Okay, you broke me, I confess it. I used to participate in the Photoplasty contests at cracked.

It was interesting and fun, I won’t deny it. I learned sophisticated tricks of deception with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I also learned a lot about how online communities work and how they enforce their norms. I’m not being satirical; it was instructive.

Of course, cracked is Woke, and I’m not, so there was bound to be friction. To their credit and mine I resigned with a positive karma score. Barely. In the meantime I racked up a treasure-trove of rejections.

Photoplasty is a contest. Participants suggest Challenges, and the Top Editor approves and sets the rules for each week’s game. Sometime the rules are stupidly strict. Movies, especially recent movies, are the favored playing-ground. Typical challenges all follow the same patterns:

• Mash two movies together to make something better
• Rip apart one movie to reveal something comical
• Do something clever to turn one movie into the movie of your choice

Mash two movies together to make something better. I tried four times. Here was one:

Here’s another:

Yet another:

For some reason I got a demerit on that one. So I went full Nazi: