Wait. Wait, I have a theory about this.
So, as of today, the 10th anniversary of Loss.jpg, the original image in question was taken down by Tim Buckley. This classic internet Phenom was replaced by this. Found.jpg.
Ghastly, isn’t it? I know the instant reaction of many people on this site, me included, was a strange perturbance. Something was wrong. This felt… off. What does Ethan know? Why is this titled Found.jpg?
I have a theory.
After all these years, has Ethan found us, the viewer?
For 10 years, we have poked fun of the melodrama of Tim Buckey’s Loss Arc, how jarring it was that this lighthearted video game comic attempted to tackle serious issues like a relationship facing a misscarriage. For an entire decade, this four panel comic has been lambasted in about as many ways it possibly could have, in every format it could have, all at the humor of the audience. The consumer. All at the expense of Tim.
Yet now, Ethan stares at us. Bemused.
Ethan, for the first time in 10 years, establishes direct eye-contact with us; destroying the fourth wall that the original strip held together. The safe boundary in which we were able to freely poke fun of Tim Buckley’s most infamous 4 panel comic is now broken.
Is he now gazing at us, the viewer, and judging us for our -own- personal losses? Is he mockingly thriving in the fact that he is just a character in a fictional comic, whilst the loss that each and every one of us feels in every one of our own personal lives hold true, heart-wrenching reality, weight, and concequence?
Ethan broke the chain of ridicule. Just like we laughed at his own losses, his own fictional shortcomings, his own melodramatic tragedy over and over in this memetic, long standing joke, he is now doing the same to us. He meets our eyes, with an all-knowing look in his eyes. A gaze of mocking Frivolity.
He found us.
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