What's Wrong With This Picture?: Difference between revisions

|date = February 2002

|imagecaption = The cause of PTSD starts on this "image."

}}

'''What's Wrong With This Picture?''', also called '''What's Wrong?''' or '''What's wrong with this image?''' is an infamous internet [[screamer]] created by Jaybill McCarthy, originally posted to his personal website "Jaybill" in February 2002.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020815165932/http://www.jaybill.com/article.php?articleID=66</ref>  Many copies have since appeared on the internet, and is an example of an early e-mail chainletter prank.

The [[screamer]] face itself originates from gettyimages<ref>https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-woman-screaming-close-up-royalty-free-image/BD4381-001</ref>, and was created by photographer 'Gandee Vasan' in 1998 as a stock photo inspired by ''The Scream'' painting by Edvard Munch.  This stock image was also used (albeit heavily edited) for the cover of the 2001 film "Maniacts."  

<blockquote><u>NOTE</u>: This section is about the histories (and the rise) of WWWTPs.</blockquote>The Screamer gained traction rather quickly, with 5,000 page views an hour (6 million per month) shortly after its release.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020609145230/http://jaybill.com:80/article.php?articleID=82</ref>  Ironically, many viewers did not get the "joke" the first time... so Jaybill made an alternate version of the screamer titled the "observationally impaired" edition.  This version added a bunch of text pointing out all the things it wasn't, then would warn the viewer the scare was coming with big arrows saying "this is it! this is what is wrong! the original image was just to deceive you!" This version is currently lost.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020802050810/http://www.jaybill.com/article.php?articleID=79</ref>

Sometime after this [[screamer]] was made, Funshack released their own version, which featured a living room and the need to figure out what's wrong with it; after 10 seconds, a mouse (from Liquid Generation's [[Optical Illusions (Liquid Generation)|Optical Illusions]]) appears with a shriek.<ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20070704220607/http://www.funshack.com/scary.html</ref> A Spanish version of the original was released in March 2002 by Jaca101 on the website Jaca101.com.<ref>web.archive.org/web/20020329184718oe_/jaca101.com/efectooptico.swf</ref> Another comparable version also exists, but there are no links to it, though ScreamerCentral uses the .swf file as a showcase video for “What's Wrong?”, which can be accessed here.<ref><nowiki>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXWOti9M3ek</nowiki></ref> [[Liquid Generation]] made a series of WWWTP in April 2002, only 3 animations were made altogether. from April to December, many copies began to appear, though most of them were deleted.  

Weasel Circus also created its own version of WWWTP in 2003. In 2009, Amendia uploaded a [[YouTube]] video which has reached over 1.7 million views. WikiHow also used the [[screamer]] as a reference to “Internet Screamers”.<ref>WikiHow's "[https://www.wikihow.com/Recognize-an-Internet-%22Screamer%22-Video Recognize an Internet Screamer Video]"</ref>. However, many [[screamers]] like this began to appear, they aren’t well-known in the new era.

The screamer gained so much traction in its day, that it actually managed to land a spot in the New York Times on April 22, 2002. The article hosts a small interview with Jaybill, who describes both his website and the screamer which was made "exclusively for the purpose of scaring my girlfriend''."''<ref>"[https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/business/compressed-data-why-is-this-room-so-popular-shh-you-re-about-to-find-out.html?searchResultPosition=1]"</ref>

==References==

[[Category:2002]]