Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

Twitter abuse cartoon. A cartoon about social media trolls and malicious messaging

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twitter cartoon

Twitter troll cartoon
A cartoon about malicious tweeting

Twitter attacks illustrated by the Twitter logo pooping on a person (who is being attacked by Twitter

People who send anonymous abusive, bullying, offensive or otherwise malicious messages via social media are known as trolls.
Cartoons about cyber bullying and internet harassment, shitter twitter, tweets, tweeting
Cartoon reference number: a429
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Going viral – a cartoon about popular culture and YouTube videos

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youtube viewing cartoon

A cartoon about the most popular YouTube videos and the inanity of popular culture.
“Gangnam Style” tops YouTube viewing figures

A comic comment on popular culture in the internet age

This cartoon was inspired by the fact that the song and video “Gangnam Style” was the most popular YouTube video today.

I’ve got nothing against “Gangnam Style” (in fact I quite like it), but it’s a shame that the most popular areas of popular culture are usually the most inane/mildly amusing/superficial.
The man in this image is implying that he’d like to see something a bit more intelligent topping the internet viewing figures.
The cartoon is about internet trending, going viral, cultural inanity, popular culture.

Cartoon reference number: a428

Social media bullying or Twitter abuse cartoon badge/label

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twitter shitter badge

Cyber troll or twitter Troll cartoon
On-line abuse cartoon

A person who indulges in Twitter bullying and tweeting abusive tweets may be called aTwitter shitter
The cartoon shows a bird similar to the Twitter logo shitting on a person, as a metaphor for social media abuse or internet bullying

An illustration designed as a badge or label to campaign against the use of Twitter for sending malicious tweets.
I’d never heard of the phrase ‘Twitter shitter’ previously, however a quick internet search has thrown up a number of examples, all of which seem, surprisingly, to relate to actually going to the toilet. My own use refers to posting unpleasant tweets similar to the activities of internet trolls and suchlike.

Cartoon reference number: a476
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Conkers cartoon – the computer game

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Conkers computer game

A cartoon about the traditional children’s game, conkers, conkers, as a computer game

The cartoon is about the way that traditional children’s games are being usurped by computer games and other forms of digital entertainment

Conkers is played with the seed of the horse chestnut tree on the end of a piece of string. Competing children take turns to hit each other’s conker until one of them is broken and falls off the string it’s threaded onto.

Cartoon reference number: a399

Cartoon – Apple logo with teeth

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Apple logo with teeth - cartoon

Apple logo cartoon.
Menacing Apple logo with teeth

Editorial cartoon showing the Apple logo transformed into a ‘monster’ with teeth

The concept of the cartoon is that Apple corp is getting too big and is turning into a bit of a monster, with all of the consequent problems, such as market monopoly, corporate greed, imbalance of competition.

This cartoon is about rapacious corporate gigantism, and not necessarily about Apple’s products – I’ve drawn almost all of my cartoons since 1985 on Macs, and have hardly touched a PC in my life.
A cartoon about corporate success, expansion, mobile phones, 3G, 4G, computers, computer companies, phone companies.

WARNING. This cartoon can not be used for commercial purposes unless it is as editorial content.

Cartoon reference number: a386
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Apple are getting so big they may be turning into a monster

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apple logo monster - cartoon

Apple logo cartoon.
Apple are getting so big they are turning into a monster

Editorial cartoon showing the Apple logo transformed into a ‘monster’ with teeth, devouring a cell phone that represents the other phone manufacturers.

The concept is that Apple corp is getting too big and is creating an imbalance in the telecommunications industry.
This cartoon is about rapacious corporate gigantism, and not necessarily about Apple’s products – I’ve drawn almost all of my cartoons since 1985 on Macs, and have hardly touched a PC in my life, so I’m a big Apple fan.

WARNING. This cartoon can not be used for commercial purposes unless it is as editorial content.

