Pictures of People Before and After Calling Them Beautiful

Submission 25,765

About

Pictures of People Before and After Calling Them Beautiful refers to a viral video featuring various people reacting to being called beautiful by photographer Shea Glover. After being uploaded to YouTube in early May 2015, the video spawned a series of exploitable image macro parodies featuring photographs of other people smiling.

Origin

On May 7th, 2015, the SHEA YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "People react to being called beautiful," in which . Over the next two years, the video accumulated upwards of 16.1 million views and 39,400 comments.

Spread

On December 2nd, 2015, Redditor Revel1020 submitted the video to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it received more than 8,800 points (84% upvoted) and 1,500 comments prior to being archived.

On January 22nd, 2016, Redditor amethyst-deceivers submitted image macro featuring screenshots from the video with pictures of Adolf Hitler in the bottom-right corner, which received over 9,800 points (83% upvoted) and 270 comments on /r/funny^[3] before it was archived (shown below, left). On November 4th, Redditor Crystal_Raptor submitted a version of the image featuring musician Tom Yorke from the English rock band Radiohead (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, it gathered upwards of 1,400 points (88% upvoted) and 40 comments on /r/radiohead.^[2]

On May 9th, Redditor Jebasu posted a verson of the exploitable featuring "Pepe the Frog": to /r/me_irl (shown below, left). On June 11th, 2017, Redditor flimsyspoons submitted the image with YouTuber Éirinn O'Kelly in the bottom-right corner (shown below, right). Within three weeks, the post gained over 3,700 points (96% upvoted) on /r/dankmemes.^[4]