ViralWorld

2008·Early YouTube·fail

Disaster Girl

No copy of this image is currently available to show.

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

  • SourceNot an upload originally
  • MediaNot held by ViralWorld

A four-year-old smirking at a house fire, and the internet's favourite way to claim credit for a catastrophe.

The story

What this was

A photo, described as fail.

It first appeared in 2008, during early YouTube.

It is the definitive "I did this" reaction image. The photograph was recomposited into the extinction of the dinosaurs, the sinking of the Titanic and every disaster in between, and the joke works because the child's expression is genuinely, unnervingly satisfied. The New York Times has called it a vital part of the meme canon, alongside Bad Luck Brian and Success Kid.

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.

You were there

More from 2008

The same internet

Early YouTube

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

What we know

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, described as fail.
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