The Week in MSN Pictures

I know you. You’re one of those ferocious internet surfers. And I bet there’ve been times when, exhausted and overwhelmed by all that information streaming into your retinas, you pause and leave that cursor hovering over a website picture for a moment or two. If this sounds familiar, then you’ve probably also noticed that a small text-box often appears with a photo credit, a caption, or more often, a simple description of what you’re looking at. Web-guru Alex told me that this is called alt text, and I enjoy it because it distills that photo down to the very CORE of its reality. No judgments. No bullshit. Just a pure, rock-solid description of that which is actually taking place before you. Some might even say…Truth?

But enough preface. It’s time for another rousing game of…

GUESS THE MSN PHOTO DESCRIPTION!

Below, you’ll find a series of photos recently taken from the venerable MSN.com. Below each photo is the title of the relevant MSN article. And if you swipe just below that, you’ll get the descriptive alt text supplied by the MSN web-gurus. So respectively, that’s (A) what you think you see, (B) what MSN's telling you to see, and (C) what you’re really seeing without even realizing it. Enjoy.




photo description (swipe to reveal): one man yelling at another man




Keep Thieves out of Your Bank Account

photo description: man doing a karate move in front of a bank vault





photo description: man lassoing money





Zero Gravity available…for $3K

photo description: man floating in zero gravity





How to Prevent Getting Laid Off

photo description: confident business woman






photo description: a masked insurgent in mosul





DNA to Decide Baby's Fate

photo description: Baby ‘81’
[ed: wtf?]


Oh, MSN.com. How you move me. How you teach me. It's so easy to get so caught up in the complexity of it all, that we lose touch with our basic, alt text realities. Always simple. Always true. Think about what your personal alt text is right now. Here's mine (swipe for answer): young man typing at computer and crying.