Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/05/Category:Cursed images

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Cursed images[edit]

Subjective to the point of being meaningless Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:24, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I contributed to this cat, but hesitantly. I would not object to any decision about it. --E4024 (talk) 18:59, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Keep Yes this category is somewhat subjective, as is any category depicting an art-style or movement. That being said, it is not "so subjective to be meaningless," as there does appear to be a general public consensus as to what a cursed image is (though the category page can probably be trimmed a bit, as there are a few debatable photos in there). As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said (regarding the definition of pornography), "I know it when I see it." I see the "level of subjectiveness" here as being roughly equal to something like Category:Minimalist photography, or Category:Erotic photography (aka clearly important to have, but hard to define unambiguously). Yitzilitt (talk) 23:45, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Yitzilitt, I think you should also say you have initiated this cat. As I said above, I was a bit confused about this cat, but I liked the images in Category:Cursed images of food and even made a subcat to it. (Indeed I like everything, or almost everything edible. :) Having said that, I remembered I had a very nice upload that would go well in there, File:Alligator in my plate.jpg. I cannot understand why, someone simply moved it to a dull name, without asking my opinion. The reason showed is "preposterous description". I have no idea what "preposterous" means. Normally each time I see a new word for me, even in cases where I can imagine the meaning, I go to dictionaries to learn about it. Probably the lack of tolerance towards a sympathetic description (name?) made me not to be curious to learn what that chic word means. I did not protest, I even forgot it. Now speaking about the Cursed images of food subcat, I remembered. However it is not the same thing putting there a file named "Seafood linguini". (I may show you what a seafood linguini is, something like this, although it is spaghetti and I had only mussels at home as seafood. Whereas, the above dish was about a fantasy film, where there was lots of water/juice in the plate, and animals swimming in it. The few sticks of pasta were like snakes accompanying the other animals... (And I ate this disaster in Italy, mamma mia! :) Whatever, delete it if there is little tolerance. Or keep it, it sounds much better to my eyes than cats like "Category:Nude or partially nude women with shaved armpits but unshaved genitalia sitting with legs wide open and smiling with teeth while giving a handjob to a seminude male". Bye. --E4024 (talk) 01:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • E4024 sorry I didn't mention that I initiated the cat; that's my bad. I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about, though I certainly sympathize with the struggle of fellow Wikipedians not understanding a given naming schema. Yitzilitt (talk) 02:15, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Convert to gallery. I agree with Andy Mabbett; this doesn't quite fit into the Commons' category tree, but I think it is okay to have this as a standalone gallery. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 19:01, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Edit conflict)  Keep Nomination is based on false assumptions. "Cursed images" are a coherent concept discussed as such, even if a subjective one, and much more comparable to art movements than the nominator's dismissal of the concept permits. See discussion of the concept in e.g. the Intelligencer, the New Yorker, Paper Magazine, TheNextWeb, and Wired. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 19:04, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but clean up and remove the “cursed food” subcat. The definition (mediocre-to-low-quality images with bizarre and/or creepy content) is semi-subjective but straightforward enough to not be arbitrary and meaningless. Some of the pics currently in the category are silly because they are too mundane to be called “bizarre and/or creepy” by the majority of viewers (i.e. a bad flash photo of a bidet shooting water) but that just means they should be removed from the category, not the category from WM commons. The “cursed food” cat however is completely subjective, since almost every single picture is simply some boring food item that is badly prepared, poorly photographed, unfamiliar to westerners, or being used for sexual purposes.
