Perhaps I have been reading just a bit too much Neal Stephenson lately, but it seems to me that humans are dangerously susceptible to “infection” by ideas and images. Once a thought enters a human mind, willfully or otherwise, it sinks into the subconscious and cannot be forcibly removed — it asserts itself consciously in convenient circumstances until it is peacefully forgotten.

A perfect demonstration of this occurred on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005, when five people whose minds were (and are) unhealthily saturated by the ideas and images of the online photo-sharing service and mind-composting machine Flickr assembled with the primary goal of shortening the hair of two of their number. After the carnage had subsided, cleanup began, and, anomalously, the discarded hair formed itself into two circular wads of contrasting color.

I can’t recall for certain in which relatively independent sub-totality the idea arose (probably this one, though). The saturation of Flickr-imagery acted as impenetrable noise. Eventually, the group began nudging the wads of hair around and snapping successive photographs. They produced an animation that is simultaneously a novel and clever echo of something beautiful , at least from their perspective, and the most disgusting GIF animation of the year: