CSotD: QR as in “quite ridiculous”
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Sheldon, once more, provides a bit of sea anchor for a world seriously adrift.
Note that a sea anchor doesn't stop the drift entirely. It just slows it down. And, in this case, it may be a case of dangling a piece of dental floss off the side of the ship for all the good it will do, because this thing is going crazy.
My post office has a QR Code on a sticker on the front door. This is so you can shoot it with your smartphone and then later get all the updates on … um … stamps and envelopes and stuff. And look up whether they are closed on Sunday, and the other stuff about post offices that you need to have on your smartphone when you can't remember usps.com.
And I agree with Dave Kellett, as far as he goes. If you're going to have a nice picture of a tropical beach in your add, don't drop the QR Code there. Stick it down in the lower righthand corner by the little picture of your sunscreen or beer or sand or whatever it is you're selling.
And not on that picture either. Next to it.
I'll be sure to capture it on my smartphone, if I ever feel the need to get a smartphone and then if I ever feel the need to be kept in touch with sunscreen or sand.
Or if you figure out a way that, if I have the QR Code, your beer will pour out of my smartphone on command, which I would probably go for. Depending on the beer. I mean, I'd want to make sure I knew how to delete the thing before I ended up butt-dialing a Coors Light and getting it all over my car seat and my pants.
Or, worse, drinking it.
But I think he's being overly polite by ignoring a small but growing number of his fellow cartoonists, who have started sticking the damn things on their cartoons.
What, you couldn't find a nut with spray paint to vandalise your work?
It puts me in an odd place, because, even when a comic has a great gag, I'm hesitant to feature it here if, for instance, it has an egregious you're/your error in a caption, features penguins at the North Pole (except with purposely silly intent) or mistakes Andrew Jackson for Andrew Johnson.
Which is to say, putting stupid shit in your comic is kind of a disqualification around here, even when it's an accident. On purpose? For sure, you're out.
I mean, come on. It's one thing to put your URL in the margin, though I think it's better to put it just outside the frame. But, even inside the frame, a discreet URL can be like the copyright notice or signature.
Why am I even saying this? A professional artist is supposed to know the difference between a discreet URL and defacing your own work with a big, fat QR Code.
Real artists don't screw up their own pieces. Can you imagine Botticelli doing this?
Even an absolute master of self-promotion wouldn't screw up his own work with one of these stupid, ugly things. You don't have to be a believer — only an art lover — to find this a bit sacrilegious, even if it were to come from one of the biggest egotrippers in the history of art. Which, I promise you, it wouldn't:
Do I consider comic strips to be on a level with Botticelli and Dali? Well, I don't think they're the same thing, but is Hogarth on a level with Botticelli or Dali? Because he was a cartoonist, after all. So, it's a matter of where you draw the line and how much you care.
And, in his case, it's important that we not mistake the artist for the subject: Degas was not a ballet dancer, Delacroix was not an Arab and Hogarth was not … inclined to add something like this to his paintings:
Once you've admitted that you don't take your artwork seriously, well, it's like the old joke. We've established what you are. Now we're just haggling over your price.
I mean, you could at least show enough pride in craftsmanship to try to work it in with some subtlely.
But I'm wasting my breath, and, who cares about those stupid little boxes anyway? They're nothing but a pack of codes!
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