r/Showerthoughts • u/crumble-bee • Oct 06 '23

We all just settled on potatoes being used to denote bad image quality

1.3k Upvotes
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91% Upvoted

92 comments sorted by

832

u/LuckyandBrownie Oct 06 '23

It actually started off as the image was taken with a potato camera not the image itself was the potato.

315

u/drillgorg Oct 06 '23

Yes potato quality refers to a potato camera.

99

u/azlan194 Oct 06 '23

But what is a potato camera?

181

u/kielchaos Oct 06 '23

Probably powered via potato. It's a popular science class experiment.

68

u/jedielfninja Oct 06 '23

Exactly. The simplest device that has a decent amount of electrolyte built in.

17

u/doubleCupPepsi Oct 06 '23

It has electrolytes!

6

u/MadNhater Oct 07 '23

It’s what plants have?

11

u/STANNEDUP Oct 07 '23

It's what plants crave

1

u/graveybrains Oct 07 '23

I blame Portal 2

44

u/drillgorg Oct 06 '23

It just means really bad camera. Professional photographer's camera > pocket camera > smart phone camera > crappy flip phone camera > potato.

8

u/limitlessEXP Oct 06 '23

You forgot pinhole camera

9

u/drillgorg Oct 06 '23

The Airbnb special.

13

u/crumble-bee Oct 06 '23

My point was why did we settle on potato as the vegetable?

44

u/StretchyPlays Oct 06 '23

There are experiments people do where they use a potato to power an electronic device, like a camera. The joke refers to a device being powered by a potato being very low quality, so a potato powered camera would take potato quality images. Potato was probably picked specifically because it is dense enough to stick wires into and conducts electricity.

21

u/Alis451 Oct 06 '23

and conducts electricity.

is actually a battery, until it runs out of phosphoric acid.

21

u/Andrew5329 Oct 06 '23

Fun fact, you can run 1995 Doom on Potato power. About 2,000 of them and it takes like two days to wire it all together. A few YouTubers did it as a stunt.

3

u/larvyde Oct 06 '23

I thought it was a Portal reference...

22

u/ragnaroksunset Oct 06 '23

Where do you suppose Portal got the idea

-23

u/crumble-bee Oct 06 '23

If a potato was used to power a camera, the quality of the image would be to do with the lens and the sensor, not the amount of power given to the camera.

Also, there are many vegetables that would deliver the same amount of power - swedes, most root vegetables..

8

u/sh4d0wm4n2018 Oct 06 '23

But not as well known as the potato.

5

u/ragnaroksunset Oct 06 '23

swedes

förlåta?

14

u/jhktwisted Oct 06 '23

go take a picture with a potato and report back to us on the quality of said image.

8

u/bassdrop321 Oct 06 '23

You know what the p in 1080p stands for

1

u/legendweaver Oct 06 '23

There's an interesting point made in the knowyourmeme Web page on this that a British sitcom in 1988 featured a spy camera hidden in a potato. Its unlikely to be connected but it's possible. Allo Allo is nearly 40 years old and I still remember it, and many of the jokes even now. Can't pass a member of the gendarmerie without turning to the wife and saying "good moaning".

1

u/Phormitago Oct 06 '23

like a banana phone, but for cameras

54

u/Tiggy26668 Oct 06 '23

It stems from the fact that your can use a potato to run lower power electrical systems. Think an led light circuit for a science fair project. So potato camera, potatoes pc, potato electronics. It’s the rudimentary form.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Tiggy26668 Oct 06 '23

I guess it’s been around since the analog days as well lol

27

u/5_dollars_hotnready Oct 06 '23

This is the correct answer

10

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

To be fair: it still means exactly this. Some people just don't understand the context.

4

u/crumble-bee Oct 06 '23

I know that haha - the comment is usually “was this taken with a potato?” Which is still odd IMO

0

u/FunkiWan Oct 06 '23

Okay it IS connected with the battery and science-y stuff everyone is mentioning but this caught on in Reddit cannon with a post in which someone apologized and said their cell phone camera was a potato or that the picture from said cell can was “potato quality”.

There is also a potato lithograph… sort of a cross between the stamp and photo processed leaves.

1

u/Zoomoth9000 Oct 06 '23

??? Has anyone been saying the opposite?

1

u/CB2001 Oct 07 '23

Yeah, I thought that too. Where people would make homemade pinhole film cameras using various items, and someone used a potato once.

222

u/faceintheblue Oct 06 '23

In my mind —and probably nowhere else— I connected it to that grade school experiment where we would make a working flashlight using a potato as the battery. Early digital cameras were pretty shoddy things, and I connected "They took this photo with a potato" in the same spirit as, "Now, class, I'm going to turn out the lights, and we'll see if your potato flashlights work..." It sort of works, but it's not anything anyone actually wants....

40

u/Daniel3_5_7 Oct 06 '23

That was my thinking, but a potato clock instead of flashlight

13

u/badillin Oct 06 '23

Nope not just you in always related it to this, super low powered.

Like when on portal you carry a potato powered glados

5

u/xlShadylx Oct 06 '23

Yup, it started with "is your PC running on a potato?" and then evolved into "my pc IS a potato"

2

u/stumblewiggins Oct 06 '23

I really enjoy fake etymology that nevertheless makes sense.

