God, I remember that first image terrifying me and my sister when we were kids, but we called it the "Ugly Girl". There was a point where I was scared to watch any video on RU-vid out of fear of being jumpscared at any moment.
Same. I remember watching barbie videos and I would always see a specific video being recommended to me with that damn thumbnail called "Ugly guy sings barbie girl" or something, And it'd always make me jump or cover the screen
Same. But I watched a weird video version of the maze game with that picture on it. I was terrified to watch any videos in fear of screamers, unfortunately it seems like I was a magnet for them lol
Holy shit that same thing happened to me but with a different image. There was an image of Ed Edd n Eddy drawn extremely grotesque by an animator, JaimeR who made that animation "Prank Time". I saw it on google images a while back and it utterly terrified me to the point where I didn't want to look up anything Ed Edd n Eddy related in fear of seeing it again. Some youtube channels used to use it as the thumbnail for Ed Edd n Eddy creepypasta vids. I still think it's creepy but not the same way I did as a kid.
Yeah, remember the cartoon of the frog getting eaten by a stork but the frog was still fighting back by strangling the stork? I think I got that image by fax.. I'm so old...
so after some digging I have found the original post of "Michael Alone". The original poster said it's from a place called "Guichuan". There is a long-distance bus stop named "广东高要贵川长途客车服务区" (Guangdong Gaoyao Guichuan Long-distance Passenger Transport Terminal Service Area) which is located in Zhaoqing, Guangdong.
Sadly the Baidu Map only provided with streeview outside of the service area. edit: have found a recent video that shows Michael Alone maybe abandoned and repurposed as a toilet /a/FOBXNRB
I remember seeing that first image for the first time in 2002 in the computer lab at my highschool during my freshman year. It was posted on funnyjunk. Wasn't part of a jumpscare or anything, just the image. I remember laughing pretty hard at it because I'd never seen an absurd photoshop before. It's creepy looking and weird, but it reminds me of simpler times.
i remember when i saw the first picture on a musical lyrics video of the song "Aquí Mandan Las Divinas" from the argentinian novel "Floricienta". Old times, that was between 2007-2009
That's exactly the comment.I was looking for because I knew someone was gonna say it before me.I just wanted to Reply to your comment and let you know.
My dad was a major stereotypical 80s kid. When he discovered the internet as it was born, best believe he shared it with me as a kid. I remember seeing this man-woman-monkey in one of the hundred of weird videos on the internet that my dad showed me. Along with videos like “Charlie the unicorn” and “Harry Potter puppet ticking bomb”, he showed me a song called “Shwifty Five” (if I remember it correctly). This is the first time I saw this image and I remember being TERRIFIED. Now when I see/hear a “55”, I think of my younger self being traumatized 😂
Good someone else who has early childhood memories of shwifty five. That image will always make that song pop into my head even though I barely remember it.
Sadly this is normal "internet video essay" investigative reporting lol. Answer isn't 5 seconds google search away so they didn't even bother to check if there was another way to find it. Not saying it would have worked, but it would have made like he knows what he's talking about a lot more if he tried something like that instead of going off on a tangent to talk about some random mall in the Philippines lol.
@@fzxfzxfzx I'm in college rn for a very research-heavy major and I sometimes wonder why I don't just try doing this. For some reason every internet essay I get recommended has like a million views and thousands of positive comments no matter how bad and low-effort the video actually is lmao.
I can't believe that so many people was scared by "creepy ugly guy" when I literally never thought that was supposed to be creepy - I always took it as funny
I've been meaning to say this, but you sound like Izzzyzzz's older brother or something, except instead of covering 2000's internet tween culture, you cover lost media. Seriously the infliction shared between you is spot on.
Anyone remember a photo called "my chemical bromance" it was a photo 4-5 emo dressed guys relatively normal til you notice all their trousers unzipped and their doinkers hanging out. I remember one guy had a really intense creepy smile. Please help me find this image known only as "my chemical bromance"
I first encountered the "creepy ugly guy" as a kid, in the form of a fake quiz that claimed it would generate a picture of you from a description of your features. I was young and naive enough to believe the claim, and I was pretty upset by the result, lmao. Then I got my dad to try it, and was absolutely mystified when he got the same image. I was a pretty gullible kid... 😅
Omg yes! I thought it was at the bottom of an email that said it had a photo of you attatched at the bottom but what youve described actually rang more bells in my mind. I know it hurt my feelings lol.
