> the obvious desire for transgressive expression by drawing dicks and slurs
this truly is fascinating, that the common denominator of any anonymous, open space for creative expression seems to always be large amounts of doodled dicks... Are there any studies on this?
dnpls 1 days ago [-]
I've seen it mentioned somewhere this is known as TTD - Time To Dick - as the amount of time elapsed between releasing a drawing tool in the open and someone using it to draw a dick.
pelagicAustral 1 days ago [-]
corollary: the mean TTD is inversely proportional to the amount of anonymity granted by the medium
mft_ 14 hours ago [-]
Back in the very early days of online meetings (I’m talking pre-WebEx) I joined a global corporate meeting utilising a new meeting platform.
A few minutes into the presentation, someone discovered annotation tools were freely available.
After a few minutes of increasing experimentation, it then dawned on people that the annotations were completely anonymous.
From that point, TTD was short.
spython 23 hours ago [-]
I'm writing a second part of this post right now - about the differences in how separate online communities are drawing horses. There are clear differences in richness of detail, drawing mastery, but also in the amount of dicks drawn. My suspicion that people with more drawing experience draw less dicks simply because they already have drawn all the dicks previously. While people with an untrained drawing muscle perhaps fall back to these easy and familiar shapes. Drawing a horse is hard.
mproud 23 hours ago [-]
People draw horses because they want to draw horses.
People draw dicks because they feel it’s funnier, it’s a form of rebellion, and/or it’s way easier than almost anything else. And because they can without repercussion.
spython 23 hours ago [-]
I understand all that, but how would you explain that 8,6% of drawings from people coming from HN were dicks, while visitors from Tumblr would draw dicks only in 1,6% of the cases? My guess is that people from Tumblr already explored a lot of the transgressions, so it does not interest them much - just like "potty talk phase" stops being interesting after your reach a certain age.
gus_massa 14 hours ago [-]
Let's call it unpaid software testing team :) People want to know how good is your filtering.
Anecdote time: Last year my wife asked ChatGPT to make a multiple choice test to learn some Biology topic. I arrived and she showed the test to me. The options were a, b, c or d. I wrote e to see what happens :) ChatGPT gave a good reply explaining that I made a mistake :(
spython 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed, I think this is how it starts. However the filtering system does not indicate to the user if their drawing was filtered - otherwise it would turn into a "trick the system" game - a whole different genre. So the visitor always gets the satisfaction of seeing their penis galloping on the horizon. Still, many if not most penis artists then continue to add more and more lewd drawings. So it's not just a test but some other behaviour. Coming from Hacker News, they might feel like a hacker, a rebel breaking the system. And that's fine - after all there are not many ways in a society where you can feel this way and not hurt anyone.
malfist 23 hours ago [-]
> people coming from HN were dicks
I think you answered your question
mft_ 14 hours ago [-]
Could we hypothesise a different gender ratio from Tumbler vs. HN?
"In every time and environment that humans found they could make art by drawing on some surface there has always been one fellow in the community who found he could let people know what a big dick he had by making a rendering available for everybody else in his distribution channel
This base level of dick drawings to other artistic forms represent the minimal level of crap in all aesthetic production."
mihaic 1 days ago [-]
I have a feeling that being transgressive is universal, but the form of expression is cultural, with independent convergence to some common patterns.
For instance, in Romania I've noticed that the slang term for penis is written far more frequently than a crude drawing of it. I've also seen probably more drawn breasts than dicks as well.
goodmythical 21 hours ago [-]
The oldest example I know of is Hadrian's Wall from ~1700 years ago engraved with a larger than life example.
zimpenfish 20 hours ago [-]
If carved stone phalluses count, Pompeii has loads of those[0] which would knock the date back a few hundred years.
Amazing. Apparently they used to draw them for luck!
"In Roman Britain, the phallus (often called the fascinum) was a symbol of protection. It was believed to ward off the evil eye, bring luck and guard people, buildings and journeys from harm. On the empire’s northern frontier, it also made a diplomatic statement: Rome was here, with its symbols; and Rome was in control."
I love that dicks are a feature of graffiti even going to ancient times. Pompeii's walls are covered with dicks.
swah 1 days ago [-]
Found the blurrred 67 so funny when I was expecting penises
anotheryou 1 days ago [-]
Show us the penis collection, we know it exists!
(also amazing already anyways :)
gus_massa 5 days ago [-]
My Pegasus and my Space Invader weren't selected :(
Anyway, I remember a very good Godzilla and a moonwalking Michael Jackson. I think the post need an additional row for weird.
spython 5 days ago [-]
Oooh, there are just so many horses - more than 600 000 - that it's a tiny chance to actually see your drawings! And there are around 50 000 drawings marked as non-horses - all kind of weirdness - that could be an exhibition on its own..
