Kill This Picture

My fellow bloggers, please. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, per se. But this damn pic (it's L'il Wayne, for those who don't know) comes up in my Google reader 50 times a day, and has been for several months now.

Friends, L'il Wayne is no recluse. Look around you - there are a bajillion photos of him all over the 'net and offline. And more are being taken every day by every hip-hop media outlet (because it would be, like, super hard to think up an article on rap music if you couldn't follow what everybody else was already covering). If Obama made L'il Wayne photos the new currency (and I just read on SOHH that he might), the economic crisis would be immediately overturned! So there is no reason to keep recycling this one, accursed picture.

Some of you sites especially. I mean, do you ever look at your blog's main page and notice that you have the same photo repeatedly going down over and over? Do you think that's attracting new viewers each and every time? Or that when someone comes from viewing one hip-hop site (or two or twelve) over to yours, they're excited to see the exact same photo they just left?

While we're at it, it's past time you considered swapping out that Jennifer Hudson file photo where she's smiling in that black dress and pearl necklace, too. It was especially inappropriate during all those stories about the murder of her family members. Again, Jennifer Hudson hasn't exactly been one of those celebrities to shy away from the cameras. Use a different picture. Heck, pick out seven and alternate them, one for each day of the week (don't worry, I'm confident that many of you will still be covering the same stories a week from now).

Look, here, I'll do your work for you:
Use that one, ok? Now no one will have to sprain their fingers doing a Google image search. Or you could just stop writing stories on L'il Wayne until he does something worth covering again. Either way. Just please kill that picture.

Update 1/23/09: I think this post has had a positive impact. Since posting this, I've only seen the picture used on one blog in my reader: the aforementioned SOHH, who still managed to use it a couple days in a row. SOHH, please hear our plea! We are on the cusp of a new era... only one last gloppy, putrid tentacle still tethers us to the dark past. Barack Obama said, "change." Now don't you think it's time? The answer is already burning in your soul; look deep and find the strength of will. Do the right thing. Kill that photograph. Kill it with fire.

Update 1/23/09 (later today): Aggh! They (SOHH) used it a second time today! Why, God, why??

Update 1/25/09: Hurray! Today's L'il Wayne story on SOHH featured a totally different L'il Wayne photo! That photo wasn't in my reader AT ALL today! We're saved!

Update 1/27/09: Aw nuts. It's back.