I think the ammount of useless knowledge it takes ti get these is, in fact, pretty geeky. This magritte "pipe" image, for instance. Without a basic knowledge of HTML and at least a little bit of art education, you just won't get it.
I felt real smart when I got the pipe joke, but I don't get a lot of these. There's some other stuff I kind of get, like the smiley face thing, and the lol cats mona lisa, but many of them----I'm at a loss. They're pretty geektastic. More HTML references, some videogame stuff, a Second Life joke. Some of it's pretty clever, some of it is beyond me.
uns3en
Not really "that" funny. Even if I consider myself geeky.
jason-m
A geekier take on "The Treachery of Images" can be found on the cover of Craig Larman's "Applying UML and Patterns":
For me, it's like reading a sign in a foreign language when on holiday; I know something valuable is being communicated, I just don't know what it is. I get a similar feeling when looking at some art, so I guess these could be art, then again, perhaps not.