    • Edit I’ve removed several images that I’m fairly certain nobody would ever seriously call “creepy” or even “bizarre”, including the photo of metal ritual objects seen above and the aforementioned toilet image (I was particularly amused and puzzled by the inclusion of a photo of a Hatsune Miku Dominos delivery vehicle). Dronebogus (talk) 08:49, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Edit I have now also cut “cursed food” down to just a few of the best/worst(?) images. Whether or not they justify a separate category is still up in the air, but at least the category is no longer just “bad food photography” mixed with “food I don’t like”. Dronebogus (talk) 04:15, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • edit I am not opposed to making this category into a gallery, as an alternative to deleting. I feel like keeping it as-is will result in never-ending debates about what should be included, but there’s enough value to it that it shouldn’t be completely destroyed. Dronebogus (talk) 03:42, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Delete What counts as a "cursed image" is largely a matter of opinion, and isn't a clearly understood or defined genre of images. Essentially any image that can be interpreted as disturbing or strange can be considered a "cursed image". Different images can elicit different emotions from different people, so even assuming that there was a clear definition of cursed image being those that elicit a specific emotion, nothing could be objectively categorized in that way. This category is about as useful as something like "sad videos" or "ugly animals". Di (they-them) (talk) 01:38, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Delete It includes File:ABNORMALITIES; Tabulae ad illustrandam embry Wellcome L0032358.jpg and File:Eddie Leonard 1929.jpeg, pictures of human beings that effectively say that certain people, by existing, are worthy of mockery. File:のりくら高原温泉郷・湯川温泉せせらぎの湯 ２人入浴P8118150.jpg is a little more complex--is it just the censorship of the eyes?--but could be read as the same thing. Let's mock some guy's fursuit with File:LionatFrolicon.jpg! Here's another one--File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0801-131, Leipzig, Sportfestabschluss, Berliner Bären.jpg which gives the chance to mock cultural traditions along with fursuits! File:TOYOTA ist Pikachu Car.jpg and File:Oldreive's New Iron Horse tricycle, ca. 1882.jpg--cheap shots at sweet cars and old bikes!
There's some which are more fair, but still, why do we need a selection of files from Category:Ectoplasm (paranormal) here? Or from Category:Cthulhu Mythos? Art form categories like Category:Impressionism are almost completely citable; if you were working off of cites, I would be more sympathetic, but I completely oppose any such category as a subjective creation. Perhaps Category:Outsider art is a better comparison; it is a very real category of art, but it could be very problematic if slapped on "own work", especially if done willy-nilly like this category currently feels like.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:52, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don’t think a lot of images were meant to be considered “worthy of mockery” by being in this category (i.e. 2 is just an unintentionally unsettling smile, 3 is the eyes, 4 is bad flash + uncanny valley, 6 is also uncanny valley) , although there are definitely some unfortunate implications of, say, the traditional arts/culture or deformities pics. But on second inspection I agree that even though I hoped that the category could be salvaged by establishing two main criteria (low image quality + odd, creepy, surreal content) it’s obvious this is never going to work and people are just going to fill it with “images that I think are kind of odd and/or funny”. Thus I have struck my original vote and will leave it as “convert to gallery hidden category or delete” in the spirit of “blow it up and start over”. Dronebogus (talk) 05:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Hide Really this is just a spooky version of Category:Commons' weirdest photographs (which it's already a non-hidden subcategory of), so it could just have a COM:HIDDENCAT. As an aesthetic that relies on the eye of the curator, though, cursed images work better from a single person's Twitter or Tumblr account. A swarm of Commons editors making individual calls about what they personally find unfamiliar is likely just going to give us another "Commons' weirdest photographs", minus the funny ones. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:43, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

enwiki has also en:Cursed image. So we probably want to keep this category--Estopedist1 (talk) 12:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve hidden the cat if nobody minds Dronebogus (talk) 07:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted: As multiple editors pointed out, this is an entirely subjective categorization; one person's cool hotel or exciting Saturday afternoon is another person's cursed image. While the enwiki article lists some common characteristics, they don't allow for consistent categorization as we would expect with, say, Category:Impressionism. The tendency of some editors to add images of things like cultural artifacts and people with unusual physical features to this category says a great deal about those editors. While some have called for a gallery, this is likely to suffer from the exact same subjectivity issues as the category. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 02:02, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2021/05/Category:Cursed_images&oldid=699966496"