Really? Does it really cost that much to generate a single image like this?

yeah to generate a photo of reasonable quality it costs like $.18, so multiply that by 650ish MPs and you have a pretty expensive lil parody site...

	▲	aspenmayer 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Make hay while the sun shines. ~$120 upfront would make this an order of magnitude more expensive than a vanity domain name already, but if you had precomputed and cached them you’d be capitalizing on the viral momentum.