Shoggoth with Smiley Face
The 2022 meme depicting a language model as an eldritch creature wearing a small smiley-face mask, used in the essay alongside the limits of mechanistic interpretability.
ImageSources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Existing attribution traced to the cited original post and corroborating research; direct access to the post was blocked.
- ACM CHI — The Illusion of Artificial Inclusion
The paper’s references trace the meme to TetraspaceWest’s post and an archived copy.
- Original TetraspaceWest post (access blocked)
Original locator identified in research citations; its content could not be read directly in this review.
What this check doesn’t establish
- Creator and 2022 date are corroborated indirectly, not authenticated from the original post.
- Source identification does not establish permission to reproduce this asset.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
- Creator
- @TetraspaceWest
- Created
- 2022
- Medium
- meme
- Rights
- fair dealingShoggoth with Smiley Face, @TetraspaceWest, 2022
- Reuse notes
- The existing catalogue records a fair-dealing rationale for this use. No asset-specific licence or permission is recorded; this source review does not establish legal clearance.
- Image source
- View original source
Used as an analogy for the gap between an interface and the system behind it. The attribution has a traceable original-post locator, but direct access was blocked during review.
In the essays
- You Can't Shame a Fork
Read the essay
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/images/shoggoth.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25