Images that Make Me Want to Cry: 2 – The Confused Clipart Stickman
A curious feature of ubiquitous images is this – as soon as you notice the ubiquity, concrete examples become hard to find. One minute they're everywhere. And then, the minute after you mention their everywhere-ness to someone, they're nowhere. Vanishing (annoyingly) back into a swirling primordial miasma of iconography.
An example? The head-scratching, terminally confused, clipart stickman. You know him. That perma-bewildered stick-personification of contemporary unsureness. That shit millenarian version of Munch's Scream whose angst sprung not from agonising (deeply human) existential dilemmas, but, rather, from an inability to figure out how the photocopier worked.
His natural homes were crap self-help/educational websites, crap fliers advertising crap managerial workshops, crap posters promoting crap religious get-togethers etc, etc. Wherever there was doubt and uncertainty, there he'd be – like a bewildered & silhouetted Fido Dido – promising the solutions to your confusions.
And now? Try Googling him. He's hard to find…possibly due to being laughed off the net, in the kind of hipster ridicule pogrom that put paid to Comic Sans. Or perhaps he lives on, hidden from Google searching in the printed/analogue world. Clinging to the edges and fringes of popular tech-culture – like VHS, or cassette tapes, or Aertel/Ceefax.
Christ, I dearly hope not. I loathe and despise him. I feel compromised and unclean even hosting his image (and giving him an audience). He makes me feel weary and depressed and angry. Why? Hard to put into words precisely. But if you cringed & flinched & vomited when you first clicked here and caught sight of him then you share my pain, and no explanation is necessary.
September 13, 2009
13 responses to Images that Make Me Want to Cry: 2 – The Confused Clipart Stickman
He has a counterpart, where he realises something and a yellow, non-EU approved, lightbulb appears over his head. I think that one is worse.
He looks like a relative of THE SAINT, who’s turned to drink, junk food and chain smoking. He’s wondering where he left the halo, never realising that he’s about to suffer a massive coronary.
Simon, Worse? Hard to say. Like trying to choose between Fred West and Jeffrey Dahmer. Both very, very, very bad.
This fella has question marks popping out of his head as optional extras. Just in case you couldn’t read the body language. Wanted to use that version, but couldn’t find it. Perhaps just as well.
Shadow, Stick men are generally charming. I’m usually quite fond of the ones that pop up on public signage etc. By stick man standards (and they’re severe standards) Clipart-guy is grossly obese (due, no doubt, to the lifestyle you describe). Perhaps I’m just fattist…
The saddest thing about him is his nose. Look at it. Look at the total lack of effort that went into that. The tongue-twister monsters on Bosco may have been hideous, but someone spent at least ten minutes designing them.
I was going to say you’re overreacting but then you mentioned the version with the question marks and I blacked out and now there’s blood and broken glass everywhere and oh god what have I done.
Also, any excuse to link Achewood.
Are clipart “artists” anonymous or do they sign their names to their terrible, terrible work? Who’s responsible for this? Did he/she know what he/she was unleashing on the world?
I’m underreacting if anything. Omnipresent imagery has a real power to lift or destroy the spirits. Remember those polls that claimed kids recongised Mario & Mickey Mouse more readily than they recognised Jesus? Those polls made me feel all glowy inside. I love Mario and Mickey Mouse. Jesus? Meh…
If a poll ever finds that confused clipart stickman is more identifiable (by children) than Mario/Mickey (or even Jesus) I’ll immediately detonate that nuclear warhead I’ve got stored in the shed.
Bet those kids would have recognised Jesus if only he’d had his own video game.
You’re obviously forgetting the classic King of Kings on the NES:
http://www.nes-site.com/gallery/king_of_kings.shtml
I don’t think that it’s fair that you never get to play Jesus. It’s all very well being a Donkey or Joseph, but what about the main himself? I think that the game needs a final level, where Jesus gets to go up against the Devil. They could get Robert Powell to be the voice of Jesus “Okay Satan, you had this coming!”
GNnnnnnnnnggggggggg. The question marks. The question marks over the head. I almost put my own through the monitor there. Must go lie down.
I know. Just thinking about it sucks all the life out of you and leaves you a drooling, listless, catatonic wreck. Actually, I’m like that most of the time these days….BUT THIS ISN’T HELPING!
Maybe the government should launch a campaign to inform the public. Slogan:-CLIPART STICKMEN…THEY SCREW YOU UP!
it is very beautiful clipart, but what is it thinking?
nice sharing