People kept doing paintings of people holding paintings of this woman’s painting and it’s magnificent
This is harder to explain than it is to illustrate, frankly, so that’s (mostly) what we’re going to do.
It started when a schoolteacher in Florida, Cindi Decker, went to an art class and painted this rather lovely egret.
Her teenage son posted it on Reddit with the caption, ‘My mom painted this and said no one would like it. It’s her 2nd painting.’
It proved very popular, even moreso when a Swedish artist called Kristoffer Zetterstrand did a painting of Cindi holding her painting, if you see what we mean.
And then someone else did a painting of Kristoffer holding Cindi’s painting and, well, it just spiralled from there.
It really did.
It was highlighted by a chap on Twitter called Nick Kapur and went even more viral.
It keeps going! pic.twitter.com/DFMtan8m98
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
And going… pic.twitter.com/XeqNKfu3sF
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
And going… pic.twitter.com/0lymU6UZz5
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
And going! pic.twitter.com/NAf2z1vCoY
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
Oh lord, there are multiple branches! pic.twitter.com/eGRmcQ9BXL
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
Somebody’s cat got involved… pic.twitter.com/ykR6BxJac9
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
Somebody tried (and failed) to close the loop… pic.twitter.com/kLB7akZBZO
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
And somebody tried to chart out all the branches… pic.twitter.com/RF8nnItiTV
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
Here is an interactive web app that offers a definitive tree of all the branches. You can click on each image to link through to the original reddit post for that image.https://t.co/pGEOZ0sI8v
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
There is – click here to see how the whole thing happened.
For the record, I’d totally buy that lady’s second painting.
— Tom [PositiveLad] (@PositiveLad) January 30, 2019
no egrets, no regrets
— Sir Squinkly (@SSquinky) January 31, 2019
And then this happened and we think we’re about to lose our minds.
I drew a cartoon of this man saying “Something incredible is happening on reddit.” I can confirm this person has too much time on his hands. pic.twitter.com/TjHVdVmXMd
— Shatner’s Bassoon (@KloppClips) January 30, 2019
To conclude …
Something incredible is happening on reddit. I’m tempted to say these people have way too much time, but this is legit amazing. #RecursionFTW pic.twitter.com/mr8jHjTbnV
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) January 30, 2019
Recursion (noun): The repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition
