Assignment: The “Triple Troll Quote” is a simple assignment that pairs three figures; one of which is pictured, one of which is quoted, and one of which whose name is used as the quote attribute. I chose Barack Obama, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden, respectively. (Troll Quotes @ DS106)

Process: Using GIMP the image was a breeze to create. I went for a black and white image of Obama and simple black background with white text. For the quote I used a nice serif font for a more professional look, but went with a sans-serif font for the name because I felt it looked like a motivational poster you might see at a school.

The image was originally found on this website, but they attributed the photo to Portlandart, though I could not find their actual website.

Story: I drew inspiration from one of the biggest troll organizations of all, Fox News.  Some far-right Americans believed that Barack Obama was an undercover Muslim and other weird and crazy things that were equally ridiculous. Going into the assignment, I knew that I wanted to make a political statement about misinformation and would probably use Obama’s picture. From there, I chose Osama Bin Laden to attribute the quote to. My final job was to pick out a quote.  I had no quote in mind for the project, so I started by searching for quotes related to Islam by Middle Eastern dictators.  Luckily, my first search (“Saddam Hussein quotes“) yielded an excellent quote which fit what I had in mind (it was literally the first quote on the page of the first result).

The three people I chose were intended to highlight the fallacies that Fox News and other conservative news and blog outlets propagate. A suspicious “typo” appeared last year when Fox announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, their news ticker read “Reports: Obama Bin Laden Dead” (view the image here). A 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center asked participants what they thought President Obama’s religion was and 18% believed him to be a Muslim (he’s a Christian). This is depressing for any American who cares about the state of politics in America.

Hopefully my ridiculous picture grabbed the attention of at least a few 

– Paul