Cartoon drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a385

Optician cartoon. A cartoon about people’s worlds being limited to their phone

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eye test phone cartoon

Cartoon about people’s lives being limited to their cell phones or mobile phones

A cartoon about people’s over-reliance on phones and obsession with phones

Cartoon showing someone having their eyes tested at an opticians.
The person is looking at an eye chart and is saying “Why would I need to be able to see something so far away from my phone?”

A cartoon about people’s worlds being limited to their phones, opticians, eye tests, optometry cartoon, optometrist cartoon, ophthalmic opticians, ophthalmology, mobile phones, iPhones, tunnel vision, eyesight, shortsightedness, phone addiction, soart phones.

Cartoon reference number: a374
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How to stop a baby crying – give it the phone

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baby comforter phone cartoon

Cartoon showing how to stop a baby crying – give it the phone

A comment on the hypnotic fascination with phones of young people.
The cartoon is also about the way that children are socialised into dependence on technology and gadgets.
The baby is ignoring the soft toys that are dangling in the baby buggy and is focussing completely on a cell phone (mobile phone).

Cartoon reference number: a357

Gender specific reactions to mobile phone apps – cartoon

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Women men differences mobile phone - cartoon

A cartoon about gender differences and mobile phone apps.

Differing male and female attitudes to technology

Gender specific differences are shown here in the way that young men like gadgets, while young women prefer to talk (shown in this cartoon by a man who is more interested in the phone apps that he can add to his phone than in the fact that he can use it to talk to his friends).

Cartoon reference number: a352

Tiananmen Square protester cartoon – photographing conflicts

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tiananmen square tanks protester cartoon

Tiananmen Square protester cartoon – taking a photo of the tanks

Cartoon about the phenomenon of civil unrest, conflicts and protests being photographed and filmed by civilians using their mobile phones and digital cameras

At the time of the Tiananmen Square protest the technology to record the protest digitally did not exist.

It is now not uncommon for riots, battles and massacres to be filmed or recorded and to be posted on web sites such as Youtube

This cartoon first appeared in BBC Knowledge magazine.
Date created: 2010
Cartoon reference number: a335

You’re never alone when you’ve got a phone – cartoon

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You're never alone when you've got a phone - cartoon

Mobile phone cartoon. Cell phone cartoon.
You’re never alone when you’ve got a phone – cartoon

A cartoon showing a person sitting alone with a mobile phone on the table.

The cartoon is an observation about people who place their phones on the table when they are on their own, to signal to other people that they have friends
A cartoon about mobile phones, cell phones,social media,loneliness,solitary people,communication.

Cartoon reference number: a324
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Moon cartoon – following sat-nav to the moon

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Sat-nav gps lost on moon - cartoon

From my selection of moon cartoons
Following sat-nav on the moon

A cartoon about following a sat-nav to the wrong destination – a car has been following the directions given by its sat nav system and has ended up on the moon.
This is a joke about the way that people can reach the wrong destination by unthinkingly following the directions given by their sat-navs (or any other imparter of false knowledge).

Cartoon reference number: a322

Phone cartoon. Study shows that women are more intelligent than men

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Women demonstrate superior intelligence cartoon

Cartoon: are women more intelligent than men?

Recent scientific studies show that in some ways women may be more intelligent than men

Cartoon about gender differences

The comic shows a man using a complicated mobile phone. He is obviously very attracted to the complexity of the technology involved. A woman is saying that she’d rather just use a simpler phone.
The implication is that both approaches are valid, although the superficial interpretation is that the woman’s attitude is the more intelligent. It’s meant to be ambiguous, and for people to fall into accepting the interpretation of the cartoon that they first perceive (for instance, many women will think that the cartoon is a straightforward criticism of the male obsession with technology, and most men will either think that the cartoon is just plain wrong or that it is being ironic in showing a woman thinking that she’s superior to men).

Cartoon reference number: a318

Turing test cartoon

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turing test failed by human cartoon

Turing test cartoon

Showing a person testing a computer’s intelligence using the Turing test.
The computer passes the Turing test but the tester fails

The Turing test is a test devised by Alan Turing to test a machine’s intelligent behaviour, and to test whether it could pass as human.

