Flutterby™! : Making light

This image has been making its way around the next, and Shadow forwarded it to me, and I'm trying to find the origin of it and failing. And I don't want to make Flutterby all outrage all the time, but I wanted a place to hang Cesar Sayoc wasn't first: A list of Trump inspired attackers (up to now) for easy access somewhere.

In the process of trying to track down the original artist of that image, I ran into That Trump tank meme on Cesar Sayoc’s van was made as a joke, creator says — Illustrator Jason Heuser is “apolitical”.

“It was supposed to be a joke, and I think people are taking it seriously, which is a little nerve-wracking to me,” Heuser says. “In my mind it’s so obviously a joke.” The point, for Heuser, is to walk the line between sincerity and mockery. “Every time I create a piece of art, I want people to think, ‘Wait, is he... is he joking on this? Is this real? I don’t know.’”

Obviously it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between satire and sincerity, and the last decade and a half have been filled with assertions that irony is dead, but.... back in my 20s I scoffed heavily at the postmodern notion that the context in which messages are heard is more important than the message. Now I embrace it entirely, and it's given me a lot of pause...