[HN Gopher] The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great
___________________________________________________________________
The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 103 points
Date : 2025-04-22 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (technologizer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (technologizer.com)
| fullshark wrote:
| Feeling cognitive dissonance given this is making me feel
| nostalgic for advertising.
| mamcx wrote:
| True, before was cool to see the ads.
|
| Now, skip all!
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Before they were FUCKING EVERYWHERE.
|
| Like Christ. I wouldn't be as anti-ad as I am if it didn't
| feel like I was being screeched at continuously from when I
| wake to when I sleep to BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY
| ars wrote:
| It's because they are simply advertising a product. It's the
| "lifestyle" ads that people hate so much.
| rideontime wrote:
| The AI-generated raccoon in 2024 sure is a gut punch after seeing
| the lovingly rendered art from yesteryear. Completely devoid of
| the personality of the originals, even in the Christmas card, he
| can only dream of living up to the standard they set.
| mrob wrote:
| There's an inconsistent mix of human hands and raccoon paws in
| the same image. I thought diffusion models could do inpainting
| of pre-existing images. If somebody actually cared they could
| have picked one and erased and regenerated the other.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Perhaps the model was trained on too much furry art?
| indrora wrote:
| It wouldn't make that sort of mistake then.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Furry art is not in any way consistent with the use of
| human and animal anatomy. You'll absolutely see a mix of
| paws and hands
| gwern wrote:
| If you mean https://i0.wp.com/technologizer.com/home/wp-
| content/uploads/... It's definitely a weird image. The hands
| are oddly accurate, and the geometry in the background is
| also unusually straight and correct for a low-end corporate
| 2024 Bing DALL-E or Stable Diffusion slop image. And in the
| bottom image, the food is way too sharp, and the sci-fi text
| UI is also way too accurate.
|
| So I am suspicious something else is going on to produce the
| overall uncanny effect of wrongness: possibly they used
| Photoshop to paste on a bunch of unrelated images to some
| low-quality stock-art backgrounds?
| mjevans wrote:
| Might be hugged to death, no current copies on archive.org or
| archive.today :(
| snozolli wrote:
| It eventually loaded for me, which was a surprise.
| KTibow wrote:
| Archived now: https://archive.is/BxyNA
| BambooBandit wrote:
| "The point of the characters, it said, was to add 'a human touch
| to high tech.'"
|
| Something we need today, too
| danielvf wrote:
| It's buried deep in the article, but what made PC Connection
| amazing was the shipping.
|
| You could phone call a human in the wee hours of the morning, and
| have it show up later that same day. Or pay only a little and
| have it into two days. Compared to every other mail-order
| retailer in the universe at the time, it was insane, to have such
| selection and speed.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, apparently the warehouse which made this workable was in
| Kingston, Tenn. adjacent to the FedEx Hub, so things could go
| straight to the plane which was taking them to the FedEx
| distributor closest to the delivery address.
|
| Still have the Wacom ArtZ I bought from them in the wee hours
| of a Monday morning when I decided I desperately had to have
| one.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I'd love to have a poster of the picture in the "PC Preppy"
| advert from October 1984[0]. I wonder how I could aquire the
| highest resolution possible...
|
| Love raccoons <3
|
| [0]
| https://d1pkj6r18lfvhs.archive.is/BxyNA/d05003d20de92f868e5b...
| csours wrote:
| Artist website: https://www.erickingraham.com/
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There are ML upscalers optimized for illustrations you can run
| locally for these scenarios. Doesn't require bleeding edge
| hardware either.
| sgt wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT to imagine pretty much the same scene as that top
| drawing. It's such a great example of LLM's - having zero
| understanding of the real world - has the racoons looking at the
| computer but from behind it.
|
| https://sdmntprwestus.oaiusercontent.com/files/00000000-c810...
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| They look so dead eyed and bland, too. AI "art" just makes me
| sad.
|
| There's so many furry artists out there, just pay one of them
| to draw raccoons and computers. You'll get something created
| with love and beauty that expresses something real
|
| https://cursedsilicon.net/racc.png
| hhh wrote:
| missing the entire point of the article award
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Did you read the whole comment? I need you to explain why you
| think that.
| gwern wrote:
| Your link is already broken.
| bregma wrote:
| Not a single one of those images depict a single trash panda
| eating garbage, having babies in an attic, or defecating all over
| the house.
| roughly wrote:
| They've got a life outside of work, you know.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Those raccoons work on the IT side; only the more presentable
| marketing raccoons get into catalog pics.
|
| Having a PC Connection catalog w/ raccoons doing more
| stereotypical rural NH shenanigans (driving a snowmobile drunk
| on NightTrain; fleeing the cops on dirtbikes, operating bootleg
| roadside fireworks stands...) might've been hard to get
| approval for.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I absolutely adore this article on computer ad history.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's kind of odd, seeing the MicroWarehouse Girl.
|
| I very much remember her, smiling out from many different
| magazines.
| librasteve wrote:
| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/538774203378171935/11...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-22 23:00 UTC)