A cartoon about sentience, sentient lifeforms and artificial intelligence (AI).

Cartoon reference number: a301

Turing test cartoon – a robot testing a baby using the Turing test

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turing test cartoon - robot and baby

Turing test cartoon

Cartoon showing a robot using the Turing test to see if a human baby is sentient

The Turing test is a test devised by Alan Turing to test a machine’s intelligent behaviour, and to test whether it could pass as human.

A cartoon about sentience, morals, sentient lifeforms, sentient computers, sentience, intelligent computers, AI, artificial intelligence, Turing test.

Cartoon reference number: a299
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Facebook and the surveillance society

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Facebook never forgets - the surveillance society

Facebook never forgets

A cartoon about Facebook monitoring and recording its posts as part of the surveillance society.

Cartoon showing the Facebook logo as the head of an elephant watching and recording the activities of its users.
The elephant is used because of the expression ‘an elephant never forgets’ – and because the f in the Facebook logo looks a bit like an elephant’s head

The cartoon is meant to link Facebook with Big Brother in George Orwell’s book 1984.
It is about surveillance of the internet by organisations and government, internet users’ surrendering of privacy, net privacy, a potentially distopian future.

Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a254
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Facebook is watching you – illustration/cartoon

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facebook is watching you - big brother

Facebook is watching you/Big Brother is watching you

Cartoon about Facebook monitoring its posts

Cartoon showing the Facebook logo as a head with eyes watching and recording the activities of its users.
A cartoon comparing Facebook with George Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984.
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a253
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Cartoon – Facebook shares dive after floating of Facebook

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facebook share price dives - cartoon

Facebook share price dives

Cartoon about Facebook’s share price diving when Facebook floated on the Stockmarket in 2012.

Cartoon showing the Facebook logo as a submarine periscope, with the sub diving like the share price

The price of Facebook shares has fallen since the company was floated on the stock exchange recently.
The cartoon plays on the stock market terms such as float, dive and sink.

Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a251
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Blue Peter dropped from BBC1 after over 50 years – cartoon. Blue Peter’s audience is sinking

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Blue Peter dropped from BBC1- cartoon

Children’s television programme Blue Peter is to be dropped from BBC1 – cartoon

Cartoon showing the Blue Peter badge with the ship sinking (because the children’s tv programme is going to be dropped from BBC1 – the main BBC tv channel – and will only appear on CBBC, the BBC children’s programme channel

The cartoon shows the famous Blue Peter badge with the sailing ship on the badge sinking.
This illustrates the fact that Blue Peter has been axed from BBC1 and it’s also a play on the idea that the audience for Blue Peter is sinking

A cartoon about the changing viewing habits of children, tv programming strategies, television programme scheduling.

Cartoon reference number: a235

Children won’t go outside to play in the garden

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children watching tv in garden - cartoon

Gardening and gardens cartoon. The only way to get children to go outside into the garden is to put a television there

A joke about the problem of getting children away from the television and their computers.
The horror of the idea of ‘outdoor television’ – especially for kids

A comic illustration about child development, children’s games and activities, children won’t play outside anymore, physical exercise for children.
Cartoon reference number: a228

See my book of gardening cartoons here.

Is this one of the first cartoons about 3D printing?

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3d printing cartoon

A cartoon about 3D printing (additive manufacturing).

A cartoon showing a computer-generated 3D statue of a man generated from digital scans of the man. The cartoon was drawn before the concept of 3D printing entered mainstream public awareness, and definitely before the cartoonist (me) had heard of the existence of 3D printing technology, so it’s an early reference to 3D modelling in cartoons, if not one of the first.

I’m sure that 3D technology must have existed for a few years before I drew this cartoon, but possibly mainy in research labs and places that were experimenting with early prototypes of 3D printers. 3D printing definitely wasn’t in the zeitgeist.

