The latest trend to sweep the Internet has been the Dall-E mini-image generator, which creates pictures through artificial intelligence based on a textual description. Users can enter practically anything into the textbox on the website, and the software will draw a somewhat accurate picture of what the user says.
Images will not be photorealistic, but they will give viewers a general idea of what the things they are describing would look like. The opportunity to see almost anything in the human imagination resulted in users flocking to the website to create the most ridiculous pictures they can think of.
Dall-E has become so popular that most people who try to run the software will receive a notification from the page: “Too much traffic, please try again.”
Users lucky enough to have their descriptions processed have shared their creations to social media, resulting in Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers dedicated to sharing them.
Over the past couple of weeks, Internet users may have seen pictures of “the demogorgon from Stranger Things holding a basketball,” “fire hydrant death metal cover,” and “courtroom sketch of a capybara suing Elon Musk.”
The type of cultural climate that surrounds Dall-E’s growth in popularity is something that we should welcome and work to nurture. The memes surrounding it make the Internet enjoyable and fun, bringing people together in a very healthy way. There is no uniting people into a cancel- culture mob or creating an aggressive campaign of infographics for a political issue. People are simply enjoying the ridiculousness all for its own sake.
Some of the Dall-E posts border on being a little political, e.g., “Grimace at the Capitol Riot,” and many appeal to dark humor with “Hitler in a Pixar movie” or “gender reveal 9/11.” But most of the pictures are lighthearted.
We may not have thought we’d ever see a “courtroom sketch of the Xenomorph from Alien on trial for felony jaywalking,” but here we are. Apparently, there was a great need in our society for “Darth Vader mowing his lawn,” and Dall-E fulfills it.
These are the types of posts users generally create and share. They are intentionally stupid creations that are not meant to be taken seriously, and people can laugh at them without doing so at others’ expense.
Seldom can we enjoy a moment where Internet users come together simply because they are enjoying something. It is not an cure-all antidote to our social ills and polarization, but it is a sign that we can redeem our culture.
For that reason, let’s keep generating and sharing “Godzilla robs a McDonald’s” and “Bigfoot performing at Woodstock.” They help the internet become less toxic.
Who knows, maybe “Thanos looking for his mom in Walmart” will win the culture war.