Disaster Girl
The archive does not hold a copy of this image that it may show.
Biggest memes ever22 of 32
2008·Early YouTube·unexpected
A photograph of a four-year-old girl looking back at the camera with a small knowing smile while a house burns behind her.
At a glanceThe facts
- Spread in
- 2008
- Began as
- A photograph
- Where it started
- publisher-site
- Format
- Photograph
- Who or what it shows
- Zoë Roth, aged four
- Photographed by
- Her father, an amateur photographer
- Recorded
- 2005, in Mebane, North Carolina
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
Four-year-old Zoë Roth turns to the camera with what the New York Times later called a devilish smirk, while behind her a house burns. The fire was a controlled burn set for firefighter training in Mebane, North Carolina, in 2005, and her father Dave Roth, an amateur photographer, took the picture. He entered it in JPG magazine's Emotion Capture contest, which it won in 2008.
In April 2021 Roth, by then a university student, sold an NFT of the photograph for 180 Ether — around $500,000 — after consulting Bad Luck Brian's Kyle Craven and Success Kid's mother Laney Griner about how to take back control of an image that had been used hundreds of times without her family's involvement. She paid off her student loans with it.
Why it matteredWhat changed
It is the picture people paste in front of every catastrophe to suggest somebody did it on purpose. Sixteen years after it was taken, its subject sold it herself.
TimelineIn order
- Made
Zoë Roth’s father photographs her in front of a house in Mebane, North Carolina, that the fire service has set alight for training.1
- Found
The photograph wins a photo contest.1
- Picked up
It wins the Emotion Capture contest in JPG magazine. Edited versions spread, placing her in front of the sinking Titanic and the extinction of the dinosaurs.1
- Came back
Roth sells the original as a non-fungible token for 180 ether, about 486,716 US dollars. The family keeps the copyright and ten per cent of any resale.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asA child watching somebody’s home burn down.
ActuallyThe fire was a controlled burn for firefighter training, and the family had come to watch it.1
More from hereIn this collection
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast
This began as a photograph, not as a video. Originally published on publisher-site.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This 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.
More from 2008You were there
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things