The fact that the first picture scarred my childhood for some reason is just actually terrifying. But I guess the horror vanished as we grow, looking back to the memories. :)
AUUUH immediate chills. That image haunted me for a while after seeing it on YT back when i was a kid. Looking back now that image accompanied by "Beautiful Girls" seems like what would pass as a shitpost.
honestly knowing the ‘origins’ of the first image and that it was just stock images spliced together kinda healed a part of my inner child 😅i used to be so scared of it i couldn’t look at it. now it’s just funny lol
I feel like I remember watching a video on how the image was made. and yes, stock images were used. Everything was dragged and pasted (like a Timelapse photoshop). I remember the eyes came from a black dog with brown spots but a chimpanzees eyes makes sense. The head came from a 30ish or 40ish year old man, and the pigtails came from a little blonde girl with overalls. I watched it probably 13 years ago when I was 7. My memory is a bit fogged also incase anyone is curious, I first saw the image in a RU-vid video titled, "Ugly Barbie Girl"
as a funfact- the smokeing bug meme beacame a reaction meme in poland with caption "ta? to zajebiście" wich means "yeah? thats fucking awesome" usually used to show how small and unimportamt the information was, alternatively it could show genuene apperciation
That picture scared me so much as a kid. I remember seeing him on RU-vid videos and immediately turning off my monitor and crying while finding my DS to try and get my mind off of what I saw.
I remember back in elementary school of a presentation at what I think was the auditorium when they showed the first image as a warning of who you talk to online
In Indonesia, smoking caterpillars are also popular Commonly called "Ulat Rokok" Well, there is no context in it and usually it's just an absurd image that is included in the absurdhumor format
8:11 useless knowledge for you today: The “当家” in ”麦当家” basically means “in charge”, so it can be translated to “麦” is in charge. “麦” pronounce “Mai” I guess that’s why they called it Michiel. 9:06 later it changes from 麦当家 to 我当家 “我” means “I”so now it means “I’m in charge”
Thank you for posting this! I only know very basic Chinese so I recognized the characters and their meaning but I didn't know enough to connect it to the English name.
Seems more like an edited version of McDonald's chinese name, which is 麦当劳, but they changed the last character to 家. And later when they noticed the flipped logo looked like a W and changed the name to Wicheal, they also changed the name to 我当家 because 我 is usually written as Wo with Latin alphabet.
The first image of the guy with the pigtails solved a decades long mystery for me. I had used Kai's Power Tools on Windows 98 as a child and had been searching for that program for so long but was scared to make a post about it anywhere seeing how obscure and generic "old Windows 98 photo editor" sounded.
Chinese language teacher here, if you look at the original Michael place the first Chinese character in the name is 麦 pronounced "Mai" and often used as the first character in the Chinese version of Michael 麦克. The name of McDonalds in Chinese is 麦当劳. If you look at that the first two characters are exactly the same as in the original Michael Alone except the last character is 家 instead of 劳. The name was obviously put through a computer translator like Google Translate (which is ass for translating Chinese, don't let anyone fool you). The three characters 麦 （Michael) 当 (dang which sometimes means alone) and 家 (jia which means family) and you get something like Michael is alone in his family? Utter nonsense so the computer translator broke its little algorithm on it. Now there was obviously a lawsuit somewhere because its name shifts from 麦当家 to 我当家. 我 (wo) just means I or me but starts with a W so they did a tricky little change to Wichael instead of Michael. Shit like this happens in China all the time even with Chinese chain brands. It's always IPviolate o'clock over there. The more you know 🌈
Thank you for the explanation. Based on that information, I assume it was supposed to be a phonetic transcription, and "Mai"/"Mike" was supposed to be "Mc" while "Dang" was supposed to be "Donald's"?
I used the creepy ugly guy image in a PowerPoint comic when I was 6 or so and now it's an inside joke between me and my sister. I thought it was funny as hell I never knew it was this popular
I think it's worth mentioning that "Michael/Wichael Alone" isnt a translation of the Chinese name. The Chinese name is "我当家" ("wo dangjia") which translates to "I'm in charge". Idk too much about this but I've noticed that oftentimes where I live Asian-run businesses will have a name in English but a completely different name in their native language, both names next to each other and sometimes on the same sign. Idk much about this, but being a resturaunt in China for a Chinese audience, the business and locals likely thought of it as 我当家, not Wichael Alone. My best guess is that the English name was just used as little more than decoration to help with the whole American burger shop vibe. Out of curiosity I did put 我当家 into Google maps and got a Ramen place called Ramen Nagi in LA? Japanese Kanji does use Chinese characters and even though I zoomed out and hovered over China I'm on my phone so it probably brought me to a place that's relatively closer to where I live so it's not too weird, I guess.
That makes sense, you could totally imagine a Chinese restaurant in the west having a sign with chinese characters spat out by google translate with the actual name in English.
I looked around for any info on the gangster Spongebob image and I also couldn't find anything conclusive on its origin, BUT I also searched the name "Bob Esponja cholo" (that's how it's known in Spanish) and according to its page on Memespedia, it would have (allegedly) been made by "Mother Yolanda's Designer T-Shirts", a now defunct eBay store, in 2006. Sadly it doesn't cite any sources, but I thought it would be interesting to point it out.
