All they’ve got are lies and illusions to prop up their poor self-image. Trump has set the standard for all Republican candidates.
Screenshot
Is anyone fooled by Photoshop anymore?
Pathetic pretense
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
There’s a parody version of that going around where Mike looks like Mister Hyde from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Notice that the photoshopped image also cuts out the non-white person from the background, in addition to looking absurdly fake.
The fascistic ideation of their notion of bodily perfection. Look at all the ridiculous muscled-up versions of AI trump illustrations they promulgate. The “Fitness” and “Wellness” to right-wing pipeline is real.
The inclination to worship perceived “Health,” “Purity,” and bodily perfection is a fascist impulse. It aligns with eugenics and eliminationist rhetoric against the disabled.
I no longer trust any of the imagery on the Internet because of the power of these photomanipulative apps. I can take a picture from the gallery on my iPhone, delete parts of the background and add differential movement of the foreground and background to create a quasi-3D effect with just a few taps and swipes of my fingers. It’s fun but it’s frightening when you think about it because you can’t tell it’s been doctored unless you have the original to compare it with,
So the message from the Rogers campaign is that they expect their voters to vote based on physical appearance. Happy High School Days, I guess!
Robert Westbrook @3
I would stop well short of saying just anyone who is into fitness or wellness is on a right wing pipeline or exhibits fascist tendencies or promotes eugenics. Or is ableist.
I am VERY ANNOYED that so very many “pictures” in this age prompt me to “count their fingers”.
“My name is Snarki. You killed my trust. Prepare to die”
We truly are living in a “post-truth society.”
As with others, the sheer childishness of it gets me. He’s like a kid in a muscle shirt and Hulk Hands.
Is anyone fooled by Photoshop anymore?
Of course not!
We’re all fooled by AI graphics anymore.
Yet some people say there is no such thing as progress!
Baldrick: “Well, Your Majesty, I just thought – this Welliton bloke’s been in Europe for years. You don’t know what he looks like. He don’t know what you looks like. So why don’t you get someone else to fight the duel instead of you?”
Prince Regent: “But I’m the Prince Regent! My portrait hangs on every wall!”
Edmund: “Answer that, Baldrick.”
Bladrick: “Well my cousin Bert Baldrick, Mr Gainsborough’s butler’s dogsbody, says that he’s heard that all portraits look the same these days, ’cause they’re painted to a romantic ideal rather than as a true depiction of the idiosycratic facial qualities of the person in question.”
Edmund: (impressed) “Your cousin Bert obviously has a larger vocabulary than you do, Baldrick.”
–Blackadder III, Episode 6 – Duel and Duality
Wow that is cringe.
It would take someone several years of intense workouts, radical dieting, heavy roid and HGH abuse, and resulting shrunken testicles and skull anomalies to get that jacked. Stolen valor!
the implied violence is what I find most disturbing besides the cringe inducing fakery of course.
re microraptor@2: I don’t think that was intentional. If you compare the two pics, the muscle version is zoomed slightly closer, so cropping the pic to the same size does the work of cutting the person out.
The cropping may not have been intentional, but there it is.
I myself notice the vanishing of the obvious singlet under the shirt, though.
Hemidactylus @#9
It’s a good thing I didn’t say that, then.
@14 When it happens over and over and over again, it’s intentional. Otherwise, ooof, What a clown.
Hemidactylus@9–
Backing up Robert Westbrook here. I did not read his comment as being dismissive of fitness/wellness. He was referring to the well-documented fascist tendency to equate athletic appearance with moral purity.
One can be fit and well without cartoonish muscles. This strikes me more as a “vote for me because I could beat up the other guy” thing. Republicans venerate their bullies.
The irony that they follow a man who is neither fit nor well.
Walter, pretty much like Hitler was an epitome of the Nazi ideal of German manhood: tall, muscular, ‘Nordic’‑featured, disciplined, and racially ‘Aryan’. ;)
For the benefit of non-Aussies a “singlet” (# 15) is a man’s undershirt or vest.
@Hemidactylus:
It’s a tangent but not really. Either one on its own would work to get this.
I took a peek.
Who did the cropping is known, and it was not the ‘photoshoppper’.
Sad all around.
cf. https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/heres-posted-altered-photo-mike-130000599.html
Hmm. What I got out of that is that he’s begging for handouts so he can afford a shirt that actually fits. He’d like us to give him a government job so he can earn a living wage and since he’s just another selfish Republican he’ll do that by making sure the rest of us don’t have such opportunities. It’s waste, fraud, and abuse when the government works for us. And it’s a magic trigger for an economic boom that will happen any day now, aaaannnnyyy day now… when all the money is sent their way.
I have to admit, this is how I look on my phone when taking selfie vs. how I look when viewing the actual photo except in reverse. X-D
Almost makes one wish that crispr worked on large scale “adults”. Would be funnier than heck if every liberal on the planet where given a free “upgrade” of the gene mutation that doubles baseline muscle mass, just to fuck with these idiots. lol
Also, @24, of course it was also AI slop to start with. lol
Was the right-most picture intentionally cropped to make it look like he gave a Hitler salute?
Hmm…A dress body shirt with collar. Do they even sell these things?
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/13/geert-wilders-pvv-dutch-far-right-party-damages-court-artist-change-image-ai
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A Dutch court artist has received damages after an MP for the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) used one of her drawings without permission and manipulated it with AI to make the subjects look more menacing.
Petra Urban, a court artist for 19 years, was shocked to discover a drawing she had made last year of two Syrian brothers jailed for the murder of their sister had been reworked and used in a video on Instagram and Facebook by the party’s Noord-Brabant region.