The humour in the cartoon lies in the fact that highly advanced, even futuristic, computer technology is being used to produce a representation of a stereotypically simple and technologically conservative old gardener.
The cartoon is partly a comment on the fact that advanced technology inevitably often ends up being used for mundane purposes (just look at television and mobile phones, where ludicrously trivial content abounds). This is not a criticism of this phenomenon, just a humorous observation.
A cartoon about hi-tech manufacturing, garden furniture, garden statues, statuary, sculpture, self portraits, gardening.

Drawn: June 2011

Cartoon reference number: a194

See my book of gardening cartoons here.
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Child development cartoon – why children no longer ask “Can we have our ball back please?”

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can we have our ball back - cartoon

Cartoon – why children no longer ask “Can we have our ball back please?”

Children no longer play physical outdoor games, preferring to play computer games and to use mobile phones and other electronic devices.

A cartoon about child development, play, outdoor activities, exercise, passive entertainment.

Drawn: Nov 2003

Cartoon reference number: a164

Life coach guru cartoon. Only watch the news once a day

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Wise sayings cartoon. Only watch the news once a day

Cartoon about advice on how to live your life.
Life coach advice – only watch the news once a day.
The news as noise and the illusion of engagement

The cartoon shows a ‘lifestyle guru’ telling someone to only watch the news once a day.
Some people (myself included) watch the news far too often. One of the problems with the broadcast news on tv is that it is extremely superficial, especially when broadcast on a 24 hour rolling news channel. Watching the news sometimes gives the illusion that you are actively engaged in the news, however, we should really be doing other things instead, such as reading books and magazines that analyse and explain in greater depth the implications of the news events of the day. The news is ‘noise’.
This analysis of the news is similar to that put forward in the book by Alain de Botton, The News. The cartoon predates the book.

This cartoon is from a series about the phenomenon of gurus, personal counsellors, lifestyle coaches (a recent and rather ludicrous twist on the phenomenon of personal fulfilment), motivational speakers and suchlike. In the series the guru, counsellor or what-have-you is a very ordinary middle aged woman rather than someone who is removed from the humdrum of everyday life, and is meant to represent a parody of lifestyle advisers and self improvement gurus.

Cartoon about truth, knowledge, opinions, prejudice, bias, philosophy, lifestyle, lifestyle coaching, gurus, motivational speakers, therapy, counselling, current affairs, engagement in society.
Cartoon reference number: a127
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Facebook cartoon/illustration. Facebook as Big Brother – Facebook is watching you!

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facebook cartoon big brother watching privacy

Facebook privacy protection illustration.
Facebook as Big Brother.

Illustration depicting Facebook’s logo as part of a face with the caption “Facebook is watching you”.
The face is meant to evoke the concept of Big Brother, from George Orwell’s 1984 (especially because of the eyes). The caption is based on the 1984 slogan “Big Brother is watching you”.

Facebook monitors and retains vast amounts of information about Facebook users, including deleted posts and messages, and also stores information about the user’s physical location. Such information helps Facebook and other companies target advertising on individuals.
As Facebook and similar organisations become bigger and more powerful the implications of their use of user data becomes more and more worrying. Facebook, Google and other internet megacompanies could easily take on a Big Brother type role.
At the moment (2012) the use of user data is probably concentrated in marketing and market related spheres, however there is no reason why such data couldn’t be used in future by repressive governments or other repressive controlling organisations.
A graphic depicting issues concerned with internet privacy.
Update 2020: Facebook is being sued in the USA because of its near monopoly in the fields in which not operates (it now also owns Instagram and WhatsApp).
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a119
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Facebook cartoon. The monetization of social media

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facebook internet marketing cartoon

Facebook cartoon. Facebook friends cartoon

Facebook internet marketing cartoon, showing a Facebook page with the message “On-line marketing wants to be your friend”.

