Dall-E 2 has a feature where you can upload a picture, and it will generate four "variations" on it. This naturally raises the question: What happens if you generate variations on the Woman Yelling at a Cat meme, pick the strangest one, generate variations on that, pick the strangest one, and so on for many generations. This is taking "memes" back to their origins, as something that was supposed to evolve by a Darwinian-like process of variation and selection.
Here we go:
"Pick the strangest one" is a pretty vague sort of selection pressure, so this next series is one where I followed an actual rule: Of the four variations generated, always pick the one in which the cup is the most prominent.
And we're almost back where we started, aren't we?
