Do you remember this hilarious meme that has been popular since 2004?
This meme has a cute little girl smiling in the photo despite the house fire in the background.
This adorable yet evil girl, Zoe Roth, well-known as a “Disaster Girl”, shared her recent thoughts about her photos going viral.
She started off with the story behind this photo. Zoe Roth was watching TV with her family until suddenly
she heard a loud fire siren outside.
With her parents and her younger brother, they walked down the road in their village and saw a house was on fire. At first, she was surprised as she thought it was an accident, but soon she has realized this was just a test-fire. The owners wanted to clear the land and have donated this house for the fire department.
At that instant, her father had a camera and told her, “Smile!”; no one knew this was the start of Zoe’s popularity.
In 2008, her father has submitted this photo to a JPEG magazine’s Emotion “Capture” Competition.
Eventually, he won, and her photo was published in the magazine, and this was actually her first time seeing this photo. She was only in 2nd grade by the time, and brought the magazine to her school, showing this to everyone in the class as she felt so popular; she did not know this was only the beginning.
The trend started and quickly spread all over the world. People would not only put weird and hilarious captions, but also photoshop her into the horrible backgrounds, such as the atomic bomb, dinosaurs extinction, and even Hitler. The contrast of an adorable little girl and a catastrophic event in the background pulled a huge audience which has gained her fame.
Thankfully, she has never been told off or reflected as being “evil” among her friends or acquaintances, but random people online would sometimes see her as a sign of an “evil” and “disaster”.
However, this does not disturb Zoe at all as she has mentioned it is “super fun” and “interesting” to see the reactions of people. In fact, she is enjoying this bizarre fame!
Currently, she works in a restaurant, and all of a sudden, she is flown out to different countries for interviews and documentaries, and it is like an escape from normal life.
She has an enormous number of followers on Instagram, and her top fans are from Brazil, Indonesia, and Poland. She has no idea why these countries are so fond of her, but she definitely finds this phenomenon “cool”.
Replaced!