This cartoon was drawn when Facebook was due to be floated on the stock market in 2012, based on the idea that following the proposed stock market flotation Facebook would change from being a social networking site into a commercial marketing site, appropriated by business and commercial interests as a channel for selling their goods and services.
The process had already started, with data about Facebook users’ ‘likes’ being used as a means of targeting and reaching potential customers.
The joke in the cartoon is that business interests cannot be your ‘friends’ as they are only interested in you because of your money.
A cartoon about the commercialisation of social media sites. A cynical view on what it will mean to be a Facebook friend in the future.
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a115
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Cartoon. Stop using the internet and get a life. Slightly in the style of a David Shrigley drawing

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get-off-the-internet-and-get-a-life

Cartoon in a style that’s similar to a David Shrigley drawing.

Artwork designed specifically to appear on internet image searches, urging people to stop using the internet so much and to get out a bit.
Vaguely in the style of a David Shrigley drawing. The cartoon urges viewers to “Get off the internet and get a life”.

This image is in a style similar to David Shrigley art. It is drawn specifically for how it will look when it appears in internet image searches such as by using Google image search. So it may appear on image search pages that display artwork by David Shrigley (because Shrigley is mentioned several times in this explanation).
The idea is that the display of images on an image search page is a form of exhibition in an art gallery, and this cartoon is a humorous ‘intervention’ in the exhibition.
Because the cartoon was drawn in a style that looks a bit like a piece of David Shrigley art work, and because David Shrigley has a major exhibition of his work, Brain Activity, at the Hayward Gallery at the moment (February 2012) I thought it would be an appropriate time to display the drawing.
The artwork, titled – Get off the internet and get a life – is meant to be ironic and humorous, especially as viewers will normally come across it while deep in an internet image search.
Is it art or is it a cartoon? Well, to me that’s a falsely framed question, because cartoons are art. At least some of them are (just as some art isn’t art).
Cartoon reference number: a112
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Don’t click this link!

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don't click this one

An internet link button that warns you not to click it.
Text based artwork or cartoon.
Artwork titled:
“I told you not to click it, you idiot!”

The artwork is designed specifically to appear on internet image searches.

It is drawn specifically for how it will look when it appears in internet image searches such as by using Google image search. The idea is that the display of images on an image search page is a form of exhibition in an art gallery, and this cartoon is a humorous ‘intervention’ in the exhibition.
The cartoon was drawn (some time ago) in a style that looks a bit like a piece of David Shrigley art work, and because David Shrigley has a major exhibition of his work, Brain Activity, at the Hayward Gallery at the time of uploading this image (February 2012) I thought it would be an appropriate time to display the drawing so that it may appear on image search pages that display artwork by David Shrigley (because David Shrigley is mentioned several times in this explanation).
The name of the artwork – “I told you not to click it, you idiot!” – refers to the fact that people will click on it because they have been told not to. Part of the humour is that by clicking on the image they will end up on a site that they (probably) didn’t particularly want to go to. Well, they were warned!
Cartoon reference number: a111
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Cartoon. Kodak Eastman goes out of business. Digital photography eclipses film photography

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kodak closing down

Cartoon. Kodak Eastman goes out of business

Cartoon. Kodak Eastman goes out of business. Kodak fades away like an aging print.

The cartoon shows a person looking at an old photograph that’s fading away. The image on the photograph is the word Kodak. It is a metaphor for the way that the Kodak Eastman company has faded away due to the fact that digital photography has superseded film photography.
Cartoon drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: kod001
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Welcome to Hell cartoon – there is no cell phone signal in Hell

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Cartoon - Mobile phone signal - welcome to Hell

Cartoon about Hell – no mobile phone signal in Hell.

The fact that there is no cell phone signal in Hell is one of the reasons why Hell is Hell.

Part of the humour of this joke is that people are so reliant on cell phones or mobile phones that the idea of not being able to get a signal is truly terrifying and hellish.
It’s a cartoon about people’s dependency on and addiction to modern technology, without which they feel alienated and cast adrift.
The phone signal is fading in the same way that it does when one goes down an escalator into the underground or subway.
Cartoon reference number: a099