Those who combine Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in their daily browsing sessions have likely stumbled upon a new trick in the last few hours. Turning images into their ASCII equivalent is something many programs and services do with ease, but now nearly every Instagram and Facebook photo whose URL ends in .jpg can be transformed thanks to a very small adjustment.
An Age-Old Practice
Anyone who decides to look up information about the so-called "ASCII art" will discover that it's a much older practice than it seems. Personally, I remember receiving the first examples through the unforgettable BBS, and the fact that each "image" was actually pure text favored the download process... which with a 14.4k telephone modem was torture. These days, new generations have it very easy. Just search Google for something like "JPG to ASCII" to find multiple online tools that do the same job. However, what brings us here today is the novelty that Facebook possesses (for some reason unknown to us) an automatic conversion system compatible with JPG images saved on the social network, and on Instagram.
How the Trick Works
This trick was originally reported by a certain Mathias Bynens on Twitter, and basically boils down to adding the .txt or .html extension to the image's URL. For example: The URL of the image you see above (available on the Nightliquid Retro Inc. Instagram profile, which I recommend you visit for a good retro dose) ends with the .jpg extension. If we add a ".txt" after the .jpg, what we get is a black and white ASCII equivalent, while adding ".html" will result in colored ASCII. To find out the original URL of the image, just view the source code and look for the link that ends in .jpg (Chrome and Firefox are ideal for this).
Limits and Open Questions
A detail to keep in mind is that this trick doesn't work if the URL doesn't end in .jpg. In some Facebook images, the social network adds a piece of code to the address, but if we try to remove that, it will show an error message. Now, the big question is: Why does Facebook use this system? Is it a simple curiosity, or part of a function that will be presented in the future?
