A bad map that expresses the territory with great uncertainty can be confidently called a bad map, calling it a good map is clearly wrong. In that sense the shoggoth imagery reflects the quality of the map, and as it’s clearly a bad map, better imagery would be misleading about the map’s quality. Even if the underlying territory is lovely, this isn’t known, unlike the disastorous quality of the map of the territory, whose lack of quality is known with much more confidence and in much greater detail. Here be dragons.
(This is one aspect of the meme where it seems appropriate. Some artist’s renditions, including the one you used, channel LeCake, which your alternative image example loses, but obviously the cake is nicer than the shoggoth.)
A bad map that expresses the territory with great uncertainty can be confidently called a bad map, calling it a good map is clearly wrong. In that sense the shoggoth imagery reflects the quality of the map, and as it’s clearly a bad map, better imagery would be misleading about the map’s quality. Even if the underlying territory is lovely, this isn’t known, unlike the disastorous quality of the map of the territory, whose lack of quality is known with much more confidence and in much greater detail. Here be dragons.
(This is one aspect of the meme where it seems appropriate. Some artist’s renditions, including the one you used, channel LeCake, which your alternative image example loses, but obviously the cake is nicer than the shoggoth.)