
QR codes, with their seemingly arbitrary jumble of black and white squares, are popping up on all sorts of packaging and advertisements, allowing consumers to quickly and easily access a specific website on their smartphone. As common as they have become, we’ve never seen a QR code completely hand drawn on a chalkboard, but here we have one, carefully created by a student in Japan. The best part? The website it leads to is just as random as the decision to recreate a QR code using chalk.
As you saw in the photo above, it looks like a student is using the QR code reader on his phone to access the unknown website.
Additional photos reveal several other classmates doing the same. But what’s that site that popped up?
Could it be? No, we haven’t seen that fool in four months…
Well wouldn’t you know! The expertly drawn chalk QR code leads to the blog of disgraced politician, Ryutaro Nonomura; you know, the guy behind the cringeworthy sob-fest after it was revealed that he tried to pay for 106 visits to a Japanese hot spring with public funds.
▼ Yeah, that guy.
A random choice of sites, indeed, but we have to hand it to this clever student, he made us laugh out loud at the sight of Nonomura’s grinning face. Unfortunately, some netizens were not amused:
“I’ve never seen a bigger waste of talent.”
“What an idiot!”
“Why don’t you use your skill on something else?”
Are you kidding? This artist recreated a functional QR code with a piece of chalk! You can’t blame him if he wanted to use his powers for good and bring a little humor into the world. Even our own food artist, Mr. Sato, knows that you can’t always make conventional art; sometimes you just have to slap 1,050 strips of bacon together and call it a burger.
But even with all the people complaining about this student’s use of creative talent, the photos of the chalkboard QR code have already been retweeted over 27,000 times…we can’t even imagine how many hits Nonomura’s blog received these past few days. Seriously, go and check it out. You really can access Nonomura’s blog from your own smartphone using this QR code!
Not close enough for you? Here, how’s that?:
Score another one for Nonomura!







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