About

Mom Was Worried, I Sent Her This Picture is a photoshop meme featuring a picture of a woman pretending to be dangling from the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon. The meme involves superimposing a cutout of the woman to appear as if she is dangling from other objects, buildings and landmarks. The series also inspired some viewers to create their own imitations and share them online.

Origin

Redditor AlphaF submitted a post titled "Mom was worried about my trip to the Grand Canyon, I sent her this picture" to the /r/funny^[1] subreddit on November 15th, 2012, featuring a photograph in which she appeared to be falling to her death off a cliff at the Grand Canyon (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post received over 98,400 upvotes, 94,500 downvotes and 3,300 comments.

Spread

Later that same day on November 15th, Redditor hey_suburbia submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about my move to a high rise apartment, I sent her these pictures” to the /r/funny^[3] subreddit, featuring two photographs of men hanging off the edge of a rooftop (shown below).

Throughout the following day, several Redditors began replying to the thread with photoshopped versions of the original image using an exploitable cutout of Redditor AlphaF. Redditor aeusnd submitted a “[FIXED]”^[12] version of Reddtior AlphaF’s photo, which featured the character Scar from the 1994 animated musical film The Lion King (shown below, left). Redditor chromesitar submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about me moving to L.A. Sent her this picture,” featuring Redditor AlphaF superimposed into a photograph of the room from the adult film series Backroom Casting Couch (shown below, right). Both submissions soon reached the frontpage of the site after receiving 3,200 upvotes and 35,000 35,000 up votes respectively.

Redditor JimCSF submitted an image^[6] featuring Redditor AlphaF falling into the mouth of a Sarlacc monster from the science fiction film series Star Wars (shown below, left), receiving over 29,000 up votes and 400 comments in 12 hours. Redditor miseryGuts submitted a post titled "Mom was worried about my acid trip, I sent her this picture,"^[7] featuring an animated Droste effect GIF looping into Redditor AlphaF's mouth (shown below, right).

Redditor Synikul criticized the amount of posts parodying the Grand Canyon image by posting an animated GIF^[8] of a man beating a dead horse (shown below, left). Imgur^[10] user FrictionShliction submitted an animated GIF titled "My mother was worried about my trip to Afghanistan, I sen her this picture," featuring a scene from the comedy film Team America: World Police" with AlphaF dangling from the back of a jeep (shown below, right).

Redditor TrollingCancerofaMan submitted a photograph of a Grand Canyon Cliff titled "Bad Luck Brian" (shown below),^[11] suggesting that the subject had fallen off the cliff. The Internet news blog The Daily Dot^[2] published an article titled "Daughter Scares Mom With Terrifying Photo at the Grand Canyon," which highlighted several notable examples from the series.

Notable Examples

In addition to the photoshopped variations of Redditor AlphaF's Grand Canyon photo, others replied with pictures of themselves dangling from the edge of different cliff faces.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References