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2009·Early YouTube

Crasher Squirrel

The photobomb that gave the photobomb its canonical example, and a verb of its own.

You might remember it as squirrelizing

A photograph

This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video. Originally published on publisher-site.

The story

What this was

A photo classified under wildlife.

It first appeared in 2009, during early YouTube.

It arrived at the moment photo editing became something anybody could do in a browser, and the internet spent months inserting the squirrel into other photographs — the Last Supper, the moon landing, the Beatles on Abbey Road. The practice acquired the name squirrelizing. It is the founding case of an accident becoming a reusable cut-out.

National Geographic published the original in its Your Shot gallery, which is what put it in front of the world; the CBC and other outlets covered the couple. It remains the standard illustration of what a photobomb is, twenty years into a century where everybody has a camera.

You were there

More from 2009

The same internet

Early YouTube

More like this

Related

Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.

Behind the record

Where it came from

There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video. Originally published on publisher-site.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
A photo classified under wildlife.
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