About

Wood Sitting On a Bed, also known as Big Barry, is a photoshopped image of the deceased adult film star Barry Wood sitting on the edge of a bed looking at the camera with his penis exposed. The image has been used in bait-and-switch pranks and has been circulating online since 2012. The image saw a resurgence in 2020 in fake messages regarding news about the coronavirus outbreak. The news site Vice later identified the man as Wardy Joubert III, who died of a heart attack on December 11th, 2016 at the age of 45.

Origin

Before July 2012, the gay porn website Pantheon Bear^[10] (later renamed to Hot Older Male) posted a photoshoot of gay pornstar Wood. The photoshoot included a photograph of Wood sitting naked on an edge of a bed, his legs spread apart (censored version shown below). A manipulated image, with Wood's penis enlarged, has been circulated starting in 2012 (censored version shown below, right).^[11][12]

On January 3rd, 2015, Twitter user @CenicerosOc^[1] tweeted the earliest known bait and switch using this image caption, "Love my parents and my jeep" (shown below).

Spread

On February 1st, 2015, Redditor misterflyy commented on an /r/teenagers^[2] post with "All ______ County schools have been advised to close for January 28th, 2015 due to inclement weather possibilities. Check to see if your school is closed" and included a link to the image. On January 19th, 2018, the image was posted to /x/ on 4chan^[4] with the text "Barry" (shown below).

On February 5th, 2019, iFunny^[8] user Captain_clu1ch posted an image of the man with the caption, "You Got Some Fucked Up Friends if you Know Who This is" (shown below, left). On December 6th, 2019, Redditor That-Is-Fricking-Big posted the image to r/GayPornActors^[5] asking "Who is This?" which garnered 32 points (81% upvoted) and several comments answering the question with profile pages for a porn actor by the name of "Wood." On January 12th, 2020 another Redditor referred to the man in the picture as Barry in a post to r/awfuleverything.^[3] Following the coronavirus outbreak, the image circulated on Twitter again.^[7] On March 13, Twitter user @eveiscruzzin^[6] tweeted "Holy fuck, that’s almost all of California 😭😭 Just keeps getting worse. PBS: Governor Newsom announces several California cities are now under a coronavirus quarantine lockdown. See below if your area is on the list and when it goes into effect: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BG48ENgCEAAIDl9.jpg" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 200 likes in five days.

On March 17th, Twitter user @Cernovich^[9] posted a photoshopped image of the man in the oval office with the caption, "Who gets this? 🤣" (shown below, left). The tweet received over 1,800 likes in a day. Twitter user @KimJung77990374 responded to the tweet with an image of Wood photoshopped on the cover of Time Magazine (shown below, right).

Identity

That day, VICE ^[14] published the article "Bad News About the Well-Endowed Man In Those Coronavirus Prank Texts." In the piece, they report that Wood had died. They quoted Walter Smith, the owner of Pantheon Productions, who said, "I'm sorry to hear that Wood's image has been used in such a way. It's quite shameful. Unfortunately, Wood passed away several years ago. Our images from him are from 2011."

On March 18th, the Instagram ^[13] page @barrytribute page launched.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References