The first time I encountered the first image was seeing it in a gaming/PS1 magazine with the caption "If true, this is the real face of Paul Frank." or something along those lines. I remember I was just like 6 or 7 years old and my older cousin was playing Chrono Cross on the PlayStation.
I live in General Santos City Philippines. I haven't seen or heard of a Wichael Alone restaurant. The mall shown in the video got half of it burned down from the previous earthquake too so seeing an old photo of it brings back some nostalgia.
The "creepy ugly guy" was created by my high school art teacher when he was a college student. He made it as a joke for his friend when saying what his girlfriend would look like if he ever got one. He told us this a couple years ago and I watched this to see if his claims matched up with the video. Amazingly, they do. He said after he put it online, quote, "people saw it and now it's everywhere." I'm not saying I'm right, but my art teacher was defiantly not the type to make something up like that.
Origins of viral images or pictures is definitely a very fascinating topic, we mostly don't give them second thought, but looking back at some of them it sometimes makes you wonder what the sorce was, it's like internet "archeology" of sorts. Wouldn't mind seeing more of these, also your editing and transitions are really cool.
Aside from the video, I just found your channel and love your aesthetic. I love the filler clips of old commercials, graphics, fonts, etc. Very vaporwave-y and nostalgic! Definitely deserves a sub. :3
"I'm like it" is an extra brilliant tagline, because not only is it an obvious bootleg mutation of "I'm lovin' it," but Wichael Alone is similar to McDonalds - or in other words it's "like McDonalds," hence "I'm like it." Of course, I'm 99% positive only the first part of that was intentional on the owner's part.
3:56 Great. I had to go and watch Schfifty Five for the first time in 21 years and now I've got it stuck in my head for the first time since I was a teenager.
I suspect I found an address for Wichael Alone. About 15-20 miles east of Cenxi City is Sinopec Jinzhu Parking Area, a rest stop that is home to a bathroom, a Sinopec gas station, and a few places to get food while you fuel up or wait for a bus. Among them is 我当家 (Wodangjia), the same Hanzi we see on the sign, which is listed as a fast food restaurant. It is also nearby to both Wuzhou and Guangzhou. No street view is available and Google Maps seems to have the map overlay and the satellite image misaligned, the former is about 1500 feet NW of the latter, but it's the best lead I have. Sadly, my brother is not Porter Robinson, so I cannot afford a plane ticket out there, but if anyone else wants to investigate, you have this info now.
I remember seeing it for the first time in a "Generate your portrait" PowerPoint presentation. When I first saw that, I literally fell off my chair, hyperventilating with laughter. That was the most hilarious thing I have ever seen up to that day. I was around 11 years old, good times 😂
"who was behind it" I remember my uncle making that image in goo in the late 90s. I'm sorry I don't have proof of it being from him since the computer that was on has long since died but I remember being annoyed by the fact he did the pony tails crooked and the colors of the eyes. (One being redder than the other) I do know way back then my uncle went by the name of "13rainBoy" (Or other forms of "brain boy") in the older internet days but I doubt anything is left from that time. I remember the images we used. I remember him uploading the chimp image into goo after looking for it on google. (May have been a different search engine back then "ask Jeeves" was another one I remember my grandparents using.) He was using it as a way to show me how to use the program when I had went to my grandparents a long time ago. Man I really wish I had the proof.
@@BabyCharmander If it's not google then it's ask Jeeves. My mind is foggy on which search engine (It was in the 90s.) but search engines did indeed exist before google. You wouldn't search by image you'd just type what you want and it would bring links up.
For the SpongeBob one look into stickers you used to get from those machines where you put in quarters, push it in, and you get like a cardboard sleeve with a sticker or Pokémon card/etc inside.
I wonder if taking video inside Wichael Alone was banned for some reason. I find it hard to believe it was found by several people and no one thought to go inside and investigate it, what the food was like, etc
Also about the gangster spongebob, I grew up on an Indian reservation (Native American reservation) in America, and there were sellers that would pop up in towns or at pow-wows that had those kind of gangster images on blankets and tshirts. There were pictures of SpongeBob, Tupac, Stewie Griffin, Dora the explorer, etc. all thugged out. I can’t pinpoint the exact date but I would say at LEAST 2005 or so. I doubt it originated there, but maybe you could get some info. It was in North Dakota by the way.
I remember back in the mid 2000’s watching one of those scary pop up videos and one of them was a picture of what appears to be the White House and all a sudden the ugly dudes face appeared outta nowhere
8:34 I think I know why it's called Michael alone. In china, the movie “home alone” is called “小鬼当家”.since this restaurant is called “麦当家” ,“麦”translated to Michael ,and “当家” badly translated “alone ”. this kind of translation error is very common because business owners at that time can't be bothered to come up with a actual english brand name ,so they simply type chinese brand name in translate program and just copy and paste it
Oh thank goodness I’m not the only one. Exact same situation-I’ve been online since ‘96 or ‘97 and I have never seen any of these other images past the first one.
