Safety Not Guaranteed (2005)

added Oct 01, 2009 at 01:47AM UTC

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About

“Safety Not Guaranteed” is a YTMND created by axlbonbach on October 27th, 2005. The YTMND today has over 1.6 million views.

The YTMND incorporates three seperate elements. The first is an image of a young man sporting a mullet haircut and a facial expression that could be interpreted as serious and determined.

The second element is a scan from a newspaper want-ad, seeking a time-traveling companion.


WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322 Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.

The third element is Paul Engemann’s song “Push It To The Limit” from the 1983 movie Scarface_. (Soundtrack>Volume 8 of the YTMND Soundtrack.)

By combining the seriously absurd want-ad with the serious/determined image and 80’s montage music, the over-all message that “this is not a joke” becomes even more humorous.

The photo and newspaper advertisement originally appeared on the Jay Leno Show before being used in the YTMND.

Today, there are over 580 different instances of the Safety Not Guaranteed YTMND meme.

According to the YTMND Wiki, this meme comes in three main varieties:

  • Some sites will show the traveler in different time periods starting with the civil war. Most recently this has evolved into a variant of the Wikipedia Vandalism Fad, in which users would try to edit wikipedia material such as the “safety” entry, with such footnotes as “when you push it to the limit, safety is not guaranteed”.
  • Some sites will parody the original ad for other people.
  • Other sites will show the Time Traveler in action either traveling back in time or assisting other people.

Some of the highest rated derivatives:

For more detail on the full impact of the Safety Not Guaranteed meme and its impact on the culture of YTMND, see the full YTMND Wiki article.

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12 Comments

Provie
Oct 01, 2009 at 04:21AM UTC , Provie wrote:

lol, i was planning on writing an article on this as soon as i had more free time.

anyway,

there’s a lot more to this meme than you have presented here cappinkirk. When looking into it previously, I tried to find out where the clipping had come from, and I read somewhere that it was first shown during The Jay Leno show.

There is a huge meme on ytmnd, one which has almost its own legend around it. (see Mullet man goes back in time YTMNDs).

Also, the man pictured did not come from the original clipping, I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m sure with digging we can find where the pic came from.

Shockolate
Oct 01, 2009 at 05:57AM UTC , Shockolate wrote:

This was rather huge on YTMND:

http://wiki.ytmnd.com/Safety_Not_Guaranteed

Jamie Dubs
Oct 01, 2009 at 07:55PM UTC , Jamie Dubs wrote:

Yep, a classic YTMND fad. I’m amazed we don’t have an entry for this already!!1

Provie
Oct 02, 2009 at 03:59AM UTC , Provie wrote:

i was planning on doing one, i just got real busy with school ):

Bbionicjive
Oct 02, 2009 at 07:40PM UTC , Bbionicjive wrote:

iNTERESTING DEFINETLY SEE SOME POTENTIAL

Provie
Oct 02, 2009 at 11:18PM UTC , Provie wrote:

caps lock is cruise control for cool

but even with cruise control you still have to steer

Jamie Dubs
Oct 07, 2009 at 07:01AM UTC , Jamie Dubs wrote:

we need some images & ytmnd links for real

Jamie Dubs
Oct 07, 2009 at 07:01AM UTC , Jamie Dubs wrote:

and videos of the ytmnds. THAT itself is quite interesting

Kirk Elliott
Oct 09, 2009 at 08:53PM UTC , Kirk Elliott wrote:

show some love!!!

Kirk Elliott
Oct 09, 2009 at 08:54PM UTC , Kirk Elliott wrote:

please bless this meme!!

zhelldog
Oct 16, 2009 at 10:06PM UTC , zhelldog wrote:

epic ytmnd

itak365
Nov 26, 2009 at 02:49AM UTC , itak365 wrote:

I’m surprised there haven’t been any Terminator-related derivatives.

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