For reasons that really aren’t important, I found myself doing some Google Image searches for pictures of political leaders, and I was struck by how many of the top results were caricatures. It occurred to me that you could probably say something about the collective emotional age of the Internet by looking at the distribution of real and mocking pictures in these search results.
Some data (well, plural anecdotes, at least) for your consideration:
- A search for George W. Bush yields 18 images, 5 of which are modified in some allegedly satirical way, and two of which appear to be real but unflattering images.
- A search for Harry Reid yields 18 images, of which 4 are modified in some allegedly satirical way, and two are political cartoons.
- A search for Nancy Pelosi yields 18 images. 9 of the 18 are modified in some allegedly satirical way, one is a real photo with a lewd comment, and one is either a deliberately mislabeled cheesecake shot or a really unfortunate name coincidence.
The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.