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Genetic Disorder - Failed Abuse

I have tried many things to promote ChemScrapes over the years. In the days before I knew what a hashtag was, I used to try to interact directly with prominent folks online. It didn't work, but at least it gave me some fresh material to keep the one or two visitors a month (thanks mum!) to my blog entertained.

The cartoon below is an example of one of these instances of failed interaction from 2013. It was drawn in response to a call from Elise Andrew (of I F**king Love Science (IFLS) fame) to insult her in the most imaginative way possible because she was sick of the bad language and threats of mutilation she received in response to her promoting science over religion.

I wanted to incorporate as many different layers of irony into this cartoon as I could, so I created a scenario in which a fictitious institute (named after Richard Dawkins) is being marched upon by a bunch of chromosomes carrying slogans against the theory of evolution. If you look at the slogans in the background on the left, you may be able to make out "you will burn" and "IFLS bitch" - those are the insults. The three most prominent chromosomes are XXY (Klinefelter's syndrome) and, for me, the title "Genetic Disorder" put the icing on the cake. I thought this scenario was definitely clever enough to get the attention of Elise and put ChemScrapes on the map. It sure didn't work out that way.

As far as I know Elise Andrew has never seen this cartoon despite multiple posts on the IFLS Facebook page, multiple hashtag combinations/mentions on Twitter and more than a couple of direct e-mails over the years. It seems to get a chuckle for what it is when I post it online, but without the context behind it nobody sees it the way I do: failed abuse!

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