Contemporary cursed images borrow some of the inadvertently kitsch 1980s aesthetics, delivering a kind of surreal post modern still life.
If you pause for a second, you can imagine a story behind each cursed image.
Challenging the staged beauty of photoshopped selfies, violating our sense of world order, they have an unsettling attractive power, inviting us into an alternate dimension, far from the clichés of mainstream media photo galleries.
Parents dressed as children, toothpaste sandwiches, 10-legged dogs, creepy mutants blending dolls and tyres, overflowing urinals… the weirder the better. There are now websites and social media accounts dedicated to specific cursed verticals, including the filthy Scary Toilets.
Cursed images are pointless visual guilty pleasures. Once you start browsing cursed images, your brain’s craving for more. Cursed images are the typical rabbit hole distraction!