Is Google's Rorschach Webtoy today genuinely making random images?
Asked by
drhat77 (
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November 8th, 2013
Today Google celebrated Rorschach’s birthday by making a webtoy that generates inkblots. Just go to Google today only to see it.
The idea of inkblots of course is it’s just a random picture, but you can discern the mind of the thinker by seeing what he pictures in it.
Some of the pictures seem genuinely random blots. But I clearly saw a pair of garden gnomes, a pair of dinosaurs, and a butterfly over a cat.
Is the ink blot working? Am I reading too much into random blots? Or is the webtoy seeding actual images into it?
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15 Answers
VERY cool, fun. Thanks.
I think Google is messing with you. I also clearly saw the butterfly over the cat’s head. Probably part of the effort to get you to “Share what you see.” I didn’t click on the Share button, but it surely tracks you somehow, someway.
Cat? I didn’t see a cat. I saw a furry teddy bear.
@ibstubro The therapy seems to be working, you no longer see bats and snakes.
My picture
(edited for direct-to-pic instead of Tinypic website.)
My first thought was: Lungs. Looks like a chest x-ray.
Upon further consideration: The white bit at the bottom looks like a robot helmet, almost like a Cylon or a storm trooper.
@Tropical_Willie That might not be a good thing. The talking dogs are riled over that kitty.
The blots are pseudo-random. Some of the images are pre-made, such as the cat-terfly, but the rest are created via a pseudo-random number generator.
When you click the “share what you see” it gives you a permalink to that particular inkblot. The URL contains the random seed for the PRNG.
GOOGLE!
What happened to not being evil? I feel so deceived.
I just saw a back view of Satan looking into the yonder
@pleiades Keep scrolling and there’s a front view of God munching potato chips. We all know God’s penchant for tater chips…that’s why his Boy’s image shows up there so often.
As soon as I saw the iconic vase/face I knew it was made up.
@drhat77, it’s significant that the informal motto is phrased as an imperative and not a declarative statement; it says “Don’t be evil” and not “We’re not evil.”
(I want to be a Google doodler in my next life.)
(@janbb Why, were you imprisoned in an outhouse in a past life?)
(@ibstubro That would explain so much but we are in General so we’d better get off this thread.)
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