The Victorian Meme Machine // BL Labs Competition 2014
Examples of Possible Outputs
All of the examples listed below make use of the same two-line joke:
Chicago Woman: How much do you charge for a divorce?
Chicago Lawyer: One hundred dollars, ma’am, or six for 500dols.
Fig 1: A diagram of how this joke could be marked up in order to pair it with an appropriate image.
Fig 2: An example of how this joke could be ‘paired’ with an image using the caption format. This image was pulled from the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration by searching for images tagged as featuring ‘females’ and ‘lawyers’.
Fig 3: Another example of caption pairing. However, this image has been selected using less specific instructions. It was simply tagged as featuring a man and a woman. As you’ll see, remixing the joke like this changes its nature and invites you to laugh at it for a different reason.
Figs 4-9: A series of pairings formatted using speech bubbles rather than captions. Some are a close match for the joke, but later pairings become increasingly bizarre!
Fig 10: An example of pairing using the comic strip format.
Fig 11: Another comic strip pairing. This example reminds us that the images used by the VMM needn’t just be Victorian illustrations…
Fig 12: … indeed, the Victorian Meme Machine could even use existing memes!