A Man Eating Some Pants

Nov 7, 2008 12:30am

I recently discovered the Amazon Mechanical Turk. It's a place where you can pay anonymous people to do small tasks, or work on said tasks yourself. Amazon calls it "artificial artificial intelligence". It's mostly filled with small work-like tasks such as tagging an image or selecting pictures of wire strippers (which despite the warning, did not contain adult content).

After contemplating whether I was making enough money to power my laptop, it was clear that the other side of the table was where the fun was. I deposited the $1.29 I had made and got to work making my own task.

For the reward of 5 cents, I prompted 10 users with the following:

Draw a picture of a man eating some pants. The only quality requirement is that the picture can be easily identified as a man eating some pants. You may sign your artwork if you desire.

You can either use graphics software such as Microsoft Paint or draw it on paper then scan it/take a photo. When you are done, upload it to the internet and paste the link below. A free image hosting website such as http://tinypic.com is a good place to put it.

It took a few days, but I got all 10 results. Here they are in order recieved:

drawing of a man eating some pants and holding a fork and knife

This upper torso of what might be called a man is enthusiastically biting/chewing on a pair of pants, disregarding the fork and knife in his hands.

This one's pretty funny. I'm impressed they did it in pencil.

drawing of a stick man eating some seasoned red pants with the text "Nom Nom Nom PANTS = ♥"

He really loves to eat pants. Not just any pants, the finest red pants. If you look closely you can see what appears to be pepper falling off of them.

drawing of a man with sunglasses eating some blue jeans pants

The picture of the man looks like it was pulled from somewhere, but this one cracks me up.

drawing of a skinny man eating some pants while sitting at a table

That guy's pretty skinny. I assume he's starving and is eating clothing as a last resort. Or maybe he's just malnourished from only eating denim.

drawing of a propeller-for-legs stick man eating some blue pants

A propeller-for-legs stick man catches some pants/a blue stapler in his mouth.

Oooh, scenery!

drawing of an angry chair man holding a handgun instead of pants

This man is angry that he has a chair for a body and a handgun for pants.

I decided to reject this one, so the artist didn't get the 5 cents. :-(

drawing of a man yodeling into some pants before eating them

I think he might be yodeling into the pants before eating them.

drawing of a man eating some pants with a fork and a knife

titled "Man eating a pair of pants in an indefinite space."

That is one civilized pants-eating man. He took the time to cut a piece of pants with his knife and is eating it with his fork. That, or he ripped a piece off and stuck it on his fork.

drawing of a stick man eating some plants while sitting on a chair

This is clearly a man eating some plants.

I find the mixup rather hilarious. I'm not sure if they misread it, assumed I made a typo, were being funny, or what.

drawing of a man looking at some pants, possibly considering eating them

The expression on this guy's face is great. It makes you wonder what he's thinking.

These pants appear to be past their expiration date. / How did my pants get starchy enough to stand up like this? / So that's where I put my potato...

I had a bunch of fun with this. I may do something with Amazon Mechanical Turk again in the future. (I still have $0.795 left!)

Thanks to everyone who drew a picture. If you find this site, I'd like to hear from you in the comments or over email. If you drew the one I rejected, and can verify it, I'll try to give you your 5 cents.