Author Topic: Viral...again.  (Read 3411 times)

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Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Viral...again.
« on: September 14, 2012, 05:57:55 pm »
They say that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot...that may not be completely accurate.

I like to play with Photoshop, an while I am no expert, I am  creative and imaginative.

One late night back in October 2010, I was sitting around, slightly bored, when I decided to go figure out how to use my new Photoshop softeare.

I found the graphic online, and a word popped into my mind...looking over the Obama cabinet, all I could see was inept, mediocre people in charge of our nation. Theirs wasn't a democracy, as they so often liked to say, their was an...I needed a word, a word...an “ineptocracy”!

I set off to find out if such a word existed, thinking that I had coined a new term but alas, the word already existed, listed in The Urban Dictionary:

ineptocracy   
   A system of government by the incompetent.
South Africa under the ANC is an example of an ineptocracy.

That definition SUCKED, so I decided to come up with my own, and came up with what you see in the poster above.

I put the poster up on facebook on November 1st, 2010, an sent it out to a few friends and acquaintances. Two people commented on it in fb.

I forgot about it, except on that rare occasion when someone would ask them if they could use it.

One day, some political radio host with a facebook page (Paula Priesse) puts up a poster titled “Ineptocracy”. Not the same picture I used, but the exact same definition.

I asked her where she got it, and she said “in an email” but she had changed the graphic for fears of copyright issues.

So I Googled the word to see if I could find out who was using my work, AND IT WAS EVERYWHERE!

The Urban Dictionary had been expanded to include my definition. Syndicated columnist Andres Oppenheimer had <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/24/2710372/latin-americans-complain-of-ineptocracies.html'>used it in an OpEd[/url], so had the Ron Paul campaign.

The definition was being used to sell t-shirts and coffee mugs online!

All instances of the definition that I found online had ONE thing in common…they were all dated AFTER November 1st, 2010. Months after November 1st 2010 in fact.

Now, a poster that I had Oceander clean up for me, has come back to me as part of a viral email making its rounds.

Lightning does strike twice I guess.



I need to figure out how to turn this into money.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2012, 06:46:46 pm »
Isn't it fun to have your own work come back to you?   I found once that a piece of mine had made the rounds enough to get a listing on snopes.com.  This is my adventurous little baby:


This is the way the image apparently "went viral" and made the rounds of the internets:



Apparently, the image was stripped from its frame and passed around as a "real" photo of Obuttocks and Moo-chelle getting the pledge of allegiance wrong.  So much so that it made snopes.com and (I just found it while googling for the snopes page) it even made factcheck.org!  Talk about anonymous fame!

Here is the snopes.com page

And here is the (newly discovered) factcheck.org page

I just found out that it made urbanlegends.com as well, right here.

If anyone really wants proof that I did it, I still have the original file I prepared on my computer at home.  Unfortunately I don't have the original GIMP .xcf file, which would have contained all of the layers I used, but I have the original .jpg that was uploaded.

The funny thing about the criticisms of the image - that it's obviously a fake because Moo-chelle's hair is reversed and her clothing is reversed - were in fact intentionally left as telltales to let alert viewers know it was a fake (well, initially I didn't want to mess with the hair because I was just learning how to use GIMP and it was a bear of a chore to try).

Maybe I should find a new(er) image of Obuttocks doing the pledge and this time hit all the relevant points in reversing it!  :smokin:

In terms of monetizing your word - ineptocracy - and the definition you gave it, the odds are very poor that you'd be able to get anything from all the people who've used it since you put it out.

You could, on the other hand, design some more graphics, put a copyright notice on them, and then start producing your own merchandise.  You should also register your designs with the Copyright Office so you have protection from copiers.  If you have a lot of images, you can put them together in one compilation and you only have to register the compilation itself to have all of the images within it covered by a registered copyright.  Saves on the registration fees.


« Last Edit: September 14, 2012, 06:54:11 pm by Oceander »

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2012, 06:49:30 pm »
Quote


BTW, I like the graphic itself.  Did you design the black/red rays and place the figures in the composition?

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2012, 07:28:31 pm »
Quote
In terms of monetizing your word - ineptocracy - and the definition you gave it, the odds are very poor that you'd be able to get anything from all the people who've used it since you put it out.

My family is veritably crawling with lawyers (one that specifically deals with copyright laws) and they all said the same thing.

