People on social media are sharing pictures of what they think are Satanic-seeming displays from Hobby Lobby stores and vowing never to shop there again much like many people refuse to drink Bud Light or shop at Target for bigoted reasons. Aside from the fact that Americans are currently eager to boycott any company that feigns tolerance at marginalized people, there’s one big problem with these Hobby Lobby store pictures: They’re not real.
These pictures of Satanic merchandise on the shelves of Hobby Lobby were made by Jennifer Vinyard using the AI image generating tool Midjourney. That didn’t stop people from credulously sharing the photos on Facebook and TikTok as if they were real and expressing their shock and horror that Hobby Lobby, which bills itself as a Christian company, was selling giant statues of Baphomet.
Vinyard, an Austin-area pharmacist in training, generated the pictures with Midjourney and posted them to her personal Facebook, Reddit, and an AI art group on Facebook on June 5. The public post in AI Art Universe went viral and, as of this writing, has been shared more than six thousand times. The post gained more than 100 comments before the page shut them down.
Hellbound and Down 