The Tourist of Death

October 13, 2001 7:42 AM

The Tourist of Death -- a new Internet meme. Apparently he's come to be called "Waldo" by afficianados. (Good Heavens!!)
posted by Steven Den Beste (14 comments total)

A friend of mine did this one.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:10 AM on October 13, 2001

tourist guy has been making the rounds.
posted by kliuless at 8:17 AM on October 13, 2001

I like it! I can't believe how inventive some of these pix are -- and I wish I knew how to doctor photos like these "pros" do.
posted by davidmsc at 8:50 AM on October 13, 2001

I've considered putting this guy up on my department's intranet site. (Right now ALF is sitting there as a placeholder.)
posted by mrbula at 9:09 AM on October 13, 2001

I don't find it funny at all...
posted by kosubai at 9:13 AM on October 13, 2001

you're kidding, this is hilarious, or it was when it first started. i can't see it lasting much longer though.
posted by mokey at 9:30 AM on October 13, 2001

davidmsc: The expensive way is with Photoshop. The inexpensive way is with the Gimp. 90% of the capabilities of Photoshop, at 0% of its cost. A Win32 port is available here. Be sure to download Grokking the Gimp, which will teach you a lot of tricks. Gimp is way too much fun. Start playing with it, and the next thing you know, the day is gone...
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:34 AM on October 13, 2001

Also, on the Mac side, a lot of this can be done with GraphicConverter, shareware with 101 percent of the capability of GIMP (heh) which can use most Photoshop plug-ins as well. It's one of the ten best pieces of shareware on any platform, available in nine languages, regularly updated, recently carbonized and able to read and write a little under three billion different graphic formats. It does channels and masking, which is all-important when doctoring photos.

GraphicConverter will keep you busy until you get around to installing X-Windows, Gnome and the Gimp on your OS X machine...
posted by Mo Nickels at 10:21 AM on October 13, 2001

Slithy and Mo: Thanks for the tips -- will get right on it. But wait...if I already spend all day on MeFi, and then spend all day on Gimp...uh oh...possible dilemma forming...

And kosubai: if you can't see the humor, perhaps you can admire some of the ingenuity in placing him is certain situations, and doing it so well...? Some of those pix look seamless; not all, to be sure, but some.
posted by davidmsc at 12:01 PM on October 13, 2001

There's an ad from Orbitz rotating on the top of that site right now.
posted by mrbula at 1:15 PM on October 13, 2001

oh yeah, no doubt they were done very well, but why put him in situations that will cause backlash?
posted by kosubai at 1:38 PM on October 13, 2001

"oh yeah, no doubt they were done very well, but why put him in situations that will cause backlash?"

because it's FUNNY. duh.

;)
posted by jcterminal at 2:52 PM on October 13, 2001

why put him in situations that will cause backlash?

i have to agree with kosubai on this one. my god man, don't you realize that 87% of all neck and spinal injuries are backlash related? that over 90% of auto accident victims suffer lingering effects of backlash? the cumulative effect on health care premiums alone from rear-impact backlash injuries... um, wait...
...
never mind.
posted by quonsar at 7:12 AM on October 14, 2001

Note: touristguy.com has much better images than touristofdeath.com.

I've used Waldo already at work to adorn a couple of photos on the intranet. Almost everybody "gets it."
posted by Tubes at 3:10 PM on October 16, 2001