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!