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), WTC Guy, 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.
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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. While it was claimed that the picture came from a camera found in the debris at Ground Zero, there were digital compositing errors in the photograph as well as serious logical inconsistencies with the facts of the 9/11 attacks. [1]
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 John F. Kennedy assassination, the destruction of Air France Flight 4590 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 Rodger Degagne, a man holding a huge cat named Snowball (in reality, Snowball was a normal-sized cat named Jumper, and Degagne's real name is Cordell Hauglie). 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 person who claimed to be the tourist was the Brazilian businessman José Roberto Penteado.[2] When Penteado started to get media attention, including an offer to be in a Volkswagen commercial, a 25 year old Hungarian man named Péter Guzli came forward as the real tourist. Guzli 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.[3] Later on, the show Wired News examined the evidence and confirmed that Guzli was the real tourist guy.[4]
References
- ^ Snopes: Tourist on World Trade Center
- ^ Tourist Guy. Museum of Hoaxes. Retrieved on 2006-03-20.
- ^ Egy magyar turista kalandjai a cybertérben (Hungarian). Retrieved on 2006-03-20.
- ^ Benner, Jeffrey (2001-11-20). He's the Real Tourist Guy. Wired News. Wired. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