 8888crybaby
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2012, 07:33:11 pm »

BTW, I like the graphic itself.  Did you design the black/red rays and place the figures in the composition?

No, some Croatian or Greek chick named An Onymous did the art.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2012, 08:30:25 pm »
No, some Croatian or Greek chick named An Onymous did the art.

Ahh.  So you "borrowed" someone else's work as well?

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2012, 08:39:40 pm »
Ahh.  So you "borrowed" someone else's work as well?

I'm not good enough to do that level of artwork on my own.

BTW, on the telephone picture, how do I get the Presidential seal to he correct angle as it relates to the telephone?
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2012, 08:42:53 pm »
My technical abilities with Photoshop are maxed out at this poster.

All assembled by me.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2012, 08:44:17 pm »
I'm not good enough to do that level of artwork on my own.

BTW, on the telephone picture, how do I get the Presidential seal to he correct angle as it relates to the telephone?

My bad...here's the telephone picture.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2012, 08:44:36 pm »
I'm not good enough to do that level of artwork on my own.

BTW, on the telephone picture, how do I get the Presidential seal to he correct angle as it relates to the telephone?

On what telephone?

Assuming you mean that you're trying to get a circle to fit to a viewpoint that's not center-on, I would typically use a combination of the skew and perspective tools in GIMP to give the circle the proper look.  Then, once I had the circle properly formed, I would use the multiply or overlay settings for the circle to let the texture and topography of the underlying telephone dial come through.

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #10 on: September 14, 2012, 08:47:52 pm »
My technical abilities with Photoshop are maxed out at this poster.

All assembled by me.



That's pretty good; it's certainly nothing to sneeze at.  Two points/questions:  (1) did you use a displace or bump-map function to get the hammer/sickle images to conform to the undulating surface of the flag, and (2) you should probably put a stronger border around the image itself because right now it's such a thin white border that it looks more like a mistake in aligning the image to the background than it does a border.  I'm in love with drop shadows, so another way you might make the image "pop" off the background would be to center it as it is, but remove the border entirely and then give it a small drop shadow.  That should give it a more dramatic setoff from the underlying background.

Oceander

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #11 on: September 14, 2012, 08:50:53 pm »
My bad...here's the telephone picture.


Basically, you have to use a perspective tool to adjust the circle so it appears to fit into the same plane as the telephone itself; too my untrained eye it looks like the plane of the front of the phone has been turned about 20 to 30 degrees into the pane of the image itself.  You also need to take into account the relationship between the front of the phone and the viewer; in this case, the front of the phone appears to be level with the eye of the viewer, and to the right-hand side of the viewer's field of view.

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2012, 08:59:56 pm »
That's pretty good; it's certainly nothing to sneeze at.  Two points/questions:  (1) did you use a displace or bump-map function to get the hammer/sickle images to conform to the undulating surface of the flag, and (2) you should probably put a stronger border around the image itself because right now it's such a thin white border that it looks more like a mistake in aligning the image to the background than it does a border.  I'm in love with drop shadows, so another way you might make the image "pop" off the background would be to center it as it is, but remove the border entirely and then give it a small drop shadow.  That should give it a more dramatic setoff from the underlying background.

A friend was on the phone walking me through that.

I remember creating a BW copy of the image, then placing rows of sickles in place (after he sent me back a flag devoid of stars) and using a "map" command, so I gues it was bump-map.

He walked me through it, then he cleaned it up a bit for me.

You're right about the borders, they've always bothered me.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline R4 TrumPence

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #13 on: September 14, 2012, 10:04:21 pm »
I put the  ineptocracy posted on the gbr fb page, which also sent it to twitter with a hat tip to you for the pic :beer:


I am Repub4Bush on FR '02

Offline Zissou

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #14 on: September 14, 2012, 10:34:19 pm »

BTW, on the telephone picture, how do I get the Presidential seal to he correct angle as it relates to the telephone?

Edit/Transform/perspective
« Last Edit: September 14, 2012, 10:44:36 pm by Zissou »
Conservatives predicted the attacks almost 4 years ago when Obama ran for office.

We knew.

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #15 on: September 15, 2012, 04:06:01 am »
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Viral...again.
« Reply #16 on: September 15, 2012, 04:06:18 am »
I put the  ineptocracy posted on the gbr fb page, which also sent it to twitter with a hat tip to you for the pic :beer:

Thanks!
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx