Talent is a gift. Taste is a separate gift entirely, and the two are not always a package deal. We want to applaud people who put in the hours and develop their skills, but when they deploy them this diabolically, it raises more questions than answers. The execution might be flawless, but the decision to do so is another matter.

Everyone, from nail and tattoo artists to hobby painters and decorators, needs to stop sometimes and ask themselves, “Just because I can, does that mean I should?” Well, we can’t be angry. We cannot even be disappointed. We can only stand back, acknowledge what we are looking at, and respect the commitment even as we question every single choice that led to it.

#1 These Nails Are Authorized By The High Council Of Remulak

#2 Urinal By Hayden Clay

#3 Who Wants Night Bacon?!?!?!

Talent and taste are not the same thing, and nobody has proven this more thoroughly than the people in this collection. There is something almost admirable about a person who has spent years developing a real skill and then looked at every possible application for it and chosen the most unhinged one available with full commitment.

The Victorians were doing this long before anyone could post it online. There were entire exhibitions dedicated to sculptures of fleas wearing tiny functioning shoes, portraits of royalty painted on single grains of rice, and complete copies of the Lord's Prayer inscribed on surfaces you needed a magnifying glass to read. And people paid to see them! Unlike us, who just mooch off free forums online. The crowd understood that watching someone do something extremely well for absolutely no reason is a category of entertainment in its own right. OH, how right they were.

#4 KFC Moist Towelette Tattoo (With Bonus Bee Movie)

#5 Truly Art

#6 Grater Phone Case

What separates the entries here from regular bad decisions is the execution. A terrible idea done badly is just a mess. A terrible idea done with obvious care, with real hours behind it, with the kind of attention to detail that makes you stop scrolling and zoom in, is something else.

But before the internet, most of this work had nowhere to go. The outsider art world tried to do something about it, and has been collecting and selling work made outside any official tradition since critic Roger Cardinal named the category in 1972. The Outsider Art Fair in New York attracts serious buyers every year. What collectors recognized early is that making something with full commitment and no regard for convention yields a result that traditional art schools try to train out of people.

#7 This Person Made A Giant Sequin-Covered Aquarium Shrimp

#8 I'm Not Sure I Could Stomach This

#9 All Eyes On You

Susan Sontag named the broader phenomenon in her 1964 essay Notes on Camp, defining it as a sensibility that finds beauty in artifice, exaggeration, and things that try too hard and succeed completely. Camp, she argued, is not about bad taste. It is about a love of the unnatural that is so committed it loops back around to being truly compelling. She was writing about theatre and fashion, but she was essentially describing everything in this article seventy years early.

#10 The Jurse

#11 Who Needs High Fashion When You Can Carry The Bag?

#12 Mold Tattoo

Thomas Kinkade, officially the most commercially successful artist in American history with an estimated 10 million homes containing his work, was almost universally dismissed by critics as producing sentimental, formulaic kitsch, aesthetically questionable paintings of cottages with improbable amounts of light coming from the windows.

Yet, despite his bad rap, he reportedly painted over 1,000 different images and generated around $100 million annually at his peak. So forget what the haters say, unleash your inner Kinkade and let your art soar.

#13 Fang Grills

#14 Found In R/Mineralgore

#15 Works By P.puck

The Bauhaus school, founded in Germany in 1919, built its entire curriculum around the argument that craft and artistic vision cannot be separated, and they tried to unify all design, art, arcitecture, and engineering under one umbrella. The school produced some of the most influential designers of the 20th century, but with their "form follows function" principle, it did not leave much room for creativity. The folks on this list would not soon be seeing Bauhaus acceptance letters in their postboxes.

#16 I Once Crocheted A Richard Nixon Blanket For My Now Ex

#17 Burgerstocks

#18 Does This Hummer H2 Stretch Limo With A Raised Roof And Patio In The Back Count?

Jeff Koons is the art world's most expensive example of this exact phenomenon. His Balloon Dog (Orange), a stainless steel sculpture that looks exactly like a twisted balloon animal you would get at a children's party, sold for $58.4 million at Christie's in 2013, making it the most expensive work by a living artist at the time. Koons employs over 90 fabricators and reportedly never touches the work himself, which means he has built an entire industrial operation around producing things that look like party supplies. Critics have called it glorified kitsch for decades, but the auction houses beg to differ.

#19 Ssj4 Haircut

#20 Yes, They Are Real

#21 From Skullet To ‘Stache

The word 'kitsch' has a bad connotation, and when Milan Kundera defined it in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he explained that it was the "absolute denial of [bad things]". He wrote that it was the desire to create a version of the world that is purely pleasant, uncomplicated, and sentimentally satisfying. He meant it as a criticism because he did not agree with art and design that tried to exclude human suffering. The world is dark enough, buddy. Let the people make a crocheted Richard Nixon and call it a day.

#22 Mural Pointing To The Bathroom In The Middle Of The Restaurant

#23 This Stroopwafel Victorinox

#24 Custom Coffin Couch

The hyperrealistic cake is the 21st century's proud contribution to this genre. Artists like Natalie Sideserf have spent years perfecting the ability to make edible objects that are visually indistinguishable from household items, cleaning products, shoes, and raw meat, all of which can be sliced open to reveal sponge and buttercream inside. The skill involved is extraordinary but the product is something that makes your eyes go cross and your brain feel scrambled. It is just when the results turn into grotesque swamp creatures of a toe with a fungal infection that we stop celebrating the craft altogether.

#25 What A Steal!

#26 "Babe, You've Barely Touched Your Shrimp Luge"

#27 Teeth Earring Set I Made For An Art Show In Eleventh Grade

But we still get pleasure in watching someone do something unnecessary extremely well, and it has nothing to do with agreeing with their choices. The brain responds to technical competence with something close to admiration, regardless of what it is applied to. So keep spreading joy, you weirdos! Our midnight scroll sessions will remain eternally unhinged and unapologetic thanks to your dedication.