Tourist guy

The tourist guy, also known as the accidental tourist (a joking reference to the novel and film The Accidental Tourist), Waldo (a reference to the Where's Waldo? franchise) or tourist of death, is an Internet phenomenon consisting of a photograph of a tourist that has appeared in many Photoshopped pictures after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Contents

1 9/11

2 Later appearances

9/11

Soon after 9/11 an image showing a tourist on an observation deck of the World Trade Center while an airliner was about to hit the building beneath him circulated on the Internet. For a short while it was claimed that the picture came from a camera found in the debris at Ground Zero, but this proved to be untrue. First of all, the weather on the image did not match the real weather on September 11, 2001. Secondly, he is standing on the south tower, but the first tower to be hit was the north tower. Thirdly, the observation deck of the WTC was not open when the planes hit. Finally, the plane on the picture is an American Boeing 757, while the only American plane that hit the WTC was a Boeing 767. The picture won a best 9/11 Photoshopped picture contest.

Later appearances

The picture became one of the most widely known examples of Internet humor. As its fame spread, other people started to use the same tourist for other pictures. They included the tourist present at the sinking of the RMS Titanic, at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and at the Hindenburg disaster. Other pictures show him present at disastrous events in movies, like the destruction of the White House in Independence Day or as the bus driver in Speed. There are also pictures of him together with people from other famous photoshopped pictures, such as Bert or a man holding a huge cat. There even appeared a picture of the Yalta conference where Stalin is replaced by the man with the cat, with the tourist and Bert on the background.

The real tourist

The first one who claimed to be the tourist was the Brazilian businessman Jose Roberto Penteado (see pic [1]). When Penteado started to get media attention, including an offer to be in a Volkswagen commercial, a 25 year old Hungarian man named Peter Guzli came forward as the real tourist. Peter says, however, that he does not want publicity and did not originally release his last name.

Guzli took the photo on November 28, 1997, and was also responsible for the initial edit. He edited the image for a few friends, not realizing it would spread so quickly across the Internet. He first provided the original undoctored photo and several other photos from the same series as proof to a Hungarian newspaper ([2]). Later on, Wired News [3] examined the evidence and confirmed that Guzli was the real tourist guy.

External links

Pictures

Categories: Internet memes | 9/11 rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories | Web humor | Hungarian people

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01-04-2007 01:21:04

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