generated wojaks[1] from Nathan and my code for typesetting randomly-chosen fonts in layouts that range from a single image macro[2] to a 3×3 pseudo-alignment chart,[3] our final sampler serendipitously reveals a potential beauty in such inky, uncanny compositions.
(just in case the above paragraph didn’t make much sense, some footnotes — )
[1] “an Internet meme that is, in its original form, a simple, black-outlined cartoon drawing of a bald man with a wistful expression.” — Wikipedia
[2] “a captioned image that typically consists of a picture and a witty message or a catchphrase.” — Know Your Meme
[3] a diagram that groups/categorizes subjects to illustrate different character alignments; originates from Dungeons and Dragons. (more at Know Your Meme)