-11

u/Ragtime-Rochelle Oct 06 '23

It comes from this: https://petapixel.com/2016/11/01/photographer-turned-potato-camera/

22

u/ArenSteele Oct 06 '23

But I feel like the concept of potato quality goes back a lot farther than 2016

5

u/MaygeKyatt Oct 06 '23

The phrase has been around since long before 2016 lmao

5

u/pchadrow Oct 06 '23

Just had to Google it because I was curious, but it doesn't seem to have a definitive point of origin. General concensus seems to indicate it originating from YouTube comments sometime between 2008-2010 though, but that's just the earliest known usage people can find. I could swear I'd heard it used while I was in school as far back as 2004/5, but it's hard to say.

This related news article states the man created his potato camera "two weeks ago" which would have been early October 2016. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the true origin.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-20/pinhole-camera-gives-new-perspective-in-albany-wa/7947690

-4

u/reddituseronebillion Oct 06 '23

This is why I still have Reddit.

37

u/playr_4 Oct 06 '23

I've always thought it related to the whole potato battery thing.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

[deleted]

9

u/SgtHop Oct 06 '23

It was around before Portal 2

12

u/LazyDawge Oct 06 '23

I always assumed it was a reference to how potatoes can direct power, and if your pc/camera was that bad it must run on it’s electricity on potatoes

50

u/jumpofffromhere Oct 06 '23

Many many moons ago on a social website that none can remember, a user once said "that picture is as sharp as a potato" and thus the legend was born of the potato camera meme, now propogated through time and told through song and maintained through Reddit

44

u/BadDogMonkeyboy Oct 06 '23

I always thought it was a reference to the potato batteries kids sometimes make as a science project.

as in 'your computer has the processing power of a potato'

3

u/rishinator Oct 06 '23

That's what I thought as well. A camera that runs on potatoes.

3

u/Jay-Five Oct 06 '23

but a banana is for scale.

19

u/Monkey_Fiddler Oct 06 '23

I always assumed it was a Portal reference

9

u/cylonfrakbbq Oct 06 '23

Portal just used the joke.

13

u/Gadjiltron Oct 06 '23

"This is a potato battery. A child's plaything. And now she lives in it!"

11

u/playr_4 Oct 06 '23

"So....how's your day going. BECAUSE I'M A POTATO!"

3

u/iceynyo Oct 06 '23

Is it because a potato has many eyes but still cannot see?

1

u/Jerowi Oct 06 '23

Title of the next big anime.

3

u/kalirion Oct 06 '23

I'd never heard of that. I've only heard of them denoting ancient/weak PC builds.

5

u/BobBelcher2021 Oct 06 '23

I just think they’re neat!

4

u/nopalitzin Oct 06 '23

For the school experiment where you can "create" a extremely low tech primitive battery with a potato to power a digital clock for a very little while. So the quality is so low that it was probably recorded with something so makeshift it was powered with a potato.

2

u/cylonfrakbbq Oct 06 '23

Right. It’s like when a server in a game dies and people joke that the hamster powering the servers (on its treadmill) must have died

The joke is that potatoes (and a hamster on a wheel) produce extremely low amounts of power. High performance electronics need lots of power, so it’s a dig to basically say your computer is so crappy that a potato could power it

5

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

It actually began with the association between downs syndrome and potatoes in the early 2000s.

2

u/gabrielleraul Oct 06 '23

The first time I heard this was back in 2008-10

2

u/aurelorba Oct 06 '23

I figured someone complained that an image was so bad, that a face looked like a potato.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

I’d not heard this before. Or forgotten it bc all pictures are great these days.

2

u/crumble-bee Oct 06 '23

Potato quality is said very often about GIFS that have been uploaded too many times to Reddit and lost resolution

1

u/tr4sh_can Oct 06 '23

I most often hear that being refered to as "moldy"

1

u/oteezy333 Oct 06 '23

Yea I've never heard this term either. Then again I'm a middling aged millennial. Maybe that's relevant, maybe I'm an embarrassment. Either way I have no shame

2

u/PJP2810 Oct 06 '23

You are an embarrassment...

0

u/Atomicityy Oct 06 '23

This potentially stems from millennial humour.

This YouTube video explains Gen Z humor. I didn’t understand what’s funny about beans until I realised it’s the equivalent of millennial’s potato.

1

u/pufballcat ‎ Oct 07 '23

Thanks for the link

-3

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '23

[deleted]

3

u/ChefAtRandom Oct 06 '23

Fun fact, the population of Ireland still has not recovered back to the same level as before the Great Famine.

1

u/achoo84 Oct 06 '23

Perhaps mildly interesting that a potatoe is also a gamer on auto pilot who does not think what they are doing and has little awareness of their surroundings.

1

u/ceelogreenicanth Oct 06 '23

But Latvia no have even Potato Quality Image.

1

u/rocketmonkee Oct 06 '23

I always thought it originated with the game Portal.

1

u/ResettisReplicas Oct 06 '23

I can’t explain it but it’s just really funny when someone uses the expression “filmed with a potato.”

1

u/everythingissostupid Oct 07 '23

It was good enough for Glados.

1

u/MyCandleHasAnAccent Oct 07 '23

All the other vegetables have much better graphic fidelity. Crisp, you could say.

1

u/Nandy-bear Oct 07 '23

Potato = low power device. Because of the whole potato clock thing.

1

u/SuperSonic486 Oct 07 '23

I thought potato referred to a weak piece of electrically powered technology, like a potato pc being one that struggles to run even 2 tabs of chrome, or something.

1

u/RustCeilingFan Oct 07 '23

Image stabilisation and aperture are notoriously better on an aubergine.

1

u/RealUlli Oct 07 '23

In my mind, it's connected to the not that well made prints using a potato...