Survey of the Brony Culture
Content Body Changes
h2. About
*Safety Not Guaranteed" is a "YTMND":http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/ytmnd YTMND series based on a newspaper ad featuring a portrait of a young man sporting a mullet haircut next to an advertisement copy seeking a time-traveling companion:
<br><center>!http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/newsfeed/000/022/036/Screen_shot_2009-10-09_at_4.42.45_PM.png!</center><br>
h2. Origin
The newspaper advertisement originally appeared on _The Copenhagen Post_, a weekly newspaper providing Danish news in English. The image of the stone-faced man was not included in the original ad and his identity still remains unknown. "Safety Not Guaranteed"[1] was created by axlbonbach on October 27th, 2005 and has over 1.2 million views (as of August 2011). The background music is Paul Engemann's "Push It To The Limit" [2] from the 1983 movie _Scarface_, which was also featured in Volume 8 of the YTMND Soundtrack.
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
Given the highly absurd contemplation of time-traveling with the photograph of a determined looking man and 80's montage music, the warning "this is not a joke" made this news advertisement all the more entertaining.
h2. Spread
Since its launch on YTMND in October 2005, both the photograph of the man and the description has been subject to mythification and parodies, with the "safety not guaranteed" in particular. Some of the sites showed the time traveler placed into different time periods such as Civil War era while other sites parodied the original advertisement with varying descriptions. Today, there are over 580 different instances of the Safety Not Guaranteed YTMND series[5].
h4. Notable Examples
* "Don Lafontaine: Safety Not Guaranteed":http://lafontainesafety.ytmnd.com/
* "Connery's Important Appointment":http://onemoretimetrebek.ytmnd.com/
* "Temple of Time: Safety Not Guaranteed":http://totsafety.ytmnd.com/
h4. Myth of Time Travelling Man
The time-traveling man has also evolved into a popular icon of YTMND with the creation of "Safety Not Guaranteed Changes Internet History,"[3] which depicts the mullet-wearing man going back in time and replacing YTMND with "PTKFGS":/memes/ptkfgs, an alternative universe joke well-known within the community. It also had its own PTKFGS version, Security Not Ensured.
According to YTMND Wiki[2], the myth-making has expanded into Wikipedia, where YTMND users attempt to vandalize relevant Wikipedia articles with footnotes like "when you push it to the limit, safety is not guaranteed".
The meme also led to a faux-investigation regarding the identity of the time traveller in January 2006, when YTMND user vex5 raised a suspicion:
bq. Vex5 claims that after calling the number of those believed to own the P.O. box, he received very suspicious reactions. When asked about time travel, the person on the other end of the phone allowed a short pause, replied "never call here again" and hung up the phone. Another YTMND user, guano, called the same number, getting the answering machine. He announced that the message asks to "leave a message for Mark, Debra... also, Moses or Caesar!"
Since this announcement, others have tried calling and claimed to have heard the same message. Some have even managed to record it[6]. In response to these calls, the answering machine message has been changed to say that this number has nothing to do with "time travel" or "going back in time".
In June 2006, user Jewson and his friends made a short film about the time-travelling mullet man.
h4. Don LaFontaine Reading
On October 31, 2007st, user Blackadders2 posted a YTMND featuring a recording that he was able to get the late famous movie trailer voiceover artist Don LaFontaine to read. On September 2nd, 2008, almost a year after the site was made, the reading returned to the top 15 due to LaFontaine's death. Soon afterwards, an update of another Safety site, Hard Safety, was made using the LaFontaine voiceover.
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h4. Film Adaptation
In 2011, it was announced that the YTMND meme will be adapted into a full feature comedy film starring Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson and Kristen Bell. Scheduled to be released in 2012, the movie is about two magazine employees who head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel.
h2. Search Interest
<br><center><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fig%2Fmodules%2Fgoogle_insightsforsearch_interestovertime_searchterms.xml&up__property=empty&up__search_terms=%22safety+not+guaranteed%22&up__location=empty&up__category=0&up__time_range=empty&up__compare_to_category=false&synd=open&w=600&h=350&lang=en-US&title=Google+Insights+for+Search&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script></center><br>
h2. External References
fn1. YTMND - <a href=http://timetraveler.ytmnd.com/>Safety Not Guaranteed</a>
fn2. YTMND - <a href=http://wiki.ytmnd.com/YTMND_Soundtrack>Volume 8 of the YTMND Soundtrack</a>
fn3. YTMND - "Safety Not Guaranteed Changes Internet History":http://ptkfgstothelimit.ytmnd.com/
fn4. YTMND - <a href="http://jaylenosafetynotguaranteed.ytmnd.com/">Jay Leno's Safety Not Guaranteed</a>
fn5. YTMND Search - <a href=http://ytmnd.com/search?q=safety+not+guaranteed&o=|7|all|SC|D|0|>Safety Not Guaranteed
fn6. YTMND - "Recording of Answering Machine":http://content.ytmnd.com/content/c/f/3/cf32f5a7e7467a9d401a3cdcf04e877f.wav
fn7. IMDb - "Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)":http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1862079/