9/11 Tourist Guy

About

9/11 Tourist Guy is an exploitable photoshop meme featuring a man standing on top of a building overlooking Manhattan. A plane was edited on to the image to appear as if it was taken during the World Trade Center attack of September 11th, 2001, which ignited a series of photoshopped derivatives. He is sometimes referred to as “accidental tourist”, “Waldo”, “WTC Guy,” and “tourist of death.” (See also Disaster Girl)

Origin

Shortly after the events on September the 11th, 2001, an image surfaced on the internet supposedly found in a camera recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center. The image showed a man dressed in a wool cap, heavy jacket and backpack, standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center. Below him a jet plane can be seen flying towards the building. Due to its closeness it seems certain to collide with the tower. The image was often sent in emails with a message claiming that the photo was authentic.

“We’ve seen thousands of pictures concerning the attack. However, this one will make you cringe. A simple tourist getting himself photographed on the top of the WTC just seconds before the tragedy … the camera was found in the rubble!!”

Notable Examples

Spread

On September 26th, 2001, a thread was posted to the Something Awful forums titled “Help me debunk this photo… ppl think it’s real”.^[8] The thread ignited a series of photoshops showing the tourist present at the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the John F. Kennedy assassination, the destruction of Air France Flight 4590 and 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 pictures of him together with people from other famous exploitables, such as Evil Bert or the man holding the giant cat.

The domain touristofdeath.com^[1], a website dedicated to explaining the story of the doctored photo, was registered on October 5th, 2001. A Snopes^[2] page was created titled “The Accidental Tourist” that exposes the image for being a hoax.

Original Photo

Identity

According to Museum of Hoaxes^[3], the first person rumored to be the tourist was the Brazilian businessman José Roberto Penteado. 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 took the photo on November 28, 1997, and was also responsible for the initial edit. He edited the plane into the image as a joke for a few friends without realizing it would spread so quickly across the Internet. He provided the original undoctored photo, and several other photos from the same series, as proof to a Hungarian newspaper.^[4] Wired^[5] examined the evidence and confirmed that Guzli was the real tourist guy.

Apology

The Croation Times^[6] and Orange News^[7] reported that Peter Guzli publicly apologized for editing the image 3 days prior to the 10 year anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks on September 8th, 2011.

“It was a private matter – I assumed my friends would recognise me and call me to see if I was alright, but they didn’t, they posted it on to other friends and suddenly it was all over the world.

“I am ashamed that even now the police still get calls about it, I never did it for money and I never intended to cause any harm to the real victims or their families.

“I didn’t really stop to consider the consequences and never thought it would go outside of my small circle of friends.”

External Links