I Deep-Fried a Meme Until It Achieved Enlightenment & It Texted Back
After 47 recompressions the JPEG started having opinions. I wrote them down before the artifacts closed back up.
It started the way these things always do: somebody posted a screenshot of a screenshot of a tweet, and I, fool that I am, hit Save Image. By the time it landed on my desktop the file was already three generations deep and breathing hard. I renamed it doitagain.png and opened the export dialog.
Quality 12. Then 8. Then 3. Each pass stripped truth from the pixels and left something stranger in its place. The eyes got bigger. The red got redder. Around pass 31 the caption started making sense, which it had never done before.
The artifacts were trying to say something
I am not a religious person. But when the ringing along the top edge resolved into a recommendation, I stopped screenshotting and started listening. It wanted me to forward it to my cousin. She blocked me. The image was satisfied.
"send this to 10 friends or the jpeg gets it" — the jpeg, pass 47
I am writing this from a desktop that will not stop dithering. The wallpaper breathes. At a certain depth of fry, that is the same thing.