It Starts With a Question: WTF Is This?

A while back, I was on Facebook, absently scrolling.  I follow a page called VHS Wasteland because I love VHS tapes (don't judge) and I like horror movies and this page seems to cater to me.  I like sharing the images I find with other friends and other groups I follow on Facebook.  One day, I came across this image:

Tenderheart Bear from The Care Bears with a Cenobite Bear from Hellraiser
I originally found it here

So, being the absentminded participant of social media, I saw this, thought is was freaky, strange, and kind of funny, and posted it to The Last Angry Geek Facebook fan page.  The Last Angry Geek is Brian Heinz, a video producer on YouTube who does comedy reviews of comic books primarily, but the group discusses subjects of 80s nostalgia and current science fiction and superhero movies.

I posted this picture in March and soon saw this response.  You can see my reply below:

Inspiration comes from the most unusual places
You can see the original repost here

So I started to wonder, what was the story here?  Where did this image come from, in fact?  My mindless reposting was short circuited and I now wondered about who made this and why?  I also wondered, what would happen if those things couldn't be determined?  In fairness, nothing on the Internet should be a real mystery for long.  The Internet is created by people, maintained by people, and content is uploaded by people.  In theory, everything is traceable on the Internet.  But what happens in a complex system created by protocols designed to communicate with different people using different types of technology over the span of the globe?  Some things take on a life of their own, like the case of The Slender Man for instance.   In theory, there are no mysteries in man-made structures, like parking lots and malls.  But this is not the case for the Internet.  Therefore, this project seeks to attempt to theorize where meaning comes from when images like these Hellraising Care Bears pass from one place online to another.

The links above will give a facet of meaning, sometimes the meaning that comes from within the image itself, sometimes from finding where the image has been.  I even hope to find the actual originator.  However, no facet of the image's meaning is given priority over another.  One can view all the pages or some and will walk away with an idea of what this image means.  I even write my own story about the image based on these theories; ultimately, the Internet flattens the playing field, reducing informational asymmetry and creating an avenue of egalitarian information exchange.  Even if you disagree with me on this point, you can leave a comment below and tell me.  It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from because your voice has weight on the Internet, for better or worse.  These are the issues this website will explore, through the lens of this image.

You can also explore more about the process of how and why I did this project by clicking here.