Do we? I have entire legion of hipster über-baboons devoted to cranking out these things on an hourly basis, clogging Neecknaw’s Datasphere with pretty misinformation.
Before I recruited them for the Symbol Legion of Zoom, I found the über-baboons were quite good at using stunning visuals to impart complex data in simple and easily-digested images. This did not suit my purposes, so I had them “retrained” at a special and fun “infocamp” on the frozen moonlet that orbits Neecknaw VII, AKA known as Probit VII. (Note: the “infocamp” was not actually fun.)
My purpose in providing copious numbers of infographics was to obscure the information contained within them, and to maximize the search engine traffic to a number sites I ran to help generate income for the people of Neecknaw. (Armies of tutu-wearing, broadsword-weilding gorilloids and fez-wearing über-chimps packing plasma rifles don’t pay for themselves.)
I developed a simple recipe for creating frustrating, broadband-sucking, suicide-inducing infographics:
- rather than visualize the information, use a paragraph or two to describe the information next to a large number (42% is best)
- use fuzzy math
- if possible, set the text at 4 points, and make it white text on a light colored background
- some people may still be able to read this, so compress the graphic into a 400 pixel by 4000 pixel bitmap image (never in html – this could actually be useful)
- if you cannot find extremely dubious sources for your data, make your sources text even smaller.
And yes, since my arrival on earth, I have passed along this recipe. You were starting to get well informed.