Thank you for drawing, a typical drawing is seen more than a hundred times, so your pegasus and space invader were seen and appreciated : )
gus_massa 4 days ago [-]
Nice game. I draw like 10 "horses". The first didn't move the legs because I didn't understand the idea, then I started to add moving things, and then weird things like the space invader. Anyway, mines were not as good as other examples I saw.
zaik 1 days ago [-]
Is clicking and double clicking some kind of voting system?
spython 1 days ago [-]
Yes, on the original gradient.horse it was an early experiment in hidden moderation - and it did help hide quite a few of the less kind drawings. Now, as the moderation model trained on the larger corpus works quite well, it's just for fun.
quuxplusone 1 days ago [-]
One of your snails is clearly a chambered nautilus instead. :)
bitwize 1 days ago [-]
"Oh god, what have you done. You have drawn your horse incorrectly. Look what your careless hands have wrought. Select the pistol, and then, select your horse."
This would fit right into any modern art gallery. Seems that these interactive generative art projects are in most museums nowadays.
earth-tattoo 1 days ago [-]
No dicks?
spython 1 days ago [-]
So many dicks! Roughly 4 percent of all drawings are dicks. With over 600 000 drawings that means.. Twenty five thousand dicks.
I thought about including them, but as with all the other transgressive drawings, the only person who enjoys looking at them is the one who drew them.
Where is the generative dick doodle model? Consider the amount of manpower that could be saved by automating this labor-- probably equivalent so saving thousands of lives per year!
1 days ago [-]
shevy-java 1 days ago [-]
A pe** ... erm ... nevermind. I was just reminded of the fancy art I see when visiting university-campus toilets ...
xyzal 1 days ago [-]
No need to hide "penis" behind asterisks. It is proper -- even medical -- terminology, in contast to "c*ck", "d*ng" or "schl*ng".
nkrisc 23 hours ago [-]
What does a male chicken, a word representing the sound a large bell makes, and the Yiddish word for "snake" have to do with the word "penis"? Why would you censor such innocuous words?
markovs_gun 24 hours ago [-]
I feel like you can say cock, dong, and schlong on here too. It's a website for adults, it's not Tik Tok where you have to censor everything in these asinine ways.
rawling 1 days ago [-]
... does one of the pictures jump occasionally?
devonsolomon 1 days ago [-]
Given that this is the internet, I highly suspect the author has left out a category.
deelly 1 days ago [-]
Third sentence on the page:
> The image model I trained to filter out vandalism works very well, but it also hides a lot of ingenious drawings. You could see them if you’d activate the SHOW NON-HORSES setting, but most people do not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baxter_the_Horse
A few minutes into the presentation, someone discovered annotation tools were freely available.
After a few minutes of increasing experimentation, it then dawned on people that the annotations were completely anonymous.
From that point, TTD was short.
People draw dicks because they feel it’s funnier, it’s a form of rebellion, and/or it’s way easier than almost anything else. And because they can without repercussion.
Anecdote time: Last year my wife asked ChatGPT to make a multiple choice test to learn some Biology topic. I arrived and she showed the test to me. The options were a, b, c or d. I wrote e to see what happens :) ChatGPT gave a good reply explaining that I made a mistake :(
I think you answered your question
https://medium.com/luminasticity/90-crap-48e4c79419a9
"In every time and environment that humans found they could make art by drawing on some surface there has always been one fellow in the community who found he could let people know what a big dick he had by making a rendering available for everybody else in his distribution channel
This base level of dick drawings to other artistic forms represent the minimal level of crap in all aesthetic production."
For instance, in Romania I've noticed that the slang term for penis is written far more frequently than a crude drawing of it. I've also seen probably more drawn breasts than dicks as well.
[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/stone-phalluses-of-pompe...
"In Roman Britain, the phallus (often called the fascinum) was a symbol of protection. It was believed to ward off the evil eye, bring luck and guard people, buildings and journeys from harm. On the empire’s northern frontier, it also made a diplomatic statement: Rome was here, with its symbols; and Rome was in control."
A quote from this article: https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/phalluses-rom...
Anyway, I remember a very good Godzilla and a moonwalking Michael Jackson. I think the post need an additional row for weird.
Thank you for drawing, a typical drawing is seen more than a hundred times, so your pegasus and space invader were seen and appreciated : )
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/05/26/the-unhorse
https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9097033984/hE7CFF8DD/person-aa
> The image model I trained to filter out vandalism works very well, but it also hides a lot of ingenious drawings. You could see them if you’d activate the SHOW NON-HORSES setting, but most people do not.