Meta Housecleaning: Missing Images

As a meta-note a dismaying number of posts have been cropping up with the dreaded “missing image” icon (as opposed to the “broken link” one). This issue has either been happening more and more - or just coming to my attention more and more - as of late. It’s incredibly frustrating, as there’s nothing that will permanently neuter a reader’s continued interest than seeing something like that: what’s the point of the post, or even the blog to begin with, when the visual components have been kneecapped? As in, who the hell ever comes here for the writing?

Been blogging now for over a dozen years, (2181 posts since January of 2009) and this is the most serious buzz-kill yet - hopefully we’ll see if my report about the issue gets anything. I shouldn’t complain too much, since it’s the price you pay for using free platforms - hence the marketing mantra “if it’s for free that means you are the product.” Presumably I have somewheres around several billion images (*update: I actually started poking about and estimate approximately 7.5k images on Google alone + thousands more onother social media platforms) uploaded to the internet over the years. Still, what a lame thing to pull on people, and so if you’ve come across any of these duds, to quote a certain corporate entity: “we’re aware of the problem and we’re working to resolve the issue.”

It’s been a few years now since the almighty Google decided to end Google+ and I’ve studiously ignored the crushing blow when I discovered all my meticulously archived online portfolios went away. Actually a lot of the images were/are still floating around somewhere, like the thousands I’ve uploaded here to Blogger (which Google absorbed in 2013) and where all my previous blogging images were hosted, Picasa (which Google absorbed in 2004/shitcanned in 2016) and/or the Google+ fiasco (also scrapped in 2019). The only images that are missing are those of cartoons, not any other random pics. 

Which leads me to believe it’s something to do with the history of hosting them externally. There’s at the latest count almost fifty over eighty-five posts affected by the missing image syndrome, mostly clustered around 2012-2016, with 2014 leading the tally (so far) in at least a dozen posts with these embarrassing gaping holes. To be sure, this is nothing compared to the shock to civilization that will occur if and when the internet breaks prior to our impending doom. Just a taste of the despair we’ll feel when it all collapses and the world-wide web goes down, which would likely involve nuclear Armageddon - in which case all my backups will be erased from the electromagnetic pulse anyways. Or at least that’s what I tell myself while putting off downloading + archiving everything.

Update: I'll be randomly re-uploading the missing pictures over the summer. Some have been relatively easy to find on the current computer's hard-drive but many will require a deep dive into external storage archives. This of course will start counting against the new data caps on storage limitations Google Photos has imposed, which on the basis of this mess, I seriously doubt I'll maintain the blog upon reaching the threshold - who would want to pay for a service that does not work? The main thing I point to for it not being operator error is the fact that the vast majority of missing images are on posts that still have additional images - it's just the "Nuggets" panels in particular that are gone. All the supplimental images on those posts remain, for example, process sketches and watercolored versions of the same panel.