Almost Getting It

Current internet culture is strongly supportive of sending almost any string of text as long as you place it on an image. The standard Facebook unit seems to be the e-card, which puts your words by a faux-Edwardian image and, BAM, they are now worth sharing and liking. By long-standing internet tradition, the highest form of this art involves images of cats.

See here referenced a project to elevate the dialogue by placing poems on cat pictures, because people seem more likely to read and enjoy words when accompanied by cats. This keen grasp of the medium then immediately fails:

VIII. If you want to share a copy of this image, please ask first.

While a perfectly reasonable approach to intellectual property, you cannot productively harness lolcats to pull your wagon while locking them in crates. At best, you can hope for a happy medium between “too few requests to make it worthwhile” and “too many requests to read and respond.” I have this mental image of Facebook using this model and sending George Takei 250,000 messages a day, “John Smith wants to share your image, do you approve?”

: Zubon