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The Conversation
The Conversation
Christopher Schaberg, Director of Public Scholarship, Washington University in St. Louis

Why two tiny mountain peaks became one of the internet’s most famous images

Internet Hokusai
The icon has various iterations, but all convey the same meaning: an image should be here. Christopher Schaberg, CC BY-SA

It’s happened to you countless times: You’re waiting for a website to load, only to see a box with a little mountain range where an image should be. It’s the placeholder icon for a “missing image.”

But have you ever wondered why this scene came to